We drove thru some small blips on the Map. Nothing too exciting but its starting to feel very Outback. The scenery has changed dramatically. Dry & dusty. Our three fav. things in abundance - doe eyed bulls emus and huge wedge tail eagles. A lot of the roads were narrow strips of bitumen, single lane, making for lots of dust, especially when a road train approached. Its" get right off the road" for them. We had a bit of an itinerary planned but then 22kms from the town of Croydon we blew an inside tyre on the bus. Managed to get off the road and took stock of our situation. Rick tried to change the tyre but it was physically too hard. We had hoped someone would stop and ask if we were OK but no-one did. Utes, a bus, caravans and a motorhome all passed us without a blink. So we made the decision to slowly drive into the town. At 15kmh for the next 22kms. We watched the scenery slowly pass us by. Lots of bulls stared at us, either mesmerised by the bus or more likely by the noise the wrecked tyre was making. We had our hazards on, and only 1 of 7 vehicles that passed us on the road called on the CB to ask what was wrong. I couldnt beleive it. We always stop or slow down if we see someone who may be in trouble, but no one did for us. Got into town 2 hrs later and headed straight to the roadhouse. At first they wanted us to wait TWO days but after hearing Ricks plea, the owners son, who had just knocked off work for the day, relented and helped Rick do the changeover. Wouldnt take anything for it but we gave him $30 to buy a beer. So we ended up in a caravan park at 6.30 cos I could see Rick was stuffed. A hot shower, cold drink and a meal and Rick was in bed by 7.45. The next morning we got up early and headed into the Info Centre, got a walking map of the town and spent 4 hours there. This town is tiny but has a history as a huge gold mining area. The street is probably only a couple of kilometres long but once the main street was 18 kilometres long There is only one pub now but there were 36. Interesting old buildings, all open, lots of old mining equipment kept us entertained.
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| Dry river beds |
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| Camp near Georgetown |
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| Old Mine |
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| Old house still lived in till 1986 |
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| Oldest general store in Aust. |
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