Day  17:                                Charleville to  Tambo (372m)

Distance:                             201.8km

Av speed:                            16.1kmh

Total Elevation:                   412m

Calories:                              6061 per person

Weather:                             Warm (28*C)

Today’s blog will be a short one... which means today was a good day and there were no problems!! Although we continued our trend of arriving in dark!

We set off at 7am for today’s destination of Tambo, with the expectation that we would arrive in the late afternoon. However, once again the rest day seemed to knock a little bit of speed out of our legs and we weren’t able to travel at the speeds we’d been accustomed to.

The scenery changed throughout the day, such that we are now surrounded by short dusty grass and a few trees here and there.

It really did feel like today was much of a muchness, as we saw more roos, more emus, more roadtrains, more grey nomads and more roadkill. The roadkill is starting to smell pretty rotten, it appears the heat doesn’t agree with roo guts too well. Though it is handy for telling which way the wind is blowing!

The highlight of the day was undoubtedly an unexpected visit from the Bailey Bar’s Wendy and Julian who stopped to say gday as we were having a rest break.

Tambo is situated in a large catchment basin for Lake Eyre and it was noticeably cooler when we descended into the town around 7pm. Chris tried the ribeye at the local pub which was said to be from the best cattle in Queensland (from Augathella which we passed through for lunch) ... it's set the bar high but we still have another 21 days in the ‘Sunshine State’.

We have another 200km ahead of us tomorrow as we head to Barcaldine which is famous for its now goneski ‘ tree of knowledge’.