Warm and happy in Burketown

Burketown, after being incommunicado for about 6 days:

We’ve had four blissful days at Adel’s Grove, just outside the Boodjamulla (Lawn Hill) National Park.

After leaving Mount Isa we drove as far as we could towards Adel’s Grove (north-west), and I had jokingly said I wanted a bush camping spot beside a running river.

This was when we were barrelling along a dusty road, with nothing but savannah beside us, but John (also joking) said he’d find me such a spot.

John doing a photoshoot crossing of the O'Shannessy River.

And then we came to it! The O’Shannessy River, fairly close to Riversleigh fossil site, was just perfect. It had pandanus and cabbage palms and huge old paperbarks. We were the only ones there, and with its riverside of large river gravel  it was unsuitable for anything but a 4WD. We set up camp there and had an idyllic night listening to the sound of the river rushing over some small rapids, and the ford by which we’d crossed it.

The next morning we crossed the Gregory River, also very pretty but not as good as our campsite, and came to Riversleigh fossil site. It has a wonderful instructive walk up and down the hill topped with dramatic limestone and conglomerate, which tells the story of the inland sea that once covered it. The pancake stack rocks are embedded with tribolites (before creatures with backbones) but there was plenty of evidence of them as well.

On then to Adel’s Grove. I’ll explain the name. Albert de Lestang, a French botanist, bought the lease of this land next to the Lawn Hill Creek in the 1930s, and it’s believed he was commissioned by the Qld government of the day to experiment with growing tropical trees and fruits. By 1939 he had more than 1000 different species of trees and shrubs growing, many of them imported, and it was a beautiful botanic garden, with seeds sent to Kew Gardens as well as the Qld Museum.

Lawn Hill Creek at Adel's Grove.

In the early 1950s the Adel’s Grove (named for his initials ( A de L) was accidentally burnt out from a fire that escaped from one of the small mining ventures to the south. Albert was by then in his 70s, had lost all his records, his buildings, and most of his plantings, and went into a deep depression. He was taken to the Eventide home in Charters Towers where he died in 1959.

Very little remains of his plantings, just some mango trees, but the area beside the creek is very beautiful.

None of the sites in the campground has power, but there are taps for water, so we have been very comfortable with our solar panels and a generator.

Lawn Hill Gorge from one of the high spots
 to which we climbed

One day we drove into Boodjamulla National Park and went walking around the gorge. And of course we tackled some of the steepest walks (I’d call them climbs!), going 200 metres almost straight up for one magnificent view of the whole Lawn Hill Gorge.
Coming down was something else again, and we were grateful for our hiking sticks and boots. After lunch we tackled another walk, which proved almost equally as steep but the view from the top showed us a different part of the gorge. Spectacular! When we actually looked at our brochure about the national park walks, we found that the first one we’d tackled, the Island Stack, was rated as ‘difficult’. The 2^nd one, the Duwadarri lookout, had a mention of ‘strenuous’. . . . so we really did get our exercise that day.

The water in the creek is a deep green from the limestone, so it’s quite gorgeous.

Luckily for our aching knees and upper thighs (that’s from coming down the tracks made out of the stony hillside), there was a resident masseuse at Adel’s Grove. She sets up camp there from May to September each year, offers massages and also performs on keyboards some nights during dinner at the restaurant.

I had 2 massages and John had 3, so we left in much better shape than when we arrived. She was very good and found sore spots in my body I didn’t even know I had, apart from the aforementioned knees and thighs.

We were tempted to go kayaking on the creek at Adel’s Grove or in the gorge but with our dodgy backs and knees, thought we’d leave it to the young families who’ve arrived in force for the Qld school holidays.

The bird life at the campground was prolific and as every site is separated from another by a screen of foliage, we’ve had fantails, robins, wrens and wattle birds visiting and even walking right up to us when we’re sitting outside admiring the sunset or the beer/wine in our hands.

We left Adel’s Grove just before an absolute invasion. The annual palaeontologists’ dig at Riversleigh was about to start, plus 3 coach loads of tourists were expected, so there were going to be at least 80 for dinner on several nights and 150 on the Sunday . . . and that’s without any campers!

Extra tented cabins had been organised and some of the ‘diggers’ were to be bunking in what had been an activity room.

When we arrived at Burketown, via Gregory Downs, where we had a drink at the pub in honour of Nigel (2^nd son, for the non-family members reading this blog) who’d won a canoeing event there after a mad drive from Darwin when in the RAAF, we phoned ahead to book into a caravan park at Karumba but found it’s high season and the first booking is for Sunday.

It’s glorious here, shorts and singlet weather, lots of trees, birds everywhere, so we will stay an extra night, then take our time getting to Karumba, maybe doing some more bush camping.

To say we’re relaxed and happy would be an understatement. Just keep on working, get old enough to retire, and you too can have this joy at seeing Australia!

In town, but about to go bush again

We’re in Mount Isa, having stocked up on supplies for our next foray into the bush, and poked around the town to see the sights. Best of all, it’s wonderfully warm, and for the first time since leaving home, I am wearing sandals.

After we left Boulia we turned east at Dajarra onto dirt road and headed for Cloncurry, via Duchess.



The pub at Duchess

Everyone had assured us the road was good, but with our stiff suspension, the corrugations were a bit bone-shattering. I’m glad a tooth filling that my dentist said had ‘metal fatigue’ was replaced before we left home, as I may have gritted it so much on that Duchess road that it would have totally collapsed.

So into Duchess we rolled: Population 3, the publican, his wife and her brother, plus a French backpacker serving in the bar.

That is something new for the Outback. We found that Boulia was running on the work of backpackers, with a young Irish chap in the hardware store, an American in the supermarket, and others working in the roadhouse and cafe as well as being teacher’s aides in the school.

We parked behind the pub and had a great country night there, with T-bone steaks to die for, plus all the trimmings. The publican was a colourful character who had done all kinds of stuff, ranging from running sheep stations to sawmills in PNG.

He probably does quite well in his little pub as he has the contract to supply alcohol to the Phosphate Hill Mine (worth $1.5 million a year, he says), plus accommodation in dongers behind the pub for mine and railway workers.



Near Cloncurry.

We had learned from our relatives and friends at Boulia that locals could travel free on the company jet from the Osborne mine, north of Boulia, on its back trips to Townsville. Apparently the same is true for the Phosphate Hill mine.



The whole region is just full of mines, and the landscape is just stunning, with great rocky hills making any geologist slaver over his little picks.

Cloncurry was interesting, giving us our first taste of traffic for about a week, and after a day there (the Royal Flying Doctor museum was a must), we trundled on through spectacular landscape to Mount Isa where we were booked into a lovely shady caravan park.

At this time of the year, the roads are full of caravans and motorhomes, as well as road trains, and we’ve found we have to book to ensure a place. We called Adel’s Grove just outside Lawn Hill National Park and managed to get a place for four days, but only if we get there by Saturday, so tomorrow (Friday) will head off, do some bush camping, and arrive there on Saturday.



The underground hospital, just as it
was set up in 1942.

Last night we had dinner with John’s son-in-law’s sister (another written test soon, folks, on these family relationships!) and had a great time with her and her partner, her 2 daughters, his four kids, and the two dogs.

Apart from our shopping expeditions today, a highlight was the underground hospital, built to protect patients in the event of Mount Isa being bombed in WWII, but closed up and forgotten until the 1970s when an excavator uncovered it on the hill behind the hospital. It was considered unsafe so closed up again, but with the help of Mount Isa Mines and some miners’ volunteer labour, it was fixed up and re-opened in 2001. Fascinating!

And of course, the huge bulk of the mines, the smelters and the mine structures dominate the town. The annual show starts tomorrow, plus rodeo events, and the town will shut for a public holiday just as we cruise west and north towards Lawn Hill.

Grave matters, plus outback hospitality

June 13, but no internet service:

After a day wandering around Winton, enjoying the company of friends, Rick and Barb Blatchley, who are also motorhoming and whom we met in Winton, we set off for Boulia.

The staff at the info centre had assured me that my grandfather’s grave should be close to the road. I’d also phoned the Woodstock station homestead, asking about it. Thank goodness I did, as the woman there told me it was near a communication tower built quite a few kms from the homestead.



My grandfather's grave

Sure enough, when we neared that tower, and followed its small access track off the road, off to the right (and quite invisible from the road) was the grave, with its headstone and small wrought-iron enclosure.

I felt quite emotional as I thought of my grandfather dying there alone, aged 51, 100 years ago this year. He’d set off from somewhere on the Winton-Boulia road (possibly Middleton) with a load of wool, bound for Winton, but failed to return and his wife eventually got word that he’d been found dead beside his team and buried there.

My Dad was 3 at the time, and there were 2 older children, so my grandmother took on one of the many hotels/staging posts for the Cobb & Co coaches on that run, where she met her 2^nd husband, and had another 7 children, living on a property just east of Boulia.

So on we went, to what’s left of Middleton, just the pub, and the remains of a dance hall, timber floor and corrugated iron walls.

Caravans and motorhomes are welcome to stop in the cleared area opposite the hotel for the price of a few beers. The publican was a delight, Valerie Cain, an elderly woman who’d seen all her own kids through correspondence lessons and was still trying to get her 10-year-old grand-daughter to knuckle down to lessons rather than talk to visitors. Young Chloe showed us the history of the pub as she sat at the foot of a memorial opened in 1960 to mark the visit of the first white men in the Winton district 100 years before.

Then Chloe’s Dad arrived home in his helicopter. He works as a contract musterer.

We opted for dinner at the pub, very good roast, sharing the bar with a selection of characters that made John remark later that he felt like he’d been taking part in a documentary about the outback.

Middleton Hotel

Three stinking great roadtrains pulled up (stinking because they were loaded with cattle bound for Winton and Longreach) and the young drivers came in for a feed of rump steak and chips, swapping tales of what was happening around the district.

Then a bloke called Darky appeared (‘We’ve got a bit of colour in the family’) who worked for a private quarry near Boulia but lived in Winton so worked two weeks on, 1 off and was on his way home. He’d been a rodeo rider and had a hat full of badges to show where he’d been.

The publican’s husband, Lester, was home by then, having arrived looking very dusty, with a disreputable hat on, after a day working at a nearby station. He showered and changed, right down to a different hat that he wore behind the bar. We don’t think he had any top teeth and when he got a bit excited he started stammering, but the two of them served meals very efficiently to everyone, including some young ringers who’d come in to see the State of Origin match.

Valerie and Lester have a daughter who spent years at Sydney Uni studying psychology, then went to England where she took another degree as an electronics engineer. Even Darky confided that his son had graduated from uni in Sydney but two hours after the graduation ceremony Darky was on the road out (‘Can’t stand cities!’).

There was some debate about whether a chap called Nick Robinson was the grandson of the chap in the grave and after I produced the family history I was carrying, we worked out he was the son of one of my Robinson cousins, so he’s the great-grandson. The whole pub just reeks of history, from the Cobb & Co coach out the front to the folders of stuff Valerie has acquired about district properties.

A caravan and a campervan had also pulled into the pub camping ground (which has a shelter for eating and cooking meals called the Hilton Hotel) but the occupants did not come over to join the conviviality. And that was their loss.

In the morning, we lay in bed watching a fabulous sunrise . . . across which suddenly the helicopter swept as Chloe’s Dad, Stoney Cain, set off for work. Now that’s something you don’t see every day.

2 days later:

We’re still enjoying fabulous outback hospitality at the home of Adrian and Vicki Wells on Elrose. They also own four other properties surrounding it, run 6000 cattle and turn off about 2500 each year. Adrian supervises all this from his light aircraft.



Vicki and Adrian Wells

Adrian is sort of extended family, as his cousin on his mother’s side is Ron McGlinchey, who is my cousin on his father’s side. Got it? There’ll be a written exam later.

Poor John’s eyes are rolling as Adrian and I discuss various family members, properties, get out our respective family history documents, and generally confuse any listeners.



Adrian and Vicki are big-hearted people who’ve provided a home for an English girl for the past 12 months. She worked for them briefly but now has several part-time jobs in Boulia (abt 20km away). They have also taken on a 15-year-old lad from down south who was apparently going off the rails, but he’s taken to outback life wonderfully.

Their son Grant is an Australian bull-riding champion and this weekend several of his mates have turned up, tossing swags into the old shearer’s quarters, rounding up the bulls Grant breeds here and we’re set for some riding in the arena in the cattle yards later.

In the meantime, there was a farewell function for the English lass in the Boulia Golf Club last night. We’d gone in in the motorhome earlier and spent the day seeing the sights and experiencing the Min Min Encounter (very good) and seeing a stone house museum and great collection of fossils found by a local bloke who had once worked for my Dad and would talk under wet cement.



The small plaque bearing my Dad's name,
on his mother's gravestone at Macsland.

However at night, we all piled into Adrian’s big Land Cruiser and we took off for a great night at the golf club. There were cousins, a widow of cousins and even the son of a cousin who claimed me. There’s a trophy bearing my grandmother’s photo and one of the group insisted I looked so like her I had to stand on a chair and have my pic taken with the shield.

Earlier in the day we had placed a plaque bearing my father’s name, date of birth and date of death on my grandmother’s grave, on the old family property of Macsland, now owned by Adrian and next door to Elrose.

John just gave up trying to work out who all these people were after a while, and relaxed into the convivial atmosphere, having a great time.

It’s quite warm, some washing dried in about an hour in the dry atmosphere and we’re hoping the winter clothes can soon be packed away.



Not sure when we’re moving on as each day brings some new delight to experience. This morning we went with Adrian in one of the utes to a trough that has a solar panel collection powering a pump, but the corellas keep biting through the cables from the solar panel. John and Adrian fixed it with a bit of ingenuity but the corellas were keeping a beady eye on it and trying to work out how to get up to more mischief.

PS. The youngster from down south was hurt during the bull-riding, had to be taken to the Boulia Primary Care Centre (used to be a hospital), and the Flying Doctor came from Mt Isa. The bull’s hoof had come down on the inner part of his elbow, gouging flesh, but nothing was broken, and after some stitching, he was allowed home. By next morning, as good as gold.

June 18:

We left Elrose this morning, quite sad to go, but with more adventures in store. Adrian and Grant had already set off in a big cattle truck for Winton, where there’s a bull sale tomorrow.

Yesterday morning we went back to Boulia to have morning tea with a cousin, Daphne Hindom, then lunch at the Min Min Cafe, where we were joined by Nina, widow of a cousin, Shane McGlinchey.

Now we’re heading north to Dajarra, then across some dirt roads to Cloncurry, and eventually Mt Isa.

Bush camping delights

After days of being incommunicado, and some glorious nights of bush camping, we are in Winton, getting closer to my old family country.

Beside Coopers Creek.

There was no mobile phone coverage at Cooper’s Creek, just outside Windorah, where we spent most of the weekend. Dozens of large waterbirds lined the banks of the creek (should have been a river but Sturt, the explorer, who named it, wrote that he could not see a discernible current so it had to be a creek), waiting for yellowbelly and bream to come down the creek from the Thomson and Barcoo rivers, which joined many kms upstream.

Also looking for yellowbelly were the local fishermen. It was the annual Windorah P&C fishing comp, with the headquarters set up by the bridge across the creek. We joined in the festivities at night, having a few beers with the locals, meeting other bush campers from the South Coast of NSW, Victoria and Tasmania (Penguin, N&T), and had a very funny conversation with the local copper who reckoned he lived in the best part of the world, and what’s more, got paid to be there. There are only 8 children at the school so the town is looking for an injection of new families.

Four of the five giant solar circles.

When we finally left we marvelled at the solar farm that supplies the little town with its power, saving masses of diesel fuel for generators, and headed off for Stonehenge.

It’s just a pub and a few houses and the pub had sold at auction the day before for $140,000 (!!). We didn’t linger but headed for our first major bit of unsealed road, about 300km to Winton, via Lark Quarry, the national monument to a dinosaur stampede.

Once again that night, we found a spot to pull off the road and had a wonderful barbecue meal, watched the sunset while drinking our red wine and wondered occasionally what the poor people were doing. A couple of passing kangaroos stopped in their tracks, astonished to see a vehicle, but then mentally shrugged their shoulders and moved on.

The only trouble with that dirt road, apart from teeth-shattering corrugations in places, was the dust generated when we met road trains, but we learnt to stay put until the dust cleared.

The joys of meeting a road train on a dirt road.

Lark Quarry is magnificent. The building that shelters the tracks of stampeding small dinosaurs, startled by a large carnivorous dinosaur, is wonderful, and after we’d seen those trackways, we did a short half-hour walk around the surrounding spinifex area.

Now we are in Winton we’ll rest and re-group for a day or so, and I’ll make serious moves tomorrow with the info centre people to find out if my paternal grandfather’s grave (he died beside the Winton-Boulia road 100 years ago this year) is still findable from the road now linking those two centres.

Opals and oil wells

It’s sunny here in Quilpie, where we arrived yesterday. It’s a bit of a sentimental journey as my mother was a nurse here in the 1930s, and somewhere at home I have a black and white photo of her at the ‘end of the line’ . . . where the railway line from Brisbane ends with some buffers.

So John took one of me yesterday afternoon in the same place.

We visited the excellent visitors’ centre, with fabulous photos of early days in the region, and admired the cattle and even a stockman on a horse, all cut out of steel, adorning the median strip in the main street.

Opal-faced altar and lectern in St Finbarr's Church, Quilpie.

Quilpie has long been a centre for boulder opals, and we popped into the very modern  Catholic church to see the altar front, font base and lectern, all made of a mosaic of opal.

It’s been cold at night (down to 4C) but we’ve been snug in the motor home. This morning we drove south-west for about 100km to the tiny town of Eromanga, famous not only for being the town furthest from the sea in Australia, but also for its oil fields and a mini-refinery that’s been operating there since 1985. Fossils of some titanosaurs (REALLY big dinosaurs) were found in the district in the past few years but none are yet on display.

There's oil in the western plains.

It’s always been a centre for opals, and a great little park is called the Opalopolis. There is a huge mural showing the properties, roads, and most interestingly, the Cobb and Co routes . . . just mind-blowing, where those coaches went in the outback. The pub, built in 1880, was one of the coach staging places.

On the way back to Quilpie, we not only saw wedge-tailed eagles as big as dogs, feasting on road kill, but also stopped at what is known as a ‘donkey well’ right beside the road, where we sat in the motor home and had lunch to the accompaniment of the engine on the well pulling up the oil. It’s just one of many on the oilfields close to the road.

We’ve met our first roadtrains on the road, have stacks on red mud on our wheels, and are starting to feel we’re really in the outback, with the sky extending from horizon to horizon. And what a sky it is.

Brrr, it's cold!

Cold, cold, cold at Charleville, particularly on Monday night when we had a wonderful hour with the telescopes at the Cosmos Observatory. Looking like Michelin men we wore coats, long trousers, boots, scarves, beanies/hoods, and gloves as the shed-like structure into which we were ushered had a curved roof that completely slid back, with groups clustered around each of 3 telescopes. The moon was still undergoing a partial eclipse so that was interesting; we had a close view of Saturn, as well as some other stars and clusters.

The transit of Venus tomorrow will be across the sun and there is a special day at the observatory, but we’ll be on the road by then.

Today we did the tourist thing, visiting the Royal Flying Doctor Service base’s visitor centre, enjoying the historic photos and documents. (Marlene: Found a pic of your Dad at work speaking into a microphone).



The rail ambulance.

Then we wandered a local park, list of native timbers in hand, finding the various trees; and finally, enjoyed a visit to the local historical society’s centre, and old house that was built as a bank and manager’s residence. It’s full of wonderful stuff, but one of the most interesting things was the rail ambulance. As we had seen in the past few days, dirt roads become impassable in the rain, while the railway line was built much higher. So this rail ambulance served the district between 1929 and 1965.

We used the caravan park’s laundry to do a big wash this afternoon before we head further west tomorrow to Quilpie and other much smaller places. We’ll probably start to do some bush camping, as long as this fine, cold weather continues

Starry night at Charleville

This post is all about monuments, explorers and western towns. We are now in Charleville, spent quite a bit of time this afternoon wandering its wonderfully wide streets, buying bits and pieces we needed and being helped by very friendly locals.

Maranoa River bridge at Mitchell, showing damage from
recent floods, including to murals on pylons.

Before we left St George on Sunday morning we discovered the memorial to Sir Thomas Mitchell naming the crossing of the Balonne River there on St George’s Day in 1846. We were in Mitchell within a few hours but he took until June to cover the same area in 1846, then naming the Maranoa River, beside which we stayed on Sunday night.

Before we had reached Mitchell we stopped to have lunch at a little memorial to the last confrontation in Australia between police and bushrangers, in 1902. Apart from the whole story told on a big plaque, there is a modern sculpture depicting one of the bushrangers (who had stolen horses and murdered two men north of Mitchell, then were found in their camp south of the town by mounted police) who tried to get away but fell and was captured.

After a fairly fast drive this morning from Mitchell, we arrived in Charleville, around 750km west of Brisbane, according to the road signs, and settled into a caravan park for a couple of nights. We’d phoned ahead as we’d heard lots of caravanners and motorhomers were stuck in Charleville and Tambo because of flood damage to a road to Blackall. We’re not going north on that road, but further west to Quilpie, then we’ll turn north.

The police & bushranger sculpture near Mitchell.

There has been a lot of rain, there is water beside most of the roads, and the red soil is VERY, VERY soft, so our 5 tonne vehicle doesn’t leave the blacktop at present.

Lots to do here and tonight at 9 we’re booked for a session at the Cosmos Observatory. There’s a lunar eclipse tonight as well, so that’s a bonus. Glorious clear night, and we’ll have to rug up, as heaters fog up the telescope at Cosmos. We probably won’t be here on Wednesday night for the transit of Venus.

John with one of 4 tiny granite soldiers
 at Charleville War Memorial

We're at St George

 







Cattle being driven on the road
 west of Goondiwindi

Scattered cotton beside the road

What a great second day on the road! Yesterday we left Goolmangar in drizzling rain, very depressing, but after heading west through Casino and Tenterfield we eventually ran out of rain. Then we noticed what looked like snow on the sides of the road, just the sides  . . .  and then realised it was scattered cotton. We’d seen some harvesting further back beside the road. The cotton trail continued all the way to the turnoff to Texas to the north and even slightly into Goondiwindi, across the border in Queensland, where we spent the night.

The owner of the caravan park we stayed at there told me the cotton gets blown off the sides of those compressed bales as it’s transported.



Grain silos at Bungunya

Cotton stacked after harvest

Broad-acre farming of cotton,
 with stacks in the background

It was a longish drive, so today we just ambled along, stopping to look at stuff and have reached St George, lovely little town beside the Balonne River, and we are tucked up in a caravan park. We’ve just had afternoon drinkies, wonderful music is playing on the iPod, it’s slightly raining outside but we are warm and snug.

We had our lunch at a tiny village called Bungunya, mostly wheat silos beside a railway line that goes west to Dirranbandi. Between there and St George were broad acres of mostly cotton. It’s all harvested now but there are large compressed bales beside the paddocks, all covered with tarps, waiting to go to the nearest cotton gin. There’s one in St George, we saw as we entered from the south-east. Apparently in a good season, the Balonne Shire can grow 70,000 hectares of cotton.



Prickly pear fruit

Something else we stopped to investigate was prickly pear, growing in clumps here and there. One batch, just outside Talwood, another tiny grain depot, was in fruit. I remember that in my old Qld school recipe book used for domestic science, there is a recipe for prickly pear jelly. After I took a pic, I thought I’d pick one for John to taste  . . . but the fruit had prickles so I decided that was a bad idea.

Roadkill we’ve seen includes an emu, a young feral pig, a few kangaroos, and something fairly flattened being feasted on by a feral cat.

We are extremely happy and relaxed and tomorrow head for Mitchell, only about 200km.