Our next stop was at Cooper Creek. (It is not the Burke and Wills stop. I think maybe we were further down the river). There wasn’t much there, a big car park and dirt tracks leading off in all directions. We parked up in the car park then went for a walk along the riverbank. It was a windy dirt road with leads into small camping areas with not a lot of room.   Adrian and I talked about how long we would be staying for and both agreed on just one night. The decision made to stay where we were. There would be a bit of noise form the road but it shouldn’t be too bad.

We were wrong. The roadtrains continued all night. There was a little one lane bridge crossing the river, which let you know loudly when a vehicle was passing over it. I think I heard everyone of those trucks with every one of the wheels hitting the concrete of the bridge.

Jundah Van Park 

We were planning to travel on to Stonehenge but because we had such a bad night’s sleep we chose to stop at Jundah. The town offered a van park with power and water for just $15 a night. You can’t go wrong with that price plus it had a washing machine for just $2 a load. We defiantly took advantage of that. We have a washing machine in the van but it broke down about eight months into our travels. We haven’t bothered to get it fixed as you need power to make it work and we are not often on power. Secondly it would be expensive to have it repaired as the machine is tucked in beside the toilet and the toilet would have to be taken out first before the washing machine, very inconvenient.

We filled up with fuel first. We had to grab a key from the store to unlock the bowser then hand it back when done. We also booked into the van park at the store.

We were greeted with a little patch of lawn at our bay. It brought in the local bird life. It was nice to sit back at the end of the day and enjoy their play.

It ended up being a good idea to fill up first. It was the Saturday and after the general store closed then that was it for getting fuel until the store opened again on Monday morning. That is country life for you. The general store was the only shop in the small town. Adrian took a walk around the town while I did the washing. He was back before I had finished. “How was it?” “Small and uninteresting.”

Stonehenge.

We drove though Stonehenge. It was smaller than Jundah. We stopped at the information centre and took a walk along the only street of the town to the pub. They have an old steam engine out the front. The sign told us they offer pizzas. I wanted to ask if they use the steam engine to make them or not. Something different.

When we were in the information centre we were told about the address book just out of the town. A fascinating concept. What is the ‘Address Book’? Not far out of the town people have marked the ground with their names using rocks.

The names went on for miles, some traveling back from the road and others running with the road. I was all for adding my name but most of the rocks seemed to have been used. It was ok; I would leave the ground unadorned by my name.