Cloncurry after Mt Isa

After a day's driving across big, flat nothing, the boys enduring a day's ban on iPad movies for some misdemeanor or other, we finally pull into Katter country at Mt Isa. This is a town so linked to mining industry that the mines are the centre of town. And so far from anywhere that the white arrow pointers to various cities have no fewer than a thousand kilometres on any arrow. It is late in the day, but after checking out one caravan park, Matt suggests we keep driving another 110km to Cloncurry. He just has a 'bad feeling' about Mt Isa. We can only get the kids back on the car by breaking the iPad ban... Driving through some prehistoric looking mountains and forest, as the late afternoon sun makes the gum trees glow in that special way, I turn to Matt and say something like "eucalypts look their best as the sun goes down". To which Matt tries to get away with, "yeah, that's why I wanted to keep driving.. So you wouldn't miss this..."

Cloncurry has a similar 'feel', but we have no choice. The tent is pitched efficiently, and I felt confident there would be no rain... A celebratory dinner (new nephew Nicholas Preston born!) required the kids to have a bit of grooming - hair getting long enough to need brushing and probably detangling spray. Luckily there was a TV behind Matt's right shoulder to distract them. Shortly after going to bed a very impressive lightning storm started. Some wine had helped numb my anxiety until the lightning and thunder struck simultaneously and blew the street light next to our tent... There was some discussion about waking the kids to sit in the car while the storm blows over. But two children woken from their deepest REM sleep turned out to be scarier than being struck by lightning.

Back to the 'Minor setback tally' for a moment. The fridge turned out to be easy to fix. A 4WD shop guy in Darwin came out to the car and removed a small red ring from the cigarette lighter in the boot (where the fridge plugs in). He smiled and said, "you'll be right now mate.. It designed for the other brand of car fridge..". Chalking up another 'dumb Victorian' story for the pub that night.
The tent does still leak a bit, but we now know where the drips are, and are learning to place bodies and bags accordingly.
A new setback is 'front seat passenger's neck'. Everyone cheers on the Driver's efforts (admittedly 10,000km in 5-6 weeks is a lot), but spare a thought for the co-pilot. 10,000km of always turning to the right to provide stimulating conversation, check everyone's comfort, pass things to kids (and remove weapons), play chess, navigate etc, turns out to cause significant pain. Future road-trippers, you have been warned.