Travelling North

Tues 8 September… We were almost celebrities this morning as we were packing up to leave. People wanted to know where we were going next and could we visit them sometime, and all because we had an inch of rain last night. -------The Drought Busters strike again!! It hadn’t rained there for 4 months so we left them in a bit of a swamp.
We are scooting north fairly quickly as now we have seen Cania Gorge there doesn’t seem to be a lot to see until we gat back to the coast around Townsville. Certainly the scenery today was a bit bland, it’s mostly cattle country which seem to survive on dust and very little brow grass. Having said that, this is good grain country and they are just about to harvest the wheat crop, it’s only 1 week into spring----very strange. They also grow lots of cotton around here but we don’t know when they harvest that as it all looks dead at the moment.
We have stopped for the night at a tip of a place in Springsure, just south of Emerald which as you might guess is famous for it’s precious stones. We won’t be getting out the pick and shovel. We are also close to the towns of Rubyvale and Sapphire where apparently you can fossick to your hearts content. On the way up we came through a small town called Banana which oddly has no claim to fame at all.
As yet we still have no internet and just the weakest of mobile signals so just managed to get a couple of texts away. Maybe there is an opening for carrier pigeon trainer!