Western Qld - Blackall to Winton

 Day 4 - Tuesday 9th September, 2025

We were up early this morning, dog walked, packed up, topped up the fuel, picked up pies and sweet treats from the Bakery for breakfast then headed out of Blackall for a little bit, until we found a roadside rest stop to pull over and eat said haul from the bakery 🥧🍰

Back on the road travelling north to tonight's destination of Winton.  We have fond memories from an early trip maybe 20 years ago, when we ate at the Tattersalls Hotel in Winton when Craig ordered the mixed grill and it came out on 2 plates!  so thought since the Tatts Hotel now has a Van Park attached to it, we'd stay here again.  Now just to get through another long drive today, driving through Barcaldine and Ilfrcombe where we stopped at the Memorial Park to stretch everyones legs and have a comfort stop.  Really lovely little park with toilets/showers, playground, pool, rotunda (you don't see enough really good rotunda's in parks these days, do you), covered arbours and beautiful lush grass. 

Also a great machinery museum across the other side of the highway which we didn't stop at, but have it on our list next time we are up this way.  Onwards to Longreach to top up with fuel.  We are tending to do the splash and dash at towns with reasonably priced fuel this trip, so we don't forget I have a smaller fuel tank then Craig's car and get close to running again 🙄

There's still a lot of nothing out here isn't there, but we've scored the best weather so far for this trip.  Rolled into Winton around 2pm, booked into camping at the Tatts Hotel then went and set up.  Not a bad campground, amenities, free washing machines, dump point over the road at the end of the street and of course the pub across the street.  Decent sized powered site and a patch of grass.  I had to do some work after we finished setting up, so we sat in the shade of the trees we had at the end of our site which was lovely and Barney enjoyed rolling around on the grass.

Afterwards, Barney took us for a walk and then we headed to the pub for an early dinner but also so we could secure a table outside that was dog friendly.  Just as well we did, wow it got busy and filled up quickly, the line to order food was across the bar and out the door after Craig had ordered ours.  It's quite hot today, reached mid 30's and it's not cooling down really quickly either, at least we got a table in the shade.  We ended up sharing our table with 2 ladies (a mother and daughter of older age we'll say, who were doing a bit of a holiday in Longreach and Winton and flew up and are going home on a train, how cool).  Dinner was good - Parmy for me of course and Craig got the Lamb Shoulder which was cut into steaks.

We retired after dinner inside the van in the air conditioning and watched TV for something different for us.