Barcaldine to Rubyvale

We turned east after leaving Barcaldine and travelled on roads we have never been on before, which was a nice change.

There were several tiny towns to pass through.  The first was Jericho.  There is very little there to see…..

Except the smallest drive in theatre in the Southern Hemisphere.  Surprisingly, it still operates.  It was opened in 1969 and has recently had an upgrade, but the signage doesn’t give a date.

There are a couple of sculptures in the park playing on the biblical name of the town.   This is Joshua, the Trumpeter of Jericho.

On the edge of town there is a very cute Street Library.  It is a big shelter for a tiny library cabinet in the centre.  There was nothing there that interested us, but we did leave a couple of books that we have read.

The next town was Alpha.  It is slightly larger than Jericho, but not much.  There is a small information centre and basic museum.  All these towns were built as a result of the railway expanding west in the late 1800s.

The one interesting item was the railway station building from the neighbouring tiny settlement of Beta that had been relocated to Alpha.  It is interesting to read about, if you can zoom in.  I don’t thing there was a “Gamma” township.

There were some pretty flowers and butterflies in the museum garden.

Alpha’s Town Hall is rather reminiscent of that at Jericho.

After these towns we started to actually see some hills as we ventured further east.  

We stopped at Drummond Range Lookout to have our lunch.

There were lots of tall grevilleas in flower and lots of wattles, with flowers like stubby pipe cleaners.  Very pretty.

We were nearing our destination for the day and had time to do a small side trip to the village of Anakie, which was founded on the railway and has sapphire fields in the area.  The only building, other than a few houses is the pretty Railway Station, although no longer in use.

And so ended another day of travel.  A nice quiet afternoon was just what the doctor ordered, as we settled into our camp site at the sapphire township of Rubyvale.