Travel theme : Red

Ailsa you have got us thinking and looking again. Your blog at “Where’s my backpack“(click on this link and have a look) it has some stunning landscape shots. Red is an amazing colour and out here in outback Australia red dust is the curse and the beauty that shapes and colours everything. Even the white correllas have a pinky red tinge to their feathers.

Road train in the sunset

 

We have had a stressful day.

It started off just fine, we had an early start, 9-15am, Overnight stop had been at the Barkly Roadhouse miles from any where and as petrol was an expensive $1-99.9 per litre, they are in a seller’s market. The Barkly highway only has the one petrol station in the 450 kilometres length, I just put $20 in, that topped me up to three-quarters of a tank, plenty to get us 260 kilometres to the next petrol station I thought.

I thought wrong….

At 150 kilometres I noticed the gauge was well down and we still had another 100 km to go…

At 50 kilometres from the Queensland border we came to road works, nearly 5 kilometres of road works, and we were behind a road train with 3 trailers full of cattle….

The red,(red was popping up every where now) warning light was glowing we were now dangerously low on fuel…

The road train crawled along agonizingly slow covering us in red dust. Oh God when will these road works end….

Finally we are back on the bitumen, the road train is still travelling slow. This must be the only slow road train in Australia. I daren’t overtake. What if we spluttered and stopped half way past him…

With our fingers crossed, heart in mouth and keeping one eye constantly on the petrol gauge which is now down to the E marker we motor on…

We reach the Queensland border and leave the Northern Territory behind us. 20 more kilometres to Camooweal and petrol….

Finally we reach Camooweal, that lovely little drovers town on the edge of Queensland and with a sigh of relief pull up at the bowser and fill up with petrol. Here it is $1.97.9 per litre and it is the most expensive tank of petrol ever, it cost $123 for the fill up.

So what has this all to do with red? Well it was now 2-30pm so decided to stop for the night at the camp ground behind the service station. After calming the nerves with a cup of coffee and relaxing with the computer for a couple of hours I started preparing dinner. As I looked out of the van door I noticed the road trains pulling into the servo for a dinner stop. With the stop lights glowing and the fading sunset I just thought RED and rushed out with my camera. Now I have a new camera and one of the magic gizmos on it I haven’t tried yet is a special night-time setting. It was amazing, I pressed the shutter and it took about 6 shots in quick succession then magically stitched them together and the above photo is what it produced.

So that is my red contribution and a rather long story to go with it…