The 110 kilometres of today's trip east along the Landsborough Highway from Longreach to Barcaldine, through the town of Ilfracombe, is one we have done twice before, so in this missive I shall invoke the editorial magic carpet which brings us directly to the town.
Barcaldine is, apart from all else (and there is plenty of 'else'), something of a major highway cross roads. At the western end of the town the Landsborough takes a sharp right turn to continue south to Blackall, Tambo, Augathella and on to Charleville. You may recall we did that stretch in September 2016, dodging floods all the way!
Continuing straight on from this junction rather than making the right turn, would take us into Barcaldine's main thoroughfare, and the start of the Capricorn Highway which travels east through Alpha, Emerald and on to the coast at Rockhampton. We were to take this route in a week's time.
But for now it was off south along the Landsborough Highway (otherwise known in the town as Box Street......all the major town streets here are named after trees)
where in less than a kilometre, at the corner of Yew street, we came to the park we had chosen for this stay, the Homestead Caravan Park.
This place can be a spot confusing for the newcomer....there are three entrance roads, two off Oak Street and one around the corner in Yew, and the park office/shop is hidden alongside the attached service station which is also park of the park complex. Our first impression was that this was all rather ramshackle and in this case our initial impression was correct, but this is far from a criticism.
'Barky', as this town is universally known (consistent with the habit of Queenslanders to abbreviate their town names whenever they can), hosts three parks. We chose the Homestead principally because it was a short walk to the main street.
Interestingly, when we had booked, we were a little taken aback by the fact that the chap on the other end of the phone had a decidedly foreign accent. We both picked it as 'sub-continental'....Indian, Pakistani or Sri Lankan. He was exceedingly polite, and I have to say subsequently proved to be more than accommodating.
'DeeJay' was indeed from India, and he and his business partner were, to resort to the vernacular, 'bloody good blokes', but we did wonder if the advertised daily afternoon billy tea and damper, which has been a long time feature of this park, would be a reality. More of this shortly.
Fortunately we had parked just off the main road before booking in, and were able to subsequently negotiate the narrow entrance beside the large stand of trees without too much drama (other than having to pick our moment to cross the consistent flow of highway traffic).
The equally narrow entrance road led us almost directly to our site, our first site that is!
On arrival we had been given the choice of any site in the park, and as I wandered about I initially settled on one of several drive-thru sites under a stand of quite large trees to the left of the driveway and behind the office complex. I though this was a very good move (read just being lazy!)
One of the two park ablution blocks was close handy, and the patch I picked was wide and pretty well grassed and there was shade aplenty.
So we duly hove to and set up with yours truly feeling pretty pleased with himself. And then the penny dropped, well, it did early the following morning.
We had heard that one of the other features of this park is the morning bird feeding, but had not given it much thought, until the following morning that is. And then it featured very prominently in our thinking.
In they came, some perching on the nearby overhead wires,
others flapping and screeching overhead before settling in the tree directly above us,
all waiting for breakfast to be served. A few pigeons alighted for the feast, but the majority of these feathered feeders were the dreaded Little Corellas.....and not only did they settle in the tree above us pre-breakfast, but they then did the same once they had scoffed up the grain and other goodies strewn about for them.
As I am sure you know, these are the most wretchedly noisy birds, and, once they had filled their crops and settled in the branches over us, you can guess what came next!
It was time to activate Plan B....immediately.
And here good old DeeJay came to the fore. I had done another park recce and came up with another suitable site, which was in fact two. Things were not overly busy looking so I decided to take a punt and request them both, with the (less than enthusiastic) offer to pay a little extra for the privilege.
My new best friend would not hear of it...."please sir, take it, it is yours". I doubt we have ever moved so quickly!
Apart from the fact that it was somewhat narrow and this meant being a little creative with the awning tie downs (there was another drive-thru right next to us but this was not always occupied and then only overnight), we had afternoon shade, good grass and plenty of room for the Cruiser.
We could not have been happier with this new arrangement, and by way of thanking our most obliging host, we extended our stay from the initial five days to seven (and made it very clear why we did so, although we did have ulterior motives!).
Here we we quite close to one of the few park cabins, but that was of little relevance.
More importantly, the second toilet block and the camp kitchen were less than a stone's throw from the end of our van.
Now I did mention at the outset that this park is not 'The Ritz, but the ablutions, the laundry (in this back block)
and the adjacent camp kitchen were all perfectly functional. Indeed here we had a choice of BBQ's, including a hooded variety which is something not often found in parks.
The park layout is such that it is divided into three sections. In what I'll call the 'back section', folk had gathered here for what was obviously a long term stay,
whilst those dropping anchor for shorter periods would be allocated places along the second roadway in off Oak Street,
where again, the sites were adequately spacious and well grassed.
The last group of sites ran along the third entrance/exit roadway, opposite the drive-thru sites we had initially occupied. We actually used this road on departure. It leads directly out into Yew Street and was very convenient for us.
So that's about it for the general layout, save for one last feature......the group gathering area, complete with fire place, a small somewhat makeshift stage for the entertainers and plenty of tables and chairs. Nothing in this park is too far from anything...that's the Cruiser you can see centre shot.
We did note on arrival that behind this area there were a number of boxes all containing young plants. I've included this to actually remind me to give our young and highly enthusiastic Indian owners a real plug.
By the time we had left all these young trees and shrubs had been planted in various areas around the park as part of a quite extensive beautification programme. We will be more than interested to see how this develops over the coming years.
A chalk board we had seen on the office wall on arrival confirmed that entertainment and the promised damper and billy tea were a reality, and at this point I have to admit that we were both struggling with the concept of two youngish Indian lads turning out that most iconic outback Ozzie combination.
What disturbed us even more were the advertised names of our entertainers. Please no.... sadly yes! Within a few hours of our arrival Liz wandered back to the van with some dreaded news. "Do you remember that duo we heard in Katherine in 2015?" "Please tell me you are joking", was my immediate response, adding with less than heart felt optimism, "perhaps they have improved."
Now I have no wish to be too harshly critical, but I must report that they haven't, and before going any further I've decided to accept as wise the old maxim of 'If you can't say anything good about someone, don't say anything'!
From our site we had no choice but to 'be entertained' each afternoon, but we did make the effort on one occasion to formally become part of the audience. There were few of us to begin with,
but as the damper was cooking away in the coals, and the slung tin billies were coming to the boil,
the crowd began to straggle in,
and DeeJay could not help posing for the camera before he sprang into action.
Any misgivings I may have had about the quality of the product which came from the camp oven were soon dispelled, if appearances were any guide. This certainly looked the real deal.
The tea was left to brew
whilst the two lads got on with the job of cutting the damper into wholesome chunks before drenching the thick slices with lashings of butter and golden syrup.
Resplendent in her concert party pants, Liz was quick to join the queue,
and was soon scurrying back to our table with the spoils.
Despite my initial and shamefully biased misgivings, I was sufficiently enthused by what I saw to down the camera and line up. And very pleased I was too....the offering on my plate was as good an example of the 'not as easy as it may look' art of good damper cooking as I have enjoyed anywhere. We did, however, knock back the offer of tea....our chilled bottle of bubbles was more than up to the task of washing down the sticky delights on our plates.
As we tucked in, and resisted the invitation to help ourselves to seconds, we could not help but reflect on the situation as a whole, and just how odd this actually was......but then was it?
Damper and tea have been an institution of this park for eons. I can recall reading about it years ago when we were considering a stopover here in Barcaldine. DeeJay later told me that when he and his partner bought the park, the shop and the service station, it was made very clear to him that this was a tradition which had to continue. As he said, he just had to learn how to do it.
I can attest to the fact that he has done so with distinction.
Mind you, as we had discovered at Quilpie, at this time of the year throughout the south-western Queensland outback, parks which do not provide incentives such as damper and/or entertainment on a daily basis through 'the season', will find themselves foundering. In fact we noted that the rival park down the road was doing exactly the same thing (but they had better singers!).
I got on very well with our ex-pat Indian host, to the point that, as we were leaving he wished us well and made it very clear that should we return we must remind him of the site we had occupied and he would ensure that it would be ours again (despite the fact that we were occupying two!)
I hope he does well. He deserves to.
Any misgivings I may have had about the quality of the product which came from the camp oven were soon dispelled, if appearances were any guide. This certainly looked the real deal.
The tea was left to brew
whilst the two lads got on with the job of cutting the damper into wholesome chunks before drenching the thick slices with lashings of butter and golden syrup.
Resplendent in her concert party pants, Liz was quick to join the queue,
and was soon scurrying back to our table with the spoils.
Despite my initial and shamefully biased misgivings, I was sufficiently enthused by what I saw to down the camera and line up. And very pleased I was too....the offering on my plate was as good an example of the 'not as easy as it may look' art of good damper cooking as I have enjoyed anywhere. We did, however, knock back the offer of tea....our chilled bottle of bubbles was more than up to the task of washing down the sticky delights on our plates.
As we tucked in, and resisted the invitation to help ourselves to seconds, we could not help but reflect on the situation as a whole, and just how odd this actually was......but then was it?
Damper and tea have been an institution of this park for eons. I can recall reading about it years ago when we were considering a stopover here in Barcaldine. DeeJay later told me that when he and his partner bought the park, the shop and the service station, it was made very clear to him that this was a tradition which had to continue. As he said, he just had to learn how to do it.
I can attest to the fact that he has done so with distinction.
Mind you, as we had discovered at Quilpie, at this time of the year throughout the south-western Queensland outback, parks which do not provide incentives such as damper and/or entertainment on a daily basis through 'the season', will find themselves foundering. In fact we noted that the rival park down the road was doing exactly the same thing (but they had better singers!).
I got on very well with our ex-pat Indian host, to the point that, as we were leaving he wished us well and made it very clear that should we return we must remind him of the site we had occupied and he would ensure that it would be ours again (despite the fact that we were occupying two!)
I hope he does well. He deserves to.
No comments:
Post a Comment