Wednesday 30th October - Charters Towers to Belyando
Off for a few days free camping now. 20.0 overnight and upto 31.3. The plan is to spend a night at the Capr River Rest Area about 100km down the road and then the Belyando Rest Area the next day. This is about another 100km further on. We drove to the first for the free camp and this is just a concrete truck stop parking area at the side of the road, adjacent to the highway. Yes, they have toilets but that's about all. So we decided to continue another 100km down the road to Belyando Crossing where there is a caravan park, as possibly the next one we want to stay at will be exactly the same. We missed it the first time as all we could see was a service station, so did a U turn and headed back there. Clive sees the signs at the side of the service station for the Park and pulls into it and parks to go and pay for a night. He tells me that the park is closed but we can park out the front on the side as there is plenty of room. $5.00 for the hot showers if you want. The road looks like it does a circuit so Clive starts driving down it and around a corner to find that we are blocked in by pre-fab buildings and plastic pipes across the roadway joining the buildings together. So reversing out is the only option now. The problem is there is a sheer drop off on my side of the car. We need help! Clive gets out and goes and asks one of the mining lads who are just sitting around if he can help us reverse out. He safely did this and then we were able to complete am U turn and get out of this park. We don't feel like driving another 170km to Clermont today, so just park in the shade under a tree and stay the night there. We'll aim for Clermont tomorrow. Lots of road trains on the road today and we only saw three caravans heading north. We're still on the Gregory Development Road and the shoulders need some repairing as the road itself is very bumpy. I suppose that logically these rest areas need to be large and flat to accommodate the road trains that stop in them. Outside this Roadhouse they have a rest area and the longest road train we saw had four trailers attached.