Kangaroos, cows, road trains and Elvis: just the usual outback stuff

We saw this kangaroo just outside our hotel room.

And this tree frog appeared to be living in another of our hotel's bathroom.

Toompine South Western Hotel is known as the pub without a town.

This was indeed a traffic hazard.

“You always have amazing adventures when you travel to Australia,” said a friend to me after I got home. And it’s true, we do tend to have interesting things happen to us. But I suppose we set ourselves up for it, in a way, by traveling into the outback. That vast, remote, arid part of the country tends to be unique and unpredictable in all sorts of ways. Last year, we were evacuated from a national park due to flooding and caught in a cyclone. In previous visits, we saw not one creek with water in it, took a jumping crocodile cruise, met people who live underground year round and encountered a whip cracking performer who showed off his talents while AC/DC blared and he struggled to stay upright at 10 in the morning. But that’s another story.

Outback Queensland is where cattle stations are bigger than countries, where there is a pub without a town, where trucks have multiple trailers behind them, where we drove for two days and passed only one other truck and where we had not one but two hotel rooms with tree frogs living in the bathroom. You just don’t run into this sort of thing in Sydney or Melbourne.

The infamous dingo fence.

I am guessing that country killed is a selling point.

Velvet Elvis is alive and well at the Simpson Desert Oasis Hotel in Bedourie.

There are cattle stations that are larger than European countries. Yes that sign says this station is 1,327 million acres.

Tagged as: Australian cattle stations, cattle crossing, Cluny Station, Dingo barrier fence, Julia Creek, road train, Simpson Desert Oasis Hotel, Toompine South Western Hotel, Velvet Elvis