Posts From Queensland

You have heard of the novel "A Tale of Two Cities", well today was " a day of 6 tales".

It took a few hours on the phone this morning to start the process of organizing tyres and parts for the tent, and then a few more conversations throughout the day to get a plan together. TyrePower in Katherine will get in 3 tyres for us but it will take until the week of 22nd Aug for them to arrive in Katherine. Ivan at Peak Offroad, will send some replacement latches for the poptop tent. TyrePower have allowed me to have the tent parts sent to them so that fixed the "where to send stuff" question.

A beautiful morning encouraged me to get up before the sun and I even took a photo of the rising sun to prove it. Nina got a picture of the strange ants/termites nest on the tree near our camp.

Before leaving Daly Waters this morning Nina did her usual walk around and visited the Stuart Tree, the nearby WWII air field, railway bridge and we said goodbye to the campground cattle.

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Today was the final leg to Katherine, civilization for the first time in some weeks. For Brendon and Daniel it will be an opportunity to prepare for the second leg of their odyssey, for Nina and I it will mean some new tyres and repairs to the pop-top tent. Nina and I were the farewell party for the guys as they prepared to get underway and finally departed. Then we did a little tour of the Mataranka area visiting a few of the local sights; Bitter Creek, the replica of Elsey homestead built for the movie We of the Never Never, and the old Elsey Cemetery.

Today started with a few more photos of the bird life on the remainder of the lake at the Frewina rest Area. Once underway we were soon at Barkley Roadhouse which seems once to have been part of the homestead for Barkley Station (it may still be). We were really impressed by this roadhouse. It is the best maintained and most up-market roadhouse we have seen in all of our Australia Travels. In addition the kissing lizards out the front of the roadhouse entrance were very impressive and the Guinea Fowl running around the place were entertaining.

It was a shortish drive into Mt Isa this morning and thereafter the day was about the town and surrounds of Mt Isa. The mine and associated works certaiinly do dominate the town.

We thought today would be "just a driving day", but as it turned out there were a few things along the way worth seeing. But first there was another effort to capture the extend to which the mine-works in Mt Isa, visually dominates the town.

Well, what a surprise. This morning just after we woke up there was a sort-of "honking noise" outside the truck which turned out to be a pair of Brolgas which are very large long necked birds a bit like a crane only much much larger (almost Emu size).

Today was allocated to visiting the The Australian Stockmans Hall of Fame which, afterall, is what Longreach is best known for. Although the town has somewhat gone all-out on tourism as there are a number of Australiana/historical attractions in the town not the least of which is the QANTAS exhibit which boasts its own real Boing 747.

We loitered a bit today in the tiny town of Barcaldine. It is a tidy place with a nice picnic area beside the highway so there was plenty of shaded tables to lounge on so it was a pleasant place to spend some of the day. But it is also a historically and politically significant town as in some ways it is the home of the Australian Labour movement and the Australian Labour Party. To emphasis this the town is host to an enormous museum called The Australian Workers Heritage Center

Some readers will know of the song Augathella Station by the Australian Folk Group The Bushwackers. This is a song Nina and I have listened to for over 40 years and today we will finally get to visit the town of Augathella which is in Queensland cattle country and is central to the song.

There is not much to say about today as we are at the end of the trip and the "lets get home" feeling is trying to takeover our days. This can be seen by the distance we drove today, much greater than we would normally drive.

A few more photos around Tibooburra before departing. The boat up in the air is a replica of the boat carried by Stuart's Expedition while searching for the fabled inland-sea. Can you imagine hauling that thing halfway across Australia only to never find enough water to get it wet.

A shorter drive today only 168km to the Queensland town of Thargomindah via another isolated dirt road, we only saw one other vehicle. The name Thargomindah comes from the local aboriginal language and means something like "cloud of dust", which seems appropriate given the terrain we have travelled through. The town is well setup for tourists with a tourist info office handing out maps and other info, a very well equiped caravan park, and even a marked route for a walking tour of the towns historic sites. Perhaps the most interesting historical fact about the town was that it was the 3rd town in the world to have electricity. The water from the local artesian bore comes out under high pressure and a creative local engineer realized that pressure could be used to drive a generator so in the mid 1890s the construction of a water powered electric generator was commissioned. It became operational on Sept 9th 1893.

Today was supposed to be a short day on a paved road; from Thargomindah to Quilpie (don't you like the names). However it turns out that towards the end of the drive the paved road was still under the waters of the Bulloo River (a major river in this area) and as a result there was a diversion of 40 or so km to bypass the problem.

If you look at the right kind of map of South West Queensland you will see a region called Channel Country. It is an area where largish rivers like the Cooper, the Barcoo and the Diamantina break out into braids of creeks surrounded by flood plains. When the creeks flood (after the wet season in Norther Australia) the creeks overflow and the whole area turns into a temporary lake. Well today we got our first experience of Channel Country. As expected there were many many causeways over creekss and between those long stretches of low lands that were green and lush vegetation due to recent flooding.

The drive today of nearly 400km to Birdsville was in some ways interesting, in some ways boring and uncomfortable. The road was about half sealed and the gravel half was in good condition. The route is generally flat with long stretches of straight road. It was hot, 33°C, and the flies were pretty intense. That's the boring half.

Today was a bit of a rest day, with a few chores like washing thrown in. We did a little sightseeing around the town.

As the title of this post suggests today would be about Burke and Wills though we did not know that at the start of the day. A little after getting started today we came to the oil settlement of Moomba. Aussies of my age might remember when "the Moomba oil discovery" was a major news story. One never hears of it now but the town of Moomba and the surrounding area is alive with activity and as a result we would encounter many work vehicles and heavy trucks from this point until after Innamincka.

Today seemed to be never ending; with the black strip of tar (sealed road) heading off into the distance through flat and almost featureless country. Though to be fair the type of country changed from time to time. Sometimes bare rocky desert, othertimes lush grass lands thanks to recent rains, and othertimes mulga strub. But always with the red-sand or red-rock underneath.

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