Queenstown

Queenstown is the rockiest and weirdest landscape. It's fundamentally a mining town and there's not really a lot there. In the older days the smelting process generated a lot of sulphur which fell as acid rain and killed all the flora. They changed the process in the 1930s and there is starting to be a bit of greenery growing back, but it still looks pretty bleak. The sports ground has been listed on the heritage register because it was gravel instead of grass. They could plant it out in grass these days, but since it's on the register, they can't! According to the locals in Waratah, if you had to play footy in Queenstown, you were happy to be on the bench!

The sports ground, aside from being a tourist site, is also the free camping site! You have to park around the edges, which allows for the locals to still come, and the tourists to cruise by. It's really quite a busy place.

The night we arrived, Angus was pretty keen to play some soccer. Duncan, having just driven possibly the most stressful drive of his life told him he "was a bit tired, buddy". "We can play 'Tired Man Soccer' then". Who could refuse such a request??

We spent 3 nights at the sports ground, with no power or water. It gave us a chance to use up the delicious drinking water from Waratah so we didn't have to drain it away when we left. The lack of external power also did our heads in. The power unit beeps when the battery gets to 20%. It's happy on external AC power. It's happy on bus motor power. It's unhappy on solar power. There's plenty of power there, and we've never actually run out, but the warning beeps constantly and it's enough to send us insane. Apparently you can mute the beep by pressing 2 buttons simultaneously. Duncan and I have tried repeatedly to do so, but failed to stop the noise. 

In the end we borrowed a generator from a lovely caravaner for a few hours. He was the one we covered in smoke when we arrived. Our idea of "buying a generator when we need one" fell down when we were stuck in a generator-less town!! We also wrapped the "bloody beeping machine" in 3 layers of towels so we could get some sleep. That ended up being the most effective mute process of all!

Being stuck in Queenstown because of the extreme heat meant we were also stuck in Queenstown while the bushfire was burning nearby! It was slightly concerning seeing all the smoke billowing over the mountains, but we knew it was a good 20km away and watching the chopper continuously flying around collecting water in a HUGE bucket was entertaining at least!