We set off on the blood-smeared highway from Bourke, dodging the emus all the way to Charleville and beyond. The amount of road kill is astonishing – mainly kangaroos – but for all that, we have seen less than a handful of live kangaroos. The carnage seems to have abated as we have progressed North, perhaps because there is less food and shade.

The disparity between the numbers of live and dead ‘roos is perplexing, and we have assumed that the kangaroos are largely in hiding till dusk when they come out to line up along the side of the road and wait for the road trains and a game of dodgem.  It seems that word has not got around that it is not an even contest.

We have now arrived in Mount Isa, enjoying the hospitality of the towns along the way: Charleville, Barcaldine, Longreach, Winton and Cloncurry. We have had an eye on the destination, so have taken only a few opportunities to be tourists. It is enough just to soak up the amazing landscapes of the back of beyond, in their variety: a rich beauty in the changing colours of the soil, the dry river beds symbolic of the optimism that leads people of the land to persevere with their endeavours.

On about four occasions we overtook a cyclist, loaded with camping gear, and pedalling along at what seemed a modest pace.  We saw him first about 40 kms short of Longreach, then, the next day, about 50 kms after Longreach. I encountered him at Winton, having a lone beer at the Tattersalls Pub. I sat down and had a chat and took a photo for him to send to his wife. He is a Japanese Australian, and is cycling from Sydney to Alice Springs. I am not sure what happens after that. We passed him the next day about 50 kms after Winton.

We spent an enjoyable few hours at the Qantas museum in Longreach, but decided to give the Outback Hall of Fame a miss, since we had taken in the Outback Show at Bourke. Jenny has taken an affection to Country Music, and we now have a couple of CDs from the outback yodellers who sing of their loves lost and found – usually lost. At Winton, the North Gregory Hotel had a Happy Hour with chicken racing and some Banjo Patterson recitings from a travelling poet named, of all things Gregory North. True. We actually enjoyed listening to the old favourites, The Bush Christening, Clancy of the Overflow, The Man from Ironbark, as well as hearing more of the history of old Banjo, including his time around Winton where he wrote Waltzing Matilda.

It took me back to my childhood meal times when the Old Man (aka Dad) was memorising AB’s poems. Our eagerness to escape the table was thwarted by the Old Man who would say in what he imagined was a voice for public performance: “have you heard The Bush Christening?” We barely got the chance to utter a resigned “every night, Dad!” when he would order “well sit down… On the outer Barcoo…” The words are seared on my brain, but I still have, despite the nightly torture, a fond regard for the poems of Banjo Patterson.  We bought a CD of Greg North’s recitations but will wait for the kids to come around so I can ask them “have you heard The Man from Snowy River?”

It was good to catch up with Rob and Pauline Priest who have made a dash from Sunshine Coast hinterland to Mount Isa. It is good to now have travelling companions, and we head off on Tuesday for Barkley Homestead. We will be joined by John and Anne Mann at Tennant Creek, and we will then journey together to Alice Springs, Uluru, Kings Canyon and Coober Pedy till we part ways at Port Augusta. John and I have an interesting tussle ahead – he is a (literally) mad supporter of Richmond Tigers, while I am a keen follower of the Geelong Cats. The teams meet in one of the finals on 8 September, while we are at Kings Canyon – really hoping we can get the game on TV, and a Cats win.

Well, we are primed and ready to go. Internet is pretty hopeless, as we are discovering that the 2% supposedly not covered by Telstra, encompasses about 98% of the land mass! So I am not sure when I will be able to post for a while. Maybe Alice Springs.