The Red Road

More drivin' today after a mooch around Charters Towers. That is pronounced moooo ch, by the way.  This area is in love with its cattle. This one stuck its head in the car and ran off with our pink balls, so I had to get them back.

Charters Towers has some lovely old architecture.  This is the Stock Exchange arcade, built in 1888. Busy goldrush towns needed stock exchanges in those days. What elegant times they were.

For comparison, this is today's commercial branding in Charters Towers. Spot the difference: 1888 vs 2010.

The Gregory Development Road got more of our patronage today, heading south to Clermont. A lovely drive, barely saw any houses, just signs indicating distances to the massive cattle properties that make up this area.  David saw one for sale in Charter's Towers today: a mere snip at $10.8million for 166,000 hectares. That is HUGE! The area is richly grassed, and the roads are red and lined with diverse vegetation.

Quite spectacularly flat for most of the nearly 400Km we travelled today. Highlight was seeing an emu!

In other exciting news, we had lunch in one of the very rare truckstops out in the middle of Woop Woop.  Properly, with the awning, plates, cutlery, chairs, table, the works. What did the livestock truck driver who pulled in after us make of it all, I wonder?