An overview and index

The idea of this post is to give an overview of the trip and provide a consolidated way of navigating around the set of posts.

Overall I rated the trip very successful.  We avoided 6 weeks of Carwoola Winter, saw many interesting things and new places and got to 'know' Yungaburra a bit.

• Bird of the trip: There are three categories now.
• The prime award goes to Double-eyed Fig-Parrot as it is cute and was a lifer.  The runner up award goes to Chowchilla: also a lifer and very difficult to see on the floor of the rainforest at Lake Barrine.  
• In the flocks category it is very hard to choose between the Plumed Whistling Ducks at Hasties Swamp and the Brolgas at Mazeppa.  The latter just win as the flock had dispersed somewhat when another birder had a go, and thus our sighting of the Brolgas was special.  (Frances went for the PWDs as they were evident in more places
• The ubiquitous award can only be applied at the end of the trip.  Several contenders here, with the Gold Bogie going to Masked Lapwing.  Seen everywhere (a fair definition of ubiquity) and often initially mistaken for some thing else,   Second was Australian White Ibis, but it is not good to see the ultimate bin-chook win.  Black Kite was common everywhere north of the Mitchell Highway but not on the first or last days.  Cattle Egrets were in large numbers everywhere East of the Divide, but that rules out about 7 days.  Magpie-larks were everywhere but in smaller numbers than the other contenders.
• Vegetation of the trip:   In the "native" category I put the rainforest around Lake Barrine as the winner, with the regeneration at our friend's place at Daintree and the vegetation along Peterson's Creek at Yungaburra as tied for second place.  The 'agricultural' award goes to the ubiquitous sugar cane.
• Memorable moment:  Finding the chewed spud in the car, showing that the rat was in there.
• Comment of the trip: The two contenders were both at the caravan park in St Georgeearly in the trip:
• I think the winner was an exchange between two folks on the Monday morning.  "In a weeks time I'll be back at work." "Good: someone's gotta pay for our pension!".
• The second place award again featured two people but on the Sunday night.  As the party was breaking one one of the members said "Well we'll see you later somewhere.  I probably won't recognise you but I'll say g'day any way.
• Pie of the trip: The plain pie from the Quincan cafe wins out for being such a welcome change from the rather poor offerings of most places in Queensland.  It was pretty good anyway, and would have been even higher rated if the crust had the strength needed to contain the huge amount of filling. The most memorable is a tie between the offering at Chillago - barely edible - and one Frances had at Proserpine which included a whole hard-boiled egg (also barely edible).
• Troppo moment of the trip. Tinaroo man, with his strange clothing and undertaking the most tropical of activities, mowing a very extensive lawn.

In terms of statistics:

• We covered 8300km of which about 5200km were towing the camper.  We averaged 11.7 litres /100km (or 23.9mpg). The average cost per litre was $1.246 (with a range from $1.299 in Mackay to $1.129 - including discount - on the outskirts of Townsville).
• I recorded 194 species of birds (including 4 species of domestic waterfowl).  10 of these were lifers.

Our overall route is shown in blue on a clip from Google Maps:

The dashed green line is our original plan which I changed as a result of finding out that there was a large RV Rally and "Henley on Flinders" event at Hughenden (marked with a red cross).  I'd still like to visit Longreach (but not in Summer).

Following a question from a friend I realise I didn't complete the circle on the dog-scone situation.  Here is the full story:

Basically both vets that looked at her started by saying that her teeth were in fine.  The second guy - the one in Atherton - thought that there were two options: 

​​1  the infection had got into bone; or

2 some form of cancer.

When he had her asleep he looked at x-rays and ruled out 1.  He then looked at the serum under the microscope and ruled out 2.  He then had a very close look at her teeth and found a couple of back molars were, in fact, rotten and were the source of the problem.  He yanked them.  
He also sent a sample away for culture and this turned out to show that the bacterium involved was a rather nasty variety that was resistant to the antibiotics he'd provided.  It sounded as though she had got that from the dirt in which she buries her bones.  He gave us some boss antibiotics which together with the yanking, seem to have fixed the business up.  Although she missed the rat when she had a chance.

The following is a set of links to the daily posts.

Date	Area	Topic and hyperlink
02-Jul	To Gilgandra	To Gilgandra
03-Jul	To St George	To St George
04-Jul	To Roma	To Roma
05-Jul	To Emerald	Roma,  Emerald
06-Jul	Emerald	Emerald
07-Jul	To Charters Towers	Clermont, Charters Towers
08-Jul	To Mt Garnet	Charters Towers, Mt Garnet
09-Jul	Mt Garnet	Mt Garnet, Atherton
10-Jul	To Yungaburra	Mt Garnet, Platypus
11-Jul	FN  Queensland	Tour of Tinaroo
12-Jul	FN  Queensland	Yungaburra
13-Jul	FN  Queensland	Tinaburra
14-Jul	FN  Queensland	Cairns
15-Jul	FN  Queensland	Atherton
16-Jul	FN  Queensland	Lake Barrine
17-Jul	FN  Queensland	Yungaburra
18-Jul	FN  Queensland	Yungaburra
19-Jul	FN  Queensland	Daintree
20-Jul	FN  Queensland	Daintree
21-Jul	FN  Queensland	Yungaburra
22-Jul	FN  Queensland	Innisfail
23-Jul	FN  Queensland	Yungaburra Market
24-Jul	FN  Queensland	Mt Hypipamee
25-Jul	FN  Queensland	Mareeba
26-Jul	FN  Queensland	Mount Hypipamee
27-Jul	FN  Queensland	Curtain Fig Tree
28-Jul	FN  Queensland	Lake Eacham
29-Jul	FN  Queensland	Atherton
30-Jul	FN  Queensland	Chillago
31-Jul	FN  Queensland	Yungaburra
01-Aug	FN  Queensland	Car non-sevice Atherton
02-Aug	FN  Queensland	Lake Barrine
03-Aug	FN  Queensland	Yungaburra, Malanda
04-Aug	FN  Queensland	Mareeba, Skybury
05-Aug	FN  Queensland	Nerada Tea, Car service Mareeba
06-Aug	FN  Queensland	Lake Barrine, Yungaburra
07-Aug	To Alva Beach	Alva Beach
08-Aug	To Mackay	Mackay
09-Aug	To Rockhampton	Rockhampton
10-Aug	To Goondiwindi	Mount Morgan, Goondiwindi
11-Aug	To Wellington	NW NSW
12-Aug	Home	That’s all folks
Overview	Pie testing	Pie rating methods
Overview	The Rat	A saga
Overview	Observations	Birdlist
Overview	Observations	Animal list