Posts Tagged With: Carisbrooke Station

Carisbrooke Station

Posted on June 13, 2013 by Are We There Yet?

On our second day at Carisbrooke Station we decided to join in with some of the Grey Nomads on their station tour. Station owner Charles guided us to Python Canyon where we had a short but fairly steep walk down to see some Aboriginal paintings. It was nice to visit something so interesting in a fairly non-commercial setting.

Off for a hike to Python Gorge to see some Aboriginal Paintings

Looking out over Python Gorge

Python Gorge

All the kids walked down & back up by themselves and so did the Grandparents!

Aboriginal Paintings – Carisbrooke Station

Cooper & Tobes

From there we went on to the station’s private opal mine. Of course with Grammy & Grunda with us we were keen to do some fossicking and Charles was happy just to leave us there to spend the day looking for that magic opal that was going to see us all retired by the end of the weekend! We didn’t find anything really amazing but at least we all found a few bits and pieces with some colour in them so it was quite exciting! It was however very hot! I can’t imagine what it would be like out here in summer!!!

Grunda & Riley hunting for opals

The Campbell Boys claim – don’t mess with them!

Grunda & Jack didn’t even stop for lunch!

Grammy & Tobes with their treasures

Lunch time at the Opal mine

We had a good stay at Carisbrooke Station and owners Penny and Charles were very friendly and accommodating – however it is a long way out of Winton (also quite corrugated) and being in drought there was no water in the dam so nowhere for the kids to swim and cool off at the end of the day. Not quite Easter at Emu Park but still a great family weekend together with some lovely memories!

Grunda telling the two youngest grandies a story

The Fealy/Campbell kids in the shearing shed

True Blue Aussie Boys – the 6 grandsons

Rod cooking dinner – Dad there for moral support (ie. to drink beer!)

Camp kitchen – Carisbrooke Station

Communal Campfire Area – Carisbrooke Station

Matt and I and the kids feel so grateful that my mum and dad and Beth & Rod drove all the way from Townsville (7 hours) just to spend the weekend with us and wish us Bon-Voyage for our trip – it was a really lovely way to kick off our adventure and nice to see everybody before we are away from them for the next 7 or so months! We feel so lucky to have the best family in the world – thank you Mum, Dad, Beth, Rod, Riley, Dylan, Cooper and Corey xoxoxoxox

Camp Carisbrooke 2013

PS. Sorry about the photo sizes in this post – we are playing around trying a few different things trying to figure out the best way to use as little internet as possible to try and get the blog posts uploaded quickly as we are flying through our internet quota’s! If we can get some decent free WiFi (the internet at the library yesterday was just too slow!) then I will try to re-upload the photos – bummed because these photos are some of the nicest from the trip so far but I just don’t have time to re-upload them now!

Categories: Camping, Qld Camping | Tags: Aboriginal Painting, Carisbrooke Station, Opal Fossicking | 8 Comments

Carisbrooke Station – Lark Quarry

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Are We There Yet?

Matt playing with camera – sunset at Carisbrooke Station Day 2

We had no mobile phone reception out at Carisbrooke Station – so a few retrospective blog posts coming about our time out there – am using the free Wi-fi in the Winton library this morning as the kids read, colour in and play with the toys – libraries are awesome! It is air-conditioned and there are toilets – wahooo!

On our first day at Carisbrooke we headed out to Lark Quarry Conservation Park– the world’s only known dinosaur stampede site. Lark Quarry is 110km’s out of Winton and it took us about an hour to drive there from Carisbrooke Station – again along dirt roads but these ones weren’t quite as rough. We couldn’t get over the endless flat landscape with nothing but dirt & spinifex grass – the photos don’t really capture the vastness of it all!

We all enjoyed checking out real T-Rex and some smaller dinosaur footprints. A little surreal to see so many of them and realise that dinosaurs were actually right where we were standing millions of years ago!

We had a nice picnic lunch – no coffee shop all the way out there even though Beth did bribe Rod with that hehehehe!

Then it was back to camp to liven things up for the Grey Nomads (we did feel bad for the poor caranvaners that had to share the station campground with us that weekend – our 7 kids were quite noisy!!). We had yummy nachos for dinner followed by marshmallows around the campfire – and poor Grunda was dobbed in to bring the guitar out to the fire and play for us all! The Grey Nomads were of course subjected to a family rendition of ‘Free’!

Sunrise – Carisbrooke Station

More camera playing – sunrise Carisbrook station

Riley & Jack looking for fossils in the rocks early one morning at Carisbrooke Station

Grunda handing out cake before breakfast to the grandkids!!!

Tessie Tarago carted the kids all over the dirt roads no problems!

Trying to get a photo of us all in the wide open space – very difficult to capture!

The view from the Nareen Rd Jumpup on the way to Lark Quarry

Walking in to Lark Quarry

The kids liked the mechanical dinosaur

Inside the quarry site – dinosaur footprints everywhere!

The lookout – Lark Quarry

The very easy ‘Spinifex Walk’ around Lark Quarry – Mum, Lex and I

Picnic lunch at Lark Quarry

Kids hunting for dinosaur bones

Lex at Carisbrook Station

Campfire time!

All the family singing ‘Free’!

Categories: Camping, Qld Camping | Tags: Carisbrooke Station, Lark Quarry, Lark Quarry Conservation Park, Winton Dinosaurs | 7 Comments

Longreach to Carisbrooke Station

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Are We There Yet?

On the ‘Old Cork Mail’ Road to Carisbrooke Station – quite corrugated in parts!

We left our free camp outside Longreach at 8.30am last Saturday morning (the earliest packup and getaway we have had so far on the trip – getting more organised now!) and headed for Winton. We were all very excited as we were meeting all the family (my sister Beth and her husband Rod and their 4 boys, plus my mum and dad – just missing Kate!) at Carisbrooke Station today! It was a short and easy trip to Winton – only a bit over an hour in the car and the scenery was very flat and dry!

After having a quick look around Winton we set out for Carisbrooke Station which was where we were to spend the long weekend. It was a very rough 80km trip from Winton to Carisbrooke – we opted for the shortest route to the station via mostly dirt road as advised by the owners but it was quite corrugated in parts and took us an hour and a half to get there! We didn’t let our tyre pressure down on the car or camper as we thought it would only be a pretty short trip but that turned out to be a bit of a mistake! The road was quite bumpy and we found oursleves looking for the station homestead after only a few kilometres in! Winton and surrounds are in drought at the moment and everything is very dry and dusty!!! We were a little shocked at the harshness of the station camp site when we finally arrived and felt a little disappointed as it didn’t look much like the website photos, but once we got over the bumpy ride and settled in a little, we could appreciate the beauty of our surroundings!

We arrived about an hour before the rest of the family and the kids were sooooo excited when they drove in! So was I because I was a little worried that they may have hit the dirt road and decided it was too rough and turned around and gone back to Winton!! But ‘Tessie Tarago’ and the trusty ute (who is not 100%) came through once again and tackled the dirt road no problems delivering the kids their cousins, aunt & uncle and grandparents! Our kids after a week on their own were really hanging out for the company of other kids!!

We set up camp and the ground was surprisingly not too hard to bang the tent pegs into and we really did have a good weekend – I’ll fill you in with my next post!

Sunrise at rest stop free camp about 20kms from Longreach

On the road to Winton – very flat, dry and dusty

Our rig on the way to Carisbrooke Station

The corrugations rattled the stove top loose!

And also rattled the tops off a couple of bottles of cider we had in the fridge (fortunately they didn’t smash!) we also had a lot of dust in the camper – so a mess to clean up when we arrived!