Mt Surprise

Dear Family and Friends

From Charters Towers we drove just 40klms down the road to a free camp spot called Fletcher Creek. A beautiful babbling brook with crystal clear water runs through here and by the look of the surrounding area and the big bridge it floods here after heavy rain. We were on the high side but there were about five or six caravans parked on the lower side. So far we have dodged the heavy rains that seem to have hit QLD but somewhere we are going to run into it.

We set of early yesterday morning as we knew we had a fairly long drive ahead of us.We reached Mt Surprise late in the afternoon. We travelled up the Gregory development road and have now begun to pass the road trains, some of which have four trailers behind them. They are a bit scary when they pass you. Often the road way is just one lane and so you have to get off the road. They don't slow down and they don't move over. There are call points along the road where you identify where you are and so you get a little warning that they are ahead.

We stopped off Undara where there are the world reknown lave flows are. Two of the tours had ceased as it is now considered to be 'off peak season' and the easiest tour had some 300 steps plus a walk of unknown length. It is unaccesable by car so they take you in a bus so far and then you walk the rest. (the chap serving us couldn't tell us how far the walk would be) so we decided against it and continued on to Mt Surprise. The landscape here is very rocky and unusual in that the rocks are these huge basalt like boulders and many of them are boulders but many are small but all are dark. It must have been one heck of an eruption to spew out the size of some of the rocks.

Mt Surprise has just 60 people living here and for today we are just going to make it an overnight stop.

So with that I shall write again soon

Love to all. Lyn and Ken