We were both excited to start a new 'chapter' by beginning the long journey West. A short day's ride took us to Chillagoe, site of some very cool caves

and a quirky little museum which was well worth the visit. It housed an eclectic collection of fossils, large spiders, gemstones, clocks from the 1970s, an x-ray machine stolen from the Germans during World War II and all sorts of other curios. We loved it! The oldest fossil was 1,700,000,000 years old, bits of stromatolites which are the oldest forms of life on earth, still going strong to this day.In the evening we booked ourselves on a tour of the night sky at the observatory in our campground. I've been very anorakky in trying to learn all the constellations and was a complete girly swot, pointing out one our guide didn't know. Don't know if Hame was impressed or embarrassed! The telescope was the biggest I've ever seen, so powerful you had to move it to view the whole surface of the moon. Once our minds were blown by trying to take in the size of our galaxy (can't even think about the universe) we staggered to bed.

As usual Hame was up with the bloody larks, I'm not a morning person but he insists we get up at 6 (middle of the night if you ask me). He's right, I know, or we'd never get anywhere. As with every other morning he woke up and got dressed, made the coffee and breakfast and said cheerful things loudly while I lay groaning for a bit, before dragging myself up to stuff all the bedding into various bags and sacks. This morning however, felt worse than the usual morning. After I'd done my morning moaning for half an hour or so I realised it just wasn't getting light so I checked my watch - 4.30am. Not quite sure how he got it so wrong! He crawled back into the tent to wait for daylight.

We headed to Normanton where the dirt roads began in earnest. We'd been recommended the 'Purple Pub' which was indeed a pub that was very purple.

For a small fortune we got a motel room at the back of the pub as it had been a seven hour ride and we were a bit sore, but really it was because we wanted to watch the rubgy. We'd watched the previous two State of Origin games - a yearly rugby war between New South Wales and Queensland - and this was the final. As we'd always been in Queensland for the games we supported them, and were as ecstatic as the rest of the pub as they won the series for the first time in four years.

After Hame had waved the coffee under my nose the next morning we got back on Bertha and hit the dirt road again. The early morning light behind us was beautiful...

After a few kilometres our luxury purchase of the day, a box of wine, fell off the bike. We didn't realise until far down the road and we did turn around and look for it but had too many miles to go, to go back too far. We stopped off at a historical site further up the road and met a bus driver who'd managed to get his bus load of grey nomads stuck in a dip in the road. We offered to help although there was really nothing we could do. I asked him if he'd seen a green box on the road, "Oh yeah... ran over it!" he said cheerfully.

The historical site was one of the camps of the famous explorers Burke and Wills. In the late 19th century they attempted to cross the country from the South to the North, despite not being terribly experienced explorers and carrying far too much unimportant stuff. They almost made it; they could taste the salt of the ocean in the rivers and knew they were very near, but they had to turn back. They died of thirst on the way home again, only one party member survived becuase he was rescued by a friendly tribe of Aboriginals.

Another long dirt ride, about eight hours off road (after a quick stop off in Burketown to replace the wine) took us to Lawn Hill National Park, a place we'd been told about by lots of travellers. It lived up to its reputation and became another highlight of our trip. Camped near to us were a couple, Steve and Rose who by chance used to live in Malaysia. We swapped notes on travel and spent a couple of lovely evenings with them around the fire. Rose amazed me by sitting down with a bowl, casually stirring in a few ingredients, dolloping it into a big iron pot which was then covered with coals and producing a delicious cake. These guys knew how to camp in style!

Steve and Rose recommended hiring a canoe to explore the gorge in the early morning. Hame rowed while I took pictures which seemed a very sensible arrangement.

On the way up the gorge we rowed past one croc in the water and one quite large one sunning itself on a log, fortunately these were 'freshies', as opposed to 'salities' which are far bigger and scarier and will eat you up in a second.

I'll let the photos describe how beautiful it was.

We walked around the gorge and watched the sunset from the top of a hill, the views were stunning.

It was hard to drag ourselves away but we had suddenly become aware of how many more places we'd like to visit on our long way to Melbourne so we left after three nights - I think we both could have stayed three weeks. We said our farewells to Steve and Rose who we'd really clicked with, promised to take them up on their kind invitation to their home near Sydney, and set off, wanting to ride a few long days and get to Darwin.

(Emma)