Day 14 - Wing Around The Rock - Roma to Home - 618km

Last day of the trip home was highlighted only by lots of roadworks and lots of traffic so wasn't a very enjoyable ride. We left the Warrego Highway at Oakey to head home via Esk and Somerset and saw a couple of Blackhawk helicopters doing laps of the army base. Not a lot else to tell really but below is a selection of photos from the days riding.

Finally back to where we started from 14 days ago. Not the best of conditions for riding a lot of the time but a great trip nonetheless. 

The vital statistics of the trip:

Distance: 7499 km

Fuel: 493.29 litres

Average fuel economy: 6.57 litres per 100km

Most expensive fuel: 228.1 cents per litre

Day 13 - Wing Around The Rock - Barcaldine to Roma - 618km

Not too much to tell about today. We left Barcaldine and headed south through Blackall, Tambo, Augathella, Mitchell and into Roma where we are staying for the night, before heading for home tomorrow. There was a lot of roadworks which was actually good to see as the roads are in very poor condition, however it made for very slow going at times.

So is he going to jump out in front of me or not?

Plenty of big road trains travelling both directions today.

Below is the home of the famous (apparently) Tambo Teddies.

These guys don't seem to care what's coming when they step out onto the road.

Day 12 - Wing Around The Rock - Winton to Barcaldine - 314km

Our plan after leaving Winton this morning was to visit the Age of Dinosaurs Museum just outside of town. However it turned out that there was an 11km gravel road into the site which was quite badly corrugated. After only a couple of kilometres of getting shaken to the bone we decided it wasn't that vital to visit the display and turned around.

Heading down to Longreach this was a regular sight...flocks of birds feeding on roadkill which seemed to struggle to know which way to go when taking off, however we fortunately managed to dodge them all.

A rare sight below on this trip...a river with water in it! This is the Thompson River just outside of Longreach.

Another one of the crazy long legged chooks getting ready to dart out on to the road.

As it was only a few months ago we visited Longreach, we just stopped for lunch and a couple of photos at the Qantas Museum and the Hall of Fame and carried on to Barcaldine.

After deciding to stay in Barcaldine for the night, we spent a couple of hours looking through the Workers Heritage Centre displays which were quite interesting and informative. After that it was time for a pub crawl down the main street.

Day 11 - Wing Around The Rock - Barkly Homestead to Winton - 953km

We had a big day again today with lots of ground to cover so we were away reasonably early...and as we were heading basically due east...yep...you guessed it...straight into the rising sun.

As if it wasn't bad enough with the sun coming straight at us, we also had to contend with these monsters blasting past, with the air displacement threatening to push us off the road.

Of the many hundreds of kilometres we would do today, much of it was just like this below, vast open spaces with hardly any grass for the cattle to eat.

Couple of shots below are of what are called rivers out here...although there appears to be a basic element missing to deserve that title.

After a couple of hours we reached to the NT/Qld border, where as the sign below alleges, it is time to turn the clocks forward, although the speed limits get wound back and the quality of the roads becomes somewhat third world!

We came across the cattle below being driven (droved??) along the road in desperate search of some decent grass for them to eat.

I doubt that they will all survive this exercise! Considering much of Queensland was under water not that long ago, the drought out here now is staggering!

A couple more of the special features shots below

Another of those crash, burn and leave 'em car wreck stories.

About 100km south of Cloncurry is a little township called McKinlay featuring a familiar looking pub pictured below...the Walkabout Creek Hotel of Crocodile Dundee fame.

After that, another few hundred kilometres of wide open spaces which should be fertile grazing country however is all looking very barren due to the severe drought and quite regularly we saw cattle lying dead along in the fields..presumably from lack of food and water.

After a long hot ride we finally reached our destination at Winton, and the beers at the North Gregory Hotel were very cold. For those that don't know, this pub is famous as the place where A.B. (Banjo) Patterson first recited Waltzing Matilda, way back in 1895.

Outside the Waltzing Matilda Centre in the main street of Winton, a placed we visited only earlier this year on our caravan trip out this way.