Everyone was up bright and early and ready to roll out at 7.00am. Our first stop was The Tip just on the outskirts of Birdsville. All your rubbish from the BRB has to be taken out with you so there was a line of RV’s doing exactly what we were doing, droppping off our rubbish and bottles. Cans and PET bottles that can be recycled and can be left in the big bins provided at Bashville.

Next stop was the Dump Point and as there was a queue at the first one we carried on through town to the one near the Racecourse. Only 1 in front of us! Yay.

Then it was back to the Birdsville Common to fill up our water tanks. I’m really happy that our tanks lasted for the whole time at Bashville AND we had showers every day. They were short showers but still helped to get the dust off. While at the Water Point I got the first of many loads of washing done. They could hang up and dry as we traveled along.

With no sign of the others we headed north out of town towards Bedourie. We stayed ahead of the line until we reached the first lot of gravel and this is where we were overtaken by everyone heading north. We were down to 30-50km/h on this corrugated section. Most of the RV’s that passed us did the right thing and slowed down until they got past but there were the usual couple of idiots who flew past.

We pulled in at Bedourie in the line up for fuel however it didn’t take very long. They had people at the bowers with their ATM machines so you didn’t even have to go inside to pay. That made the line go much quicker.

After a lunch stop we waited in town for Mandie and Pete for an hour but as they didn’t go past we made the assumption that they had gone past us in Birdsville while we were getting water and made the decision to go on to Boulia.

We had an uneventful drive through to Boulia however there was no sign of our friends. We can just hope they get our messages and get back to us. We topped up with fuel and parked in the Main Street where we could see all the vehicles as they came into town. We were starting to worry about Mandie and Pete. Where could they be?

We usually communicate via FB Messenger and Mandie is usually very quick to respond but today we got nothing. We waited until 6pm and decided to walk across to the police station to check that there hasn’t been any accidents between Birdsville and Boulia. The nice young lady constable was very helpful and recorded all ours and the Glasson’s details and searched for any notification of accidents. Luckily there have been none. She said it is very common out here to lose people for a day or two because the mobile service is poor and patchy or non-existent. She said she will keep following up and we should call again in the morning.

So after trying some more fruitless times to call Mandie and Pete on the UHF we got a response from Brian to say the rest of them had found a camp spot on the Boulia Racecourse Reserve. We made our way there in the dark guided by Brian’s directions and Dave turned his hazard lights on so we could see the flashing lights.

We quickly set up camp and joined them all around the camp fire. Everyone was talking about where Mandie and Pete could possibly be and in the end we all thought that as the Messenger messages looked like they were going to Maddie’s phone but she was not reading them that they must have a problem with the phone. They may even be way in front of us if they got by us in Birdsville and kept going.

We’d received a messages from Robert & Catie to say they were camping at Dajarra so they are only 150kms in front of us.

Helen cooked scones in the camp oven for desert served with jam and freshly whipped cream. What a treat!

Wherever Mandie and Pete are I hoped they had a good camp spot.