Today was a bit of a rest day, with a few chores like washing thrown in. We did a little sightseeing around the town.

The drive today of nearly 400km to Birdsville was in some ways interesting, in some ways boring and uncomfortable. The road was about half sealed and the gravel half was in good condition. The route is generally flat with long stretches of straight road. It was hot, 33°C, and the flies were pretty intense. That's the boring half.

If you look at the right kind of map of South West Queensland you will see a region called Channel Country. It is an area where largish rivers like the Cooper, the Barcoo and the Diamantina break out into braids of creeks surrounded by flood plains. When the creeks flood (after the wet season in Norther Australia) the creeks overflow and the whole area turns into a temporary lake. Well today we got our first experience of Channel Country. As expected there were many many causeways over creekss and between those long stretches of low lands that were green and lush vegetation due to recent flooding.

Today was supposed to be a short day on a paved road; from Thargomindah to Quilpie (don't you like the names). However it turns out that towards the end of the drive the paved road was still under the waters of the Bulloo River (a major river in this area) and as a result there was a diversion of 40 or so km to bypass the problem.

A shorter drive today only 168km to the Queensland town of Thargomindah via another isolated dirt road, we only saw one other vehicle. The name Thargomindah comes from the local aboriginal language and means something like "cloud of dust", which seems appropriate given the terrain we have travelled through. The town is well setup for tourists with a tourist info office handing out maps and other info, a very well equiped caravan park, and even a marked route for a walking tour of the towns historic sites. Perhaps the most interesting historical fact about the town was that it was the 3rd town in the world to have electricity. The water from the local artesian bore comes out under high pressure and a creative local engineer realized that pressure could be used to drive a generator so in the mid 1890s the construction of a water powered electric generator was commissioned. It became operational on Sept 9th 1893.