Monday July 5th
Undara to Emerald Queensland

Cooking toast at the bush breakfast, Undara

8359km journey from home

Homeward bound on the great inland way
Up early, we had, without thinking too hard, on arrival booked in a bush breakfast for our departure day. It seemed a good idea to not have to rustle up breakfast while packing, but actually we have a long day's drive and now we have to wait til breakfast starts up!

Eating bush breakfast on individual 'tables'

Anyway, turned out the Bush Breakfast was a great way to wind up the stay and the holiday. It was a short walk from the main restaurant area, down among the Currawongs and kookaburras.

Back on the road, leaving Undara.

 What we saw:

• A couple of circling black kites to say farewell.
• There were plenty of cattle by the road on the way out and on the road too.
• Most abundant birds and easily identifiable are the magpies and some galahs.
• Numerous dead cows and occasional pigs on the road.
• Flock of about 30 black cockatoos flying over the tree tops

Long straight roads again

Sorghum?

Crossed into NSW, through Charters Towers and stayed at Emerald.

Fletcher creek camp ground https://www.inthetowers.com.au/fletcher-creek. In the river, quite extensive. Basalt Queensland (Basalt is a rural locality in the Charters Towers Region, Queensland, Australia. In the 2016 census, Basalt had a population of 190 people.). 41km north of Charters towers .

Charters Towers is a surprise. A big prosperous town! Woolworths, shops and even grog shops and fancy old hotels. Everything manicured and green. A big cattle town.

Lunch stop

We had lunch by the river at Llanarth, in the middle of nowhere (approximately 3 kilometres from Bathurst). Clearly there had been recent campers though.

Kilometres of beautiful wattle flower.

Fields of flowering wattle shrubs. Beautiful .

Loads of caravans and road trains. Oversized trucks carrying big mining or farm equipment.

Biggest load I've seen on a road!

One load was so huge we had to get off the road to let it go past, as it took up both lanes - we were waved off by police. (the video clip was too huge too, this is a frame from it).

What we saw:

• Fields of harvested  crops. Sugar cane?
• 3 brolgas in the stubble. Red crops, may be sorghum?
• Trees full of galahs
• Black faced cuckoo shrike
• Indian mynas 

Emerald is also a sizeable town. Lots of heavy machinery.
We checked into the hotel earlier than we anticipated after a big days drive with not much stopping, 830km.

Walked down to the Irish pub for dinner and back for a good sleep!