We were blessed again with beautiful weather today. It reached 27 degrees by mid afternoon. Our morning walk discovered a beautiful house, little doubt the best house in Rolleston and also demonstration that State of Origin is alive and well, even in the west.
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| 260517 Best house in Rolleston |
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| 260517 State of Origin alive and well out here |
Our 312 km journey today took us from Rolleston, up the Gregory Highway via Springsure and Gindie (don't blink or you will miss it), to Emerald.
Springsure is a very typical and rather charming Queensland country town of about 800 souls, nestled in below the Capricorn Highlands with the local landmark Mount Zamia, of which Virgin Rock is the most prominent feature, looming above the town.
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| 260517 Approaching Springsure |
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| 260517 The Main street in Springsure |
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| 260517 Virgin Rock just west of Springsure |
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| 260517 Mt Zamia behind Springsure (picture by Peter Lik) |
About 53 km north of Rolleston we passed over the Staircase Range which is one of a number of ranges we crossed today. The Drummond Range was another one, about 30km east of Alpha.
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120414 From the Staircase Range Lookout north of Rolleston, with
"Bluegrass Country" in the distance |
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| 170414 Looking east from atop the Drummond Range, east of Alpha |
Emerald is a largish town of around 16,000 people and is the business centre for the Central Highlands Regional Council. It is on the Nogoa River.
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| 260517 Approaching the Big Smoke, literally - Emerald |
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260517 Bougainvillia on the roadside leading down
to the Nogoa River at Emerald |
From Emerald we turned west on to the Capricorn Highway to Alpha. Alas, this time we failed to take the turnoffs to Rubyvale, Sapphire and Willow, which are small towns in the Queensland gem fields. They were not on our hit list this time.
We were met with some cloud cover at Alpha but no evidence of rain. We have noticed the countryside west of Emerald seems to have dried off somewhat compared with that over which we travelled the previous three days. There is plenty of grass but it is golden brown with very little green. Today we have passed by broadacre crop farms and cattle properties. Though it is drier, the cattle looked in good condition. There is much activity on the roads, with cattle trains being the most common large vehicles we have seen. The roads were much better today but we still don't seem to have gotten into the travel "groove" as yet. Maybe 300km/day is our comfortable limit nowadays.
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