After many long nights in the the counting house piling up our "Bingara Gold"..........yeah I know......but just let me dream a little longer.....

Well, anyway....we officiated and reveled at my daughter's engagement party and then spent some quality family time with the young uns and the not so young uns and all too quickly we were back in the motels again until early May and we had another break looming on the horizon......6 wonderful weeks in the Bushtracker....yes......wow....lets go.....Uh Oh....where will we go? What a terrible situation to find ourselves in...a 6 week break only 2 weeks away and we haven't even planned the first day....

We really enjoyed our 2 months in the deserts of Central OZ in 2006....haven't put that trip on here yet.....you'll have to wait for the next gripping episode....Ha Ha Ha......

So the desert??? Hmmm...all those corrugations and bulldust...well that's all in a days work for our Bushtracker...all that bull dust on the outside, but not on the inside.......we do love the Cooper Creek waterholes and the birdlife and the Bushtracker gives us all the comforts of a well set up home when we get there.

Also..........after our Desert trip in '06, I tried to get Julie enthusiastic about a trip across the Gulf....yep Carpentaria...but she's got a real fear of the big lizards that inhabit the region and then we had a mid trip call that changed our itinerary, so it wasn't to be in '06.

So....how about a trip out to the Cooper and then swing North and head towards the Western Gulf and run across it to the East and then back down to Rockhampton where our next motel job was to be???

Well.....Julie figured if everyone else is doing it...why let a little thing like FEAR get in the way of seeing a beautiful part of OZ ...OK, a plan was on the board. I have a cousin living in Mt Isa that I hadn't seen for years and we'd also got our Minelabs out at Bingara and put them away again after finding heaps of barbed wire and old bullets. As were going out through Cameron Corner, the goldfields of Milparinka would be worth a try as well. Yeah...the Gulf...I really wanted to see Karumba as I'd heard so much about it over the years......and while up that way.....Lawn Hill would be a "Must Do"

This all goes to show one thing.....all you need is all the top toys and some spare time to play with them and next thing you know.......you've got a trip happening. Yip Yah.

So, we did the usual preparations over the next week and a bit and we were ready to rock n roll as we've heard others say before. As luck would have it, the moteliers arrived back and we handed over to them by early evening and as the rig was trip ready we decided to leave Armidale then and there. So, we fired up the Landcruiser and towed the BT out to Bundarra, 80k's NW of Armidale, where we knew of a camp we had used before by the Gwydir river.....a lovely spot to wake up on the first day of your 6 week break.

We got to Bundarra at about 9.00p.m. and true to the New England weather it was FREEZING.......so on with the 2 kw Webasto diesel heater and it was SUMMER inside the Bushtracker within 10 minutes.

Too excited for sleep, we whipped out the chainsaw and cut up a long gum branch someone had left by the fireplace....... and a few celebratory drinks were enjoyed by the roaring firelight and crackling embers.

With the dying of the embers, the cold outside lost out over the warm 28 degrees inside...thank you Mr Webasto...and we wolfed down our first holiday dinner (Spaghetti & Meatballs on Toast) anything tastes good when you're on HOLIDAZE......and you're too drunk to peel veges......and all of a sudden 9.00p.m. turned into 1.30a.m...La Whooops......So we turned off the Webasto, otherwise we would have been roasted by morning, and our comfy bed and flannelette sheets and blanket and doona would be more than enough and ...........ZZZZZZZZZZ.