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’!
Great photography, enjoying the pictures of the kids with permanent smiles,..why wouldn’t they be?
Must have been pretty bad corrugations, be careful could boil the oil in your shocks to, supposed to pull up occassionally and let them cool down when the going gets tough. Does the camper have shocks or just leaf springs.
Where have you been filling up your water tanks? Drive safe and enjoy.
Hey Uncle Murray – the camper has shocks – we did have to pull up for a bit because the springs started to leak a little and we were worried about them – but Matt took them off in Winton and they seem ok. We think we were just going to fast on the dirt – a wake up call to slow down on the corrugations!
Hmmmm, we are in trouble when the Springs start to leak! No it was the shockies, first time on real corrugations, trying to find that fabled ‘sweet spot’ where you ‘just ride right over the top of them’……BS, the only way on corrugations like that, with this much weight on board was to slow down, drop the pressure and try not to spill my Thermos!
Hey Murray, yeah we have learned now to only go an hour or so and stop, I run round the car, grab a hold of all the shockies to make sure everything is still under a good temp, eyeball the tyres (check them every morning along with wheel nuts etc etc)
We have not had much trouble finding water so far, the information centres are normally a good spot, we are often going in there anyway and just spot a tap on the way in and ask them if they’d mind if we filled up, haven’t been refused yet.
Oh WOW this looks fantastic, we’ll be up there in August, can’t wait!
You will love it!
Note to self …. remember to put our large magnets ( we use them when fossicking to eliminate the “chuckite” ) in for the kids !!!