DAY 3 Mount Isa to Winton

We travelled on the Overlander’s Way (Barkly Highway) until just past Cloncurry where we refuelled, just in case. This leg of the drive was very different from anything so far. We drove through a very rugged mountain range, which I think was the Mount Godkin Range.

We stopped at the Burke and Wills Memorial at the (empty) Corella River. Burke and Wills had stopped at this point on 22 January 1861 as they made their way across the continent.

The wind was again very strong today and causing concern for the driver. We took this in turns again.

Once we turned onto the Landsborough (Matilda) Highway, the scenery again opened up into plains, with very poor vegetation.

We stopped for lunch at McKinlay and had a beer at the Walkabout Creek Hotel. This was to be the start of a pub crawl today.

This pub was made famous by Crocodile Dundee – it appeared in the movie and there were loads of old photos from that time. We made ourselves sandwiches for lunch before heading to Kynuna, 75 Km away. Here we had a beer at the Blue Heeler Hotel.

We had to pull over for a huge convoy of mining gear.

As we got closer to Winton, we noticed some tabletop mountains (mesas) which were quite spectacular.

We booked into the Tattersall Hotel Caravan Park right in town and continued our pub crawl stopping first at the Great North Gregory, this hotel has the most wonderful Art Deco furnishings and the most unfriendly staff, so we moved on to the Australian Hotel but it only had XXXX on tap so we finished at the Tattersall where the beer was great and the staff fantastic. Backpackers seem to be the major employees of each of the pubs we stopped at today.