Mass Exodus - are we on the nose?

Thursday 17th July.

Awoke again this morning just prior to daybreak by our little feathered friends outside the window at roughly 7:00 am. It would appear our bodies are still adjusting to the half hour time adjustment between Queensland and the Northern Territory. As we crossed from NT into Qld on Tuesday which is only 13 km's west of here, we had to advance our clocks the half hour difference.

Unfortunately it is quite windy this morning, ideal though to do the washing we need to do.

On stepping outside the motorhome around 7:30 am it was as though there was something about to happen that we were not aware of as almost the entire area was devoid of caravans etc.

Theoretically there is a 48 hour limit camping here but when we arrived on Tuesday we noticed that quite a few were set up as though they were here for a month with fireplaces built, outside shower tents, clothes lines and all the extras to make the "camping" experience special.

Maybe they just all arrived on the same day and therefore had departed after a couple of days.

We on the other hand are spending three nights here and will move on tomorrow towards Mount Isa. We had a lovely campfire of our own last night while the weather was still quite warm - why not, we have the fireplace and sufficient wood that we have been carting half way around the country.

We have not been on power nor had the generator running since we departed Mataranka last Sunday which has been a good test of our auxiliary batteries and our management of the water we carry. When camping such as we have been over the last 5 days we only shower every second morning in order to minimize our water consumption. On alternate days we simply "top and tail" as Gail calls it. Our 100 litre main fresh water tank only reached empty mid afternoon today so we consider that to be pretty good. In addition to the main water tank we carry another 40 litres for emergency use only. As we leave here tomorrow morning we can fill our tank up "in "town" and also visit the dump point to empty our toilet. The fresh water and dump point are provided as an incentive for travellers to stop here and spend a dollar or two which no doubt keeps small settlements such as Camooweal alive.