Bivouac Junction

Normally I don't blog about the caravan parks I'm staying in. But this one here was so nice that I promised to write about it. The new owners are a young couple (with three small children) and they have only started here 6 weeks ago.

Bivouac Junction Caravan Park is away from the coast road, on Flinders Highway 111 km inland between Townsville and Charters Towers. I'm here because I've decided to get an "outback experience" before going back to the coast. Tomorrow I hope to reach Emerald and then Roma.

This caravan park is 3 km off the highway and can be easily missed, so they need recommendations like this one here. When you come here, the minute you drive in you feel that the owners here really care. They put their love into this place. They have a beautiful Aussie style fireplace where they cook damper and boil billy tea in the night for the guests.

Now what is damper and what is billy tea, you may ask if you haven't been to Australia? Damper is a kind of bread that you cook (which means bake) in the fireplace. There are many different recipes and ways to cook it. Here they used a so-called camp oven, which is a cast iron pot (ein gusseiserner Topf) with a special lid designed to shovel hot coals on top so that the heat comes from above and below when you put it in the fire.

And billy tea is tea that is cooked in a so-called billycan (or just billy), a pot that is traditionally made from a big tin can with a wire handle to be hung over the campfire. Tea leaves are put in the boiling water, and then the billy is taken off and swung in an overarm action round and round: this settles the tea leaves to the ground of the pot.

So anyway I wanted to recommend this nice caravan park to everybody who reads this and comes to this part of Queensland. They have powered and unpowered sites, hot showers, phone reception, a river nearby, and even a small pool. Their phone number is (07) 4787 3804.