Off-Grid Evenings

Hughenden

On our way through outback Queensland we stopped in again and parked up at Allen Terry in Hughenden – where we’ve stayed before – for an off-grid overnight stop, to decide where the next turn will take us.

Thankfully, a few months ago we purchased a 12v adapter for the Starlink, so we were able pull up maps and watch a bit of tele, as the van park wifi was again on the fritz.

In other news, they’ve caught 10 feral cats since we last stayed around a month ago, which is awesome as the Park was absolutely riddled with them, and they were causing a lot of issues.

Winton

The road from Hughenden to Winton was hideous despite being blacktop.
Right up there with the Bruce Highway!

Not many potholes, but veryyyyy uneven in all directions, which threw the bus around bigtime; and all its occupants.
It gave us a whole new meaning to a ‘shake-down trip’.

We couldn’t go more than 80-85kmh, often having to drop down to the 60s.

We stopped off at Cornfield to make ourselves a cuppa in the bus and to have some morning-tea and a wander around.

Corfield is a former Cobb & Co Coach staging point, that these days has a population of around 7.
There isn’t much at all in the town itself, other than a couple of houses, a pub, tennis court and the most wonderful free/donation camp complete with toilets, swings, bbq and a fenced area to parkup in.

The pub is – sadly – closed these days it seems.

We’d like to come back sometime and stay and give a bit of support to the town though, as it’s a lovely little stop.

The minute we hit the ‘100km to Winton’ sign, the road improved dramatically.

Not 100% awesome, but after being thrown about for the last hour and a half, it was a marked and very noticeable improvement!

We rolled into Winton – on the Matilda Way – with no real idea of where we were going to stay, so we drove around and had a sticky-beak at the few options available in the centre of town and decided they weren’t for us, but had heard that the Winton Hotel was a part of the ‘Country Pub Camping’ group and had off-grid camping out the back, so called in to see if they had room for us.

Turned out they did!

Sadly for us, the Pub isn’t open Sundays, so we couldn’t go support the cheap stay ($15pn) by having a meal, but we ended up extending our stay to two nights, so we got to have have a meal the next evening.

The camp paddock out the back is huuuuge, and you can pretty much take your pick of where to park.
The meals amazing, reasonably priced and so delicious, and the happy hour has great prices as well.

Jo & Kevin are great hosts, and are always up for a chat and are happy to share info about the pub and the town.

(We have since heard that Jo & Kevin have sold the pub and that there are new owners.)

Until next time – happy travels, and make the moments matter.