Charleville, Queensland

Well we ended up staying in Cunnamulla for two nights, but really only because the petrol station was closed and we needed to fill up. It's very sad how these outback Aussie towns are only just holding on by the skin of their teeth. Then it doesn't help when the caravan park owners are actually rude to the travellers! We have actually been to Charleville once before about seven years ago, with my cousin Susan, my son Shane and his now wife Stacey. We liked it then so really wanted to come back and stay longer. We weren't sure where we would stay and just prior to heading off a fellow camper suggested we stay at "Evening Star Tourist Park". It is actually "Thurlby Station" and we have stayed at lots of cattle stations on our travels and always enjoyed them, so the decision was made where to stay. Within half an hour of arriving and setting up we knew we had made the right decision. The sites are all drive through, which makes arriving easy, the amenities blocks are spotless and the owners would have to be some of the friendliest we have ever met. Shane's extremely happy as they have a bar with $3.00 beers and happy hour (that goes on as long as there are people around) around the huge fire pit.

Evening Star Tourist Park

Just one of the attractions is sitting around the camp fire each night

Luckily Charleville with a population of around 3,550 is a fairly large town, but it is still facing the same woes as the smaller outback towns with lots of businesses closing and young people leaving to find work in bigger cities. When we were here last time we stayed at the historic Corones Hotel and were looking forward to seeing it again. But unfortunately it has gone into receivership and the owners just walked out leaving everything there.

Corones Hotel - unfortunately closed

Charleville still offers quite a few attractions for us visitors to see. But where we are staying is just a nice place to sit and watch the world go by. Today we decided to try our luck at a bit of fishing. We actually caught three Yellow Belly but that were all undersized and we threw them back.

Ward River