On the Wallaby-Week 2
Trip Start
Feb 26, 2005
1
2
10
Trip End
Mar 25, 2005
Barcaldine to Katherine, Australia
Friday, July 9, 2004
From Lesley's perspective (no diesel prices).
The night time temperatures have finally reached a decent level, I am sitting here at night with only a T shirt on. Until we got above the Tropic of Capricorn night time temperatures were quite cold, 0-5 degrees. We were putting on as much as we could find to wear to bed. That's Queensland for you - beautiful one day and bloody freeing the next.
I enjoyed Carnarvon Gorge, the flora was quite different from that in the surrounding countryside with lots of fan palms and large eucalypts. We didn't see any platypuses or eagles both of which are supposed to be quite numerous. The highlight was the aboriginal art gallery that had more stencils, free hand drawings and engraved pictures than you usually see in one place. There was an elder there explaining the meanings of some of the work which was very enlightening. Unfortunately part of his job was to prevent graffiti artists from defacing the work. It is a shame that people feel they must deface such significant sites.
Barcaldine is an interesting town that seems to have a lot of amenities. The Showground where we camped had sprinklers on it all night, a bit different to ACT where the sports grounds are so hard from lack of water that kids are injuring themselves. They are right on top of a very good bore. The theory is that the water will soak back down to the water table. We also visited the Australian Workers Heritage Exhibition - opened by Bob Hawke while the Stockman's Hall of Fame in the next town, Longreach, was only opened by HRH Elizabeth II.
We had the car serviced in Longreach so we walked out to the Stockman's Hall of Fame. It was a pleasant walk of about 3 km each way as the path was well made and planted with a huge variety of native plants. The hall is a huge museum detailing our history from before white settlement until the present. It takes 3-4 hours to go through with all the reading and would not be very interesting for young children. There are lots of small plaques to "Unsung Heroes" as well as the better known ones.
After nearly a day's drive over very flat and uninteresting Mitchell Grass plains we arrived in Mt Isa which is in low rocky hills with lots of trees and is much more interesting country. On the way we did stop at the famous Wellshot Hotel in Ilfracombe, the Waltzing Matilda memorial billabong and stuffed swaggie at Winton, the cultural icon of Walkabout Creek Hotel fresh from the Crocodile Dundee set and now live in McKinley, Qld.
We overnighted in the van park on the western edge of town so we could really appreciate the effort that the night shift put into Mount Isa Mines. It actually drowned out the owls, magpies, kookas and parrots. I hate to say this, but the very best thing about Mt Isa was the 93c/l diesel (Graham).
We had originally intended to bypass Mt Isa and travel from Cloncurry north-west up the Wills Development Road, but we decided in a moment of weakness to drop in on the Isa and continue along the Barkly Highway towards Camooweal before turning off on a faintly dotted track heading north to Riversleigh Fossil Deposits and Lawn Hill National Park. We bought the latest Hema Map that showed our intended track in a slightly darker hue, so off we went. Unhappily we hadn't even reached the turn off from the highway when a passing road train threw a stone at our windscreen, starting a huge crack that curled from behind the rear vision mirror to prominence right in front of the driver. Ten kilometres along the faintly dotted track (which was in fact a newly-sealed surface with multitudes of blue metal ammunition just waiting...) and another passing vehicle provided another chip - right in the centre of the driver's vision. The original crack immediately set off to meet its mate.
What could be worse?? You're right - the blowout a farther fifty ks up the track. Have you ever noticed how Toyota helpfully tighten the wheel nuts when they service the vehicle? One hour of applied physics and a tortured wheel-brace later we replaced the wheel and tip-toed up to the O'Shannassy River crossing to camp before going on to Lawn Hill. We realised that we were in crocodile country but were happy to camp above the cab height of our ute. An item on the ABC news that night about the bloke who shot the dingo that got Azaria in 1980 made us also realise that we could visit safely Uluru with this rig...we're absolutely dingo proof.
Lawn Hill is an oasis in the wilderness. A deep gorge with emerald green water, high in calcium, and thick tropical vegetation, it is a holiday mecca, and as it was Qld school holidays it was crowded.
We walked all the tracks in 1.5 days there as well as having time to rest and have a swim at our shady campsite at Adel's Grove. They had a very good sideline of tyre repairs too, but ours was a lost cause. Luckily we brought 2 spare wheels with us. We walked over and around Island Stack, visited the Cascades where Lawn Hill Creek leaves the Middle Gorge and flows into the Lower Gorge, and saw the Dingo Dreaming cultural site (from ground level). The green water contains a high concentration of calcium which deposits itself as "tufa" along the watercourse. It does not make for good cuppas, so we had tea for two from our thermos and not tufa tea.
The best track at Lawn Hill takes you to the lookouts overlooking the Upper and Middle Gorges and also accesses the Indarri Falls, separating the two gorges. The enterprising canoe rental mob has constructed an easy portage around the falls (total drop about 2 metres) so you can overstay your 1 hour hire ($10 or $15, depending on canoe size) and be charged for another hour. Not a very charitable place: even the archer fish spit at you from below the surface. We didn't see the olive pythons at Adel's Grove, but we certainly looked hard when we read the disclaimer from the proprietors absolving them from liability if a python should swallow your toddler. Come back, dingo, all is forgiven. We saw turtles, striped and sooty grunters and plenty of geckos.
The road north to Doomadgee was better than the road up to the park although it was through private property with lots of gates. There were fewer corrugations and large rocks but more bends. For over 100 km we saw only a couple of 4WDs, including one three times (he was lost).
Then across the Borroloola Track which is part of Highway 1, and it was surprising how many ordinary caravans were making the crossing. It is good dirt road most of the way with lots of splash crossings and a large number of partially repaired washouts in the last 50 km. We came across one bloke in a Ford 500 who'd just buggered his diff. Happily his mate travelling in another 4WD just made it to Borroloola Van Park after we arrived and he set about organising a memorial service. Over 500 km of dirt road in one day. We last came this way 17 years ago and the road has not improved but the roadhouses at Hell's Gate and Wollogorang are a lot more upmarket.
On Wednesday we decided to detour via Katherine rather than follow the Capricorn Highway to Cape Crawford and Daly Waters and then the Buchanan Hwy (Murrinji Stock Route) to Timber Creek and on to WA. This was because we wanted to buy another tyre and as Beaurepairs in Canberra had to order a 205R16 from Sydney we thought we'd have more chance of getting one in Katherine than in Daly Waters. So we headed north west on the Roper Bar Road (372km, no caravans, high clearance vehicles only) through Nathan River (no fuel or stores) to the Roper.
We had no fun countin' the number plates on cars (cause like the Black Bear Road, there weren't any cars) and but we found ourselves in the newly (or yet to be) proclaimed Limmen National Park which had only three signs in the first 200 km giving any indication of Parkhood. We decided not to visit the Southern Lost City after following the 4WD-only track for about a kilometre into a muddy creek crossing of indeterminate depth and crocadility, but we took the next indicated track 50 km later to Butterfly Springs. This was a beautiful swimming hole with a rocky waterfall into crystal clear croc-free water where we had a swim and then lunch.
We saw lots of fishing hopefuls at Limmen Bight and Towns Rivers, but not so many at Roper Bar (where we bought a few litres of diesel and two excellent ice creams from the only Caucasian about - a girl from Winnipeg who was working in the store and obviously pleasing her employers by adding provincial and dominion sales tax to all purchases). We didn't camp at Roper Bar but continued east along the ultimately sealed "Roper Highway" and camped at a rest area near the old Elsey homestead as soon as our car radio could pick up the coverage of the State of Origin decider. We could have seen this on satellite TV had we stayed at the Borroloola servo where the proprietor was decorating the shed with maroon ribbons that morning (and said she would have refused to serve Lesley if she knew we weren't Qld supporters - great move, as we already had the fuel safely inside the Hilux's tank). As it was, the only other carload camped at our rest area were from Shepparton and they didn't even know the game was on. Anyway, big win to the St George Blues, a happy night was had by all and today we moved on to Katherine, via Mataranka and Cutta Cutta Caves.
We paused in town to buy two tyres (off the rack, cheaper than in Canberra) and to try to send this Travel Pod, but the computer in the library transposed "z' and "y" and we had trouble signing in (would you believe grahammckenyie911@hotmail??) and then realised the machine couldn't read our floppy. We're trying again tomorrow, with luck.
Best wishes from Nitmiluk (formerly Katherine Gorge) Van Park.
Lesley & Graham
8 July 2004.
