Lake Maraboon

This post finds us at Lake Maraboon, about 20 k's out of Emerald. The Discovery Holiday Park has to be one of the best caravan parks around.  Miles away from any highway or railway line, the only noise comes from the wildlife.  It gets pretty wild at night too, when the owners, a couple of poofs, (their words, not mine)  bung on a show at night that gets the whole place rocking.  Great fun and a terrific way to meet fellow travellers, so if you are ever heading out this way we can recommend this place.
If you have a boat and are into fishing, mainly for Red Claw yabbies, then this place is an absolute must to visit, not so great for those of us who like to get out and do a bit of walking as most of the land around the lake is either prohibited access, because of the lake being a water supply, or because the land is privately owned.  But if you don't see the warning signs when you walk along you can actually cover a fair bit of territory!
Of course, people don't just come to this area for fishing and boating, they come to go fossicking in the nearby gemfields at Rubyvale, Sapphire and Anakie. We wandered out to Rubyvale to the Miners Heritage. Here we did a little tour underground of a 'tourist' mine, although at one stage it actually was a working mine. Very interesting, but it must have been very difficult way back when all the miners had was a pickaxe.   We didn't actually go fossicking as it is too much like hard work, I did fossick around in the jewellery shop, found heaps of stuff but it was all way too expensive.
Before arriving here we finished our stay at Yeppoon with the 6th birthday party for Tommaso which was great fun for everyone, then left the next morning to really commence our adventure for 2013.
Tomorrow we have a long days drive, hopefully to Winton almost 600 k's away.  We usually stay in Longreach as that is such a great town to visit, but distances are so great out here it would leave a huge drive to Mt Isa, which will be out last stop in Queensland. So Winton it will be - not sure whether we will only stay 1 night or 2.
We do have to be in Mt Isa by June 2 as that is Mike's birthday and we will need a decent restaurant to celebrate this event and as it is a BIG birthday somehow or other a camp dinner does not seem appropriate.
So till Mt Isa...