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NT Rally - Day 11 - Winton

Date:
By Officer Hardass
Category: H.O.G. Rides

Today was going to be the longest day at roughly 950km so it was up at 6am for coffee and on the road by 7.  I would have liked to leave earlier but the group decision was 7am so that's what we stuck to.  First leg was to Camooweal 260km away just over the QLD border.

Along the road now, some of the deep red dirt is starting to fade to more of a brown.  You can tell you are leaving the red centre.  There's still lots of anthills to keep things interesting.  Now, where the ranges once were have opened up to very sparse land as far as the eye can see.  Naturally we had to stop on the NT/QLD border for photo before stopping for fuel at Camooweal.

Next up we pressed on to Mt Isa about 200km away.  Dom was keen to stop at the Harley dealership so we cruised around town trying to find it.  Unfortunately, as it turns out, HD killed the dealership license about 12 months prior so we only found a little shop with a few spare parts.  At least it was worth a try.

Leading us back out of town I took a completely wrong turn and started heading for some mine.  Dave ran up beside me with a confused look so that confirmed I was heading the wrong way!  A quick check on Google maps got things back on track.  From Mt Isa the next 50km was some awesome winding roads.  We managed to pass several road trains in one go by winding the big girl up past 160km p/h.  It was awesome, and I'm very pleased we didn't see any highway patrol!  The scenery just keeps changing and changing.  Now, we were looking at some more rocky ground and rolling hills before it all gave way to flat farming land again.

Our next stop on the map was Crocodile Dundee's Walkabout Creek Hotel.  This is one place I've always wanted to visit.  Now, it was a pretty shabby old pub in the middle of nowhere but it still had plenty of charm and some friendly locals.  We all grabbed a quick beer and a photo with Mick and kept going.  We still had 250km to go and we were burning daylight.

The last leg to Winton was just open farming land.  It was quite amazing how far you could see.  The outback is just so beautiful.  We arrived at Winton about 6pm and tubbed up before heading to the pub for dinner.

Dinner was awesome; another big steak.  Surprisingly, we were told the sticky date pudding was homemade so it was ordered without further question and bloody hell it was good!  After a couple more beers we all headed for bed as everyone was knackered from a big day.  Tomorrow we are heading for Charleville, another place with an awesome pub I've wanted to visit.