Wyandra to Blackall

After Wyandra we continued to head north towards Charleville.  Charleville was a nice, fresh, tidy town with some lovely old buildings.

The Corones Hotel was very grand.  I only got a photo of the side exterior.  It was quite a long building around the corner and is listed on the National Register of historic buildings.  We poked our noses inside and the interior was rather flash.  Apparently they do afternoon tea tours.  We had a chuckle at the sign for their restaurant.

A major feature of each town we have visited, big or small, has been the War Memorials.  So many have had additions in the last few years to commemorate the centenary of the First World War.  The memorial here was very grand with the mural only painted this year.

I was also happy to find a little patchwork shop, the first we have seen this trip, so I bought a low volume fat quarter.

As we were leaving town I noticed the water tower and commented that it looked like a very faded painting on it, just in white.  As we got closer we discovered that it was in the process of being painted.  

The artist is Guido van Hessen, who also painted the Cunnenulla water tower last month, the silos at Brim in Victoria and the silos at Portland, just down the road from us, that we visited in January.  Hopefully, we will be back this way one day to see the finished work.

Our next stop up the road was Augathella, where we stopped for lunch.  It is meat ant country and there is an impressive sculpture in the park.

It is also the home of "Smiley", which was made into a movie some years ago.  The Mens Shed had a great mural.

We were continuing to see lush pastures, with more cleared paddocks.  We have been so lucky to be travelling in this part of the world in such a wonderful season.

We were now entering the Lake Eyre Basin.  All the water from this area, which covers one third of the continent, feeds into Lake Eyre, which is currently at the fullest it has been for many a long year.

The next town we came to was Tambo.  As you enter the town there is a sign for Tambo Dam, which doesn't sound all that impressive, but what a beautiful spot. There were quite a few water birds, something that we thought we may have seen more of along the way.

There were also several bottle trees.

The town is famous for Tambo Teddies.  Mick was quite settled with his teddy friend.

They have really played up the teddy theme through the town.

Mick was rather taken with the steam punk Tambo Truck in the park.

Speaking of trucks, most we now see have three trailers and there have been a lot of stock trucks on the road.

Our destination for the night was Blackall.  Once we got set up in the caravan park we enjoyed settling in and listening to Melville Mull, the in house entertainer.  A relaxing way to end the day.