Longreach Trip – Day 5 – Longreach

The fifth day of our trip would be the day we finally arrive in Longreach.   This trip has been much more about the journey than any one destination, but Longreach is the furthest point from Sydney we will reach.   It also marks the transition from our journey there to our journey home.

We started out early in Barcaldine.  As with our start in Monto, it was very cold in the morning.   We rolled out at dawn and began our 100km journey to Longreach.   The road was pretty much dead straight the whole way there.  The landscape was mostly grassland and low bushes with some small trees.   There were no large trees at all.    A lot of the way was marked as floodplains.  It was fitting that I passed over 3,000km since home on the leg into Longreach.

As with our experience driving in this part of Queensland, the road surface had no potholes to speak over, but were quite bumpy and undulating.  I would not want to be in modern car with low profile tyres and crashy suspension.   We had to be quite careful here, as there was a fair amount of wildlife out and about.   They are far more active at dawn and dusk.

After arriving in Longreach, we lined up the cars for a few photos at the Qantas Founders Museum.   The core museum is in some hangers, but there is also an outside display with larger aircraft.  Here they have a 747-200B, 707-138, DC3 and the Lockheed Super Constellation.   We were able to get some photos with the 747 behind us before the museum opened and the carpark filled up.

After our photo shoot at the museum, we drove into town for breakfast and to check out the town.   The town was quite busy and after breakfast we want for a look around.  Our cars looked quite out of place among the Toyota Land Cruisers, but there was a nice 50s Buick in the town too.   As we walked around, there were a few vintage stagecoaches taking tourists for rides around.  Tourism is obviously a big industry, albeit far secondary to cattle grazing.

Instead of staying as one big group, we agreed to meet at the Machinery museum at Ilfracombe at 1pm, about 15km east of Longreach.    After looking at the town for a while, I went with a few of the guys to check out the Qantas founders museum.   As well as checking out the museum, I bought a shirt and a keyring for the 560SEL as a memento of the trip.

The museum was interesting, but not all that big so after a while, a few of us headed back to the cars and drove the 15km to Ilfracombe.   The Machinery museum is basically a whole kilometer of farm equipment along the side of the road.   Mostly tractors and trucks, but other machines too.    The displays ranged from early steam equipment to tractors that looked like they were from the 60s or 70s. One of them was a surplus WW2 tank, which had been converted in a bulldozer.  As well as the farm equipment, there were also a few small buildings with displays that held things like rifles and glass bottles.

We had lunch at a nearby pub before meeting up with the rest of the group.   At that point the while 560SEC was making a funny noise and had sprayed oil all over the engine bay.  A closer look revealed it had come out of the power steering reservoir, which was now foamy and half empty.   Topping it up stopped the noise and there was no obvious leak.

We set off for our next stop, Blackall.   Blackall is about two hours from Ilfracombe, and took us back through Barcaldine.  This allowed us to stay on paved roads.   I don’t enjoy driving on unpaved roads, and our cars are not really set up for it.  The road south from Barcaldine was similar to the other roads – no potholes but very bouncy.   There were a lot of road trains on the road, so passing them took time.  Road trains in Queensland can be up to 53.5 meters long and have four trailers.   We saw a number of the B-Quad road trains on this leg of the journey.

The slipstream from these huge road trains is very noticeable, even in a very stable and heavy car like the 560SEL.  It is especially apparent when they are all bunched up and you have to ass them.   I’m also quite pleased my car is fitted with undershields as I had to run over a kangaroo carcass and I felt it hit the sump guard as I did.

We stopped for a short break in Blackall.   During the stop we checked the power steering fluid level on the white 560SEC.  It was only about 1-2 centimeters down from two hours earlier.  This was was very welcome news as it meant we could simply top up the fluid from time to time and get the car home.

Our final leg was an hour into Tambo, our stop for the night.   The final drive was similar to the last few legs, long bouncy straight roads with lots of road trains and almost no potholes.   We arrived at about 4:30PM which was perfect.

Since the petrol blue 280CE had been idling pretty badly, we used the next hour to check it out.   We removed the distributor cap and found the terminals all worn down and very pitted.  It is surprising it ran so well at higher revs.   We attempted to clean it up and it made a bit of a difference, but ultimately it will need to be replaced.

Dinner was at the local tavern.  A few of us had their signature two foot sausage for dinner, which was rather good.   During the day we had covered 422km.  My 560SEL consumed 14.5l/100km.