About 150km and 2hrs.
A slower start to today and we leave just after 9. We don’t plan on going too far, I’ve penciled in the Calliope River campground to test out our first free camping site. We arrive pretty early at 11:30 and decide we’ll pull up for lunch and work out if we will stay or if we’ll push on and find another campground further north.
Given the location looks great, there appears to be plenty of room, and any better looking options are a fair way up the road, we elect to stay. We’re a bit low on water and need to empty the dunny, so we drive the 5km back to town to top up and empty down.
North Side
There are two sites, one on either side of the river, but to drive they are a few km apart. The north side is really well signpost, but it has a 10-15m bank so is impossible to get down to the river. The southside is a lot flatter with easy access, but gee they don’t make it easy to find.
We park up southside and setup in a nice shady spot and think about letting the kids go for a paddle, that was until we saw this sign…..
Camped up on South Side.
Needless to say we didn’t see any, but who wants to take the chance.
So given that avenue of distracting the children is out, we go instead to the Calliope River historical village (Of course it’s on the northside of the river). It has a few old train carriages and about a dozen old various building, mostly decked out period furniture and knickknacks. All the buildings are actually from around the wider area. Only $10 for the family it was a great way to spend an hour or two.
Back to camp and have dinner, before bed we go for a walk with the torches to see if we can see any wildlife. Expecting maybe a bat or something, to come across this turtle in the river was quite a surprise. The photo is not great, but this turtle’s shell had to be over 70cm long. We didn’t expect to see something so large this far up river, so maybe the croc warnings are worth heeding…….
