The first stop-over with our Crocomobile was Marburg, a village 100 km West of Brisbane, where we visited Katja on her farm. Katja is a distant relative of Markus – we already visited her parents and her sister in South Africa.

From there we continued to the last city of importance – Toowoomba – further and further into the outback. It got drier, the landscape got scraggy and the country was only sparsely populated. Unfortunately, there were lots of overrun kangoroos on the road -(Fiona: oh, my my dear cute kangoroos…) – luckily, there were also a few alive ones sitting under the trees in the shade. In Charleville we left the A2 and continued on smaller, still good and tarred roads towards Quilpie (opal mines) and Windorah.
Shortly afterwards the gravel road started. The campgrounds consisted often only of one single rubbish bin (but were for free then). A surprise was Bedourie: the village with 100 inhabitants has a free swimming pool with thermal whirlpool for itself directly beside the beautiful campsite – in the middle of the desert!

Boulia was the last “city” with 600 inhabitants before the Plenty Highway, it offered a multimedia show and a well-equipped shop which also sells camping gear, do-it-yourself articles, car parts, spare wheels and concrete mixers.
In contrast to many reports we read, the Plenty Highway was pretty good gravel on the Queensland side (Donohue Highway), on the Northern Territory side it was badly corrugated.

The road was that boring that we made only a one night stop-over at Jervois Station (again a campsite with only rubbish bins and a pick-nick table). Close to Gem Tree we went fossicking for gemstone on our own (and we found a few pieces) and spent the night at Ross River Resort in the Estern Mac Donnell Ranges (Lodge and Camping with swimming pool and very expensive petrol). With a stop-over at the N’dhala Gorge National Park with a short break we travelled to Alice Springs.