Winter Holiday July 2012: THERESA CREEK DAM

Drove down the Gregory Highway to Emerald and stayed in the free camp that is at the Botanical Gardens.    This camp in fairly small, and there are no facilities there, but is just across the road from a shopping centre which is convenient.   We decided we would not cook dinner so walked up to the Golf Club for a meal, it was very good, the waitress even offered to drive us back to the caravan.
The following day we drove along the Capricorn Highway to Blackwater and went north from there for 28km to Bedford Weir.   This is a free camp (although they did ask for a donation) beside the weir, it has toilets, hot showers but no drinkable water.   It had phone and internet access with the aerial and non potable water for washing.
It was a very well run camp with a caretaker who worked hard to keep it clean.    There was a ski club down on the water's edge with picnic tables, bbq's and boat ramp, and the weir was quite popular with the locals for fishing and red claw (although once again we did not see any caught).   We enjoyed this camp very much as it was quiet with only 4-5 vans there at any one time and friendly people, but is very busy through the winter time.
We drove into Blackwater a couple of times for shopping, it had a shopping centre at the back of the town with Wollies and the usual combination of shops.
We ended up staying at the camp for 6 days.   Our next stop is Dululu at another free camp.