Homeward bound - this time!

What could be more wonderful than sitting out under a strawberry moon so close to full no one would notice, kicked back around a camp fire, drinking red and telling stories?  

Not to be entirely denied a last stretch of travel on outback roads, we took the road from Cobar to Ivanhoe – all dirt and not in very good condition due to rain - which let us live our dust/mud dreams a little longer!  We stopped half way along the road just on dusk at an organic sheep station – Belaradon Station.  We camped by the shearing shed and the owner was over in half hour with a 6 pack to share our fire along with a backpacker from France who is staying with the family learning some of the ropes. She had some great stories having been travelling and working around Oz for 2 years – what a magic existence. Made me wish I were young-er again. Next morning we rugged up and headed for their warm kitchen ½ K way for cappuccinos before packing up and continuing our southward journey  to Ivanhoe.   

Ivanhoe which, unlike its romantic historic Saxon links, albeit fictional, with the crusades and the  Knights Templar, is a pit stop for many travellers, but one we seem to pass through often as it is the hub of five ways heading east, west, north and south and in between.  We decided to head SW to Balranald on the road we had try to drive back in January but which was closed because of rain.  It was open this time and OK but for a few dodgy short stretches.  By now as we got closer to Victoria we were really looking hard for excuses to drag our heels and prolong the end of our travels so halfway to Balranald we pulled up and made camp by the side of the Hatfield pub now abandoned and derelict.  It was another magic night around the camp fire alone in the vast plains with their flat horizons, except for a dozy stumpy tail lizard and rather large spider sheltering under a sheet of roof iron near our camp. Rain drove us inside halfway through dinner and the rest of the night was beautifully quiet albeit punctuated every little while by rain and wind gusts and the bleating of a lone goat somewhere around midnight. We have seen more mobs of goats (and families of wild pigs) along the road in that area than ever before – they say the gathering of goats heralds rain.

By the time we rolled into a powered camp site, we were a bit feral after a few nights under the stars, minimal showers and many days of red dust in our ears. We spent half a day washing our intrepid van which has proven to be a force to be reckoned with when it comes to off road adventures, but which then stood slightly embarrassed and naked gleaming white and shiny but for a few, quite a few, hidden caches of red, reminders of our months eating dust along some of the best dirt roads in eastern Oz. 

Where to next!?

Over the Divide and out onto the plains

The Dividing Range was a significant geographical separation from the coast for us and quite magnificent – towering wet and dry forests, geological formations that would keep an amateur geologist humming for weeks. We passed through places which boasted tin, diamonds and sapphires, but the metal detector, little rock hammer and panning dish stayed buried in the back of the Beast under the recovery equipment.  The region remains a promise – we will return!

The trip west from the coast was like stretching and taking a deep breath. Out on the plains we struck Moree with it a huge developing solar farm and cotton growing but it was just a place on the road west. Changing vistas kept our eyes scanning the horizon as we loped along the road.  Just as a little aside – Walgett, which we passed through on the way to Bourke, is the largest producer and exporter of chick peas in Australia and the southern hemisphere. So eat up your humus it’s good for our GDP!!

We were heading to Bourke and a 4^th attempt at driving the largest section ~350Ks of the Darling River Run which actually ends at Menindee and starts at Brewarrina where the Darling and Barwon rivers flow through what is thought to be the oldest man-made structure on earth – the Brewarrina fish traps which are believed to be 40,000 years old. We were in the land of spinifex, sand hills, big skies, land of flooding plains and wildflowers – and loving it.  We spent a day exploring the Gundabooka NP with its ancient rock art and, for us, new and different flora. Then drove back to camp through the pearly golden slant of the setting sun watched over by a yellow moon peering through slats of clouds like a nosy neighbour peeping through the venetian blinds.

Sadly the river run was closed between Louth and Tipla because of the water still lying around after a 30 mm downpour a few days before we arrived.  In spite of patiently waiting a few days, the road remained closed to us yet again.  We will return – not just to do the run but also because we love Bourke and surrounds. It is close to corner country, opals, numerous national parks including Lake Mungo, and, right in the middle, citrus farms!  It is quite amazing.

Sugarcane, beaches and special friends

After the remoteness and silence of the many thousands of Ks we’d travelled on the Cape and far N and W Qld, the population crush and traffic of the built up areas of the coastal regions from Cairns on down to the Qld-NSW border and beyond, was a very confronting contrast. And driving became a matter of who’s the bravest! Double lines? pff*^@#tt, it is less than nothing! We’re not talking death wish here but .…… road toll figures .. hmmm.  However, taking bit between teeth, we took the most scenic route options and trawled along the roads that hugged the coast as much as possible looking for good things to ogle. Fortunately we were swimming against the tide – isn’t that typical?  When most are travelling north to sun and warmth, here we were blithely travelling south, but it does have its advantages. There were many hidden, magical spots that didn’t give up their secrets easily so one had to take a punt and drive through innocuous looking streets until – voila! there you were popped out onto a magnificent beach, with views over Magnetic, Hamilton, the Whitsunday Islands and the like, wide stretches of beach fringed with storm swept palms, pumice and coral fragments, spreading beach almond trees with their carpets of nuts, and fallen giants – palm, eucalypts and others - silent, battered witnesses of cyclones and wild seas.  Quite lovely and if not for the threat of crocs, we would have been in the water. Sigh!

It was a blur of traffic, lush green field of sugarcane standing at attention, or perhaps at easy, in neat rows swaying to their own secret music, awesome mountains – some the result of subterranean land movement, others dramatic remnants of volcanoes. We chilled out with drinks at Bowen yacht club watching the local pilot boat come in to port at sundown, marvelled at Gladstone and its humungous shipping port, and Townsville and Mackay with their massively growing metropolises and thriving ports, found ourselves off the beaten track in Marlborough with a surprise overnight stay with a delicious meal of local fish, and then it was on to Rocky and Childers famous for its backpacker’s fire way back whenever.  Centres like Gladstone and Yeppoon are massive residential developments spreading like unstoppable lava flows in all directions – the scary price of prosperity and dare I say ‘progress’.  I am still a little overwhelmed by Qld ports which like Gladstone, ship out an astonishing variety of huge chunks of Oz – coal, alumina, magnesia, loads of –ites such as calcite, etc.  We will become a negative land mass if we’re not careful!

Then we visited friends! (our primary reason for travelling coastal in Qld).  It was wonderful. From Noosa to the Tweed we ate and drank like royalty and talked the legs off a whole dining room suite of chairs – it was good! We got lost in Tweed whose roads double back and back across the river till we flung up our hands and reverted to the trusty MAPS app on my trusting iPhone, found our family of osprey who seem to have been nesting on the same post for years -  we first saw the nest ~10 years ago -, lunched at a magic Bali-kind of place at Fingal’s Head, which set the scene for lunch at the Yum Yum Tree café in New Brighton where I indulged in a plate of  ‘Peace Love Vegetables’ and left there feeling zoned out and at one with the world wishing that I could sit cross legged to meditate - we were in Nimbin territory! and the atmosphere and conversation  was entirely one of zen and the food to die for.

Beaches all the way from the Tweed to Grafton – rolling surf, stunning sand, fishermen with huge surf rods, and halleluiah NO CROCS!  Early sunsets, rivers needing a packed lunch to cross – the Clarence, Brunswick, Richmond, Tweed and more.  But can you believe I was still scratching?!   The mozzie itch has ruled the nights and I looked like an aboriginal bark painting with splodges of calamine lotion in faded pink forming crazy patterns on arms and legs, itching like a dog with fleas - thank goodness for drugs! I tucked into the antihistamines as a last resort – and they work pretty well. Now I just look like a flea-bitten dog with red blotches, reminders of mosquito nights.

With one last friend to visit on the coast, we took a day trip from Grafton, home of the most beautiful Jacaranda trees, to Sawtell and talked (and ate!) for hours – again! Sawtell is a totally delightful place of picturesque beaches and inlets, but we couldn’t linger as night was falling so we pointed the Beast back to Grafton.

Having had our fill of beaches and main highway traffic, the next day we headed inland towards the big skies and the back of Bourke. 

Away from Cape-magic and back among the flocks of winter migrants …..

After countless hard Ks, we booked the Beast in for a check-up and service in Cairns and then, all nuts and bolts secure (we hoped), we headed south through tropical fruit and sugarcane land stopping in at some gorgeous beaches. Our decision to making our way down the coast, rather than taking the inland route, was rewarded with stretches of lush plantations of fruit and the like as well as tropical forests - quite lovely. No trip to the area would be complete without a stop in Ingham in the heart of sugar country and which boasts the Tyto wetlands, a birdwatchers paradise home to well over 200 bird species. Having been eaten almost down to the bone – slight exaggeration! - the previous day on a walk through one of the many patches of rainforest with a zillion mozzies hitching a ride on my legs mistakenly thinking I was the blood bank ouch!!! Needless to say Lindsay walked the many Ks of the wetlands alone..  I seem to have been the ‘meal of the day’ throughout our trip and having not long recovered from the last bout of being sucked almost dry, yes I picked up another load walking through another ….. patch of forest. What can I say? I am a tasty thing – at least if you are a mozzie or a midge!

We did the mandatory thing and checked out the local beaches near Ingham, the famous Lucinda off-shore sugar loading jetty which stretches 6 Ks out to sea, and then headed to the mountains and Wallaman Falls which, at over 300m, is Australia’s highest sheer drop waterfall – awesome actually and dizzying gazing down into the drop pool.  It’s heritage listed and, as I learnt while wandering around there, so are the wet tropical forests in eastern Qld as they are the oldest continually living rainforests in the world.  Yes I was a bit flabbergasted by that too, but looks like it is true. 

We Aussies should be very proud of our amazingly diverse and beautiful country. We have seen grasses as high as an elephant’s eye, waving stretches of many grasses coloured pink, red, brown, purple and black some with feathery heads like the softest watercolour brush, others with seeds tiny as dust motes suspended in cobwebs yet others with bristles and geometric seed clusters waiting to snare a passing trouser leg.   Dazzling flowers and mammoth prehistoric-looking seedpods and ………………… as I said, we are a luck people!

Weipa and the southern Cape

We had a forced week long stay in Weipa - we broke a spring somewhere on our way up to the Tip and needed to repair that before moving on.  Fortunately they were able to get one shipped up from Melbourne – eventually - such is the tyranny of remoteness. The trip had been sort of ‘event-free’ to that point with Lindsay managing to fix minor issues like brake lines and some water inlet/outlet issues.  All in all having travelled over more than 5000Ks on dirt roads to that point - some very 'challenging' - we had done amazingly well.

Back tracking a few days, we reckoned the van had a bit of a lean when we were leaving Bamaga (20-30 K from the Tip) and by the time we pulled into Bramwell Roadhouse some 200 ks south our little house on wheels had quite a jaunty lean – sacre bleu ….. a broken spring. After an overnight stop there, we nursed the baby along till we got to Weipa ~180 dirt Ks away. We took a chance and took the ‘short cut’ through Batavia Downs station to get to help 'sooner' - hopefully, but I had our sat phone by my elbow in case!  We have been lucky. The people camped next to us at Weipa had their car written off somewhere up at the Tip near where we had been staying. They went through a creek which came up passed the level of the floor at which time they discovered that a grommet in the floor somewhere near 'the all essential computer' had not been put in and voila - water and electrics seem not to mix.  Poor things. Our car has been mighty! Lindsay has walked it over grids masquerading as stiles, through creeks narrow and steep-sided, across 'creeks' where the direction of the 'road' was anyone's guess, through expanses of water of unmarked depth. We reckon our 4WD training and plain common sense plus a big dash of calculated guessing has brought us through and we have cheered heartily when the wheels hit dry/firm-ish ground.

Weipa is a mining town but quite interesting for all that.  Once we had booked the van in for repairs, we went on a tour of part of Rio Tinto's bauxite mines - fascinating and huge. Millions of tons of ore are shipped from Weipa port each year.  Mind boggling but just as impressive is the revegetation/restoration program  - years of mapping, seed collecting, consultation with the local people, all designed to return the land as close as possible to what is was after mining is finished in the area. A matter of take a bit, AKA huge swathe! and then move on.  Fifty years of mining remains they say part of which is the planned southern Weipa fields which are expected to be larger than the current ones. We drove to Marpoon 90Ks north for a look. This is the community which was relocated when mining operations started, driven as much of the coast line as possible - much of it is  thick mangrove and we are nervous about getting out to  explore and a little nervous of driving down onto the beaches at low tide.  Weipa is situated at the mouth of 2 large rivers but again river edges are hard to access without local knowledge.  We travelled every road we came across and usually ended up on the rivers' edge somewhere. We took a sunset cruise on the harbour and up into one of the creeks running into the Embley River. It was heavenly after the ubiquitous hot humid afternoon to be cooled by breezes off the water.  On board there was an ecologist, maritime expert and a local indigenous man - the stories, history and highlights were wonderful.  We saw a small croc, and masses of water birds on the mudflats where the seagrass grows and on which the dugong feed and up in the narrow creek we saw kingfishers like flashes of iridescence through the overhanging branches, shy striated herons scuttled off as we approached, red-chocolate and white brahminy kites flew overhead only to drop like stones into the water for fish, and mangrove oysters clutching onto the air roots like lollies on a stick.  And then we spilled back out into the harbour with glasses of champers in hand to watch the sun slip into the ocean and the sky metamorphose into an artist's palette.  Not a bad way to end the day, eh!?

With brand new spring and a level van, we left the Cape a week later and felt quite sad. Our last night on the Cape was a bush camp at Hann River and it was quite magical - we sat outside and watched the sun go down and then lit the mozzie torches and coils and burnt gum leaves to keep the little buzzing blighters away. We discovered a wild passionfruit vine growing way up in a huge tree near the van and that was also host to a beautiful bougainvillea – we ate those huge pale, juicy passionfruit for days.  And then we emerged back in cultivated territory – we saw a Bunnings and then an Officeworks store – like being home! 

The top of Australia

The Cape is so beautiful - rivers slow and cool running though vaulted canopies of tropical rainforest, coconut and pandanus palms, eucalypts, sandalwood, frangipani, bush/beach almonds and so many other tree species, lush grasses of every imaginable colour of green and brown growing metres high, dragon flies from red through almost every colour to startling blue, butterflies as big as small birds - one species we watched for ages vivid black, green, yellow and red with the female black, silver, cream and red. David Attenborough, when he visited the area, said he would select these to go in his ‘Ark’. We visited as many of the Cape’s secluded and idyllic beaches as we could get to safely - wandering among sponges, coral, cuttlefish and pumice, tried to have a conversation with a ‘hippie’ camped on the beach but he seemed only to be able to manage a babble of psychedelic phrases, scraped vines from old graves stones to read about early explorers in the area. We took a ferry to lazy friendly Thursday Island where we lunched at Australia’s most northern pub and where we were personally serenaded with a welcome song in TI and English by a darling old man (90 odd). He, Seaman Dan, had been a pearl diver in Australia's north and Indian Ocean islands all his life. We've gazed at dazzling sunsets, coastlines rimmed by mangroves, water so clear and beautiful but too deadly to dip into. And the Tip - yes we made it by foot after walking along the beach, passing a small forest of mangroves with a wary eye out for large moving objects with big teeth! and clambering over high rocks.  About 1K later we arrived at the very tippy tip of the continent and were greeted by a huge sail fish leaping high out of the water in a welcoming salute as well as by a large green turtle who popped his head up to say hello. Lindsay explored an alternative way back from the Tip which ran us into the water and impassable rocks (for me at least) so we had to climb up a rock face to find a different route.  Hard work and nerve ranking for me but we made it and then clambered down on to the sand and the receding tide once again keeping a careful eye out for crocs. A real buzz experience!  And to top it off we saw a few palm cockatoos. 

The list of wonders goes on and on. Camping in bush settings and being woken by the maniacal song of the gorgeous blue-winged kookaburras and the thud of horses clomping around the van.  There are so many free grazing/wild horses at Pajinka 'owned' by the local indigenous. They (the horses!) are as sleek and fat as seals and simply beautiful.  One day (while camped at Loyalty Beach) we watch a few of them jostling to get under the sprinkler.  Really!  One totally hogged it standing over it with his mouth open to catch the water and then letting it play over his chest and shoulders. The others slurped at the tap and tried to push him off to get a turn, he didn't give ground but copped a few bites for being unfriendly.  Hilarious to watch. But all things come to an end and all too soon it was time for us to leave.

Heading for Pajinka

The wet was more a damp this year it seems with places in and around the Gulf really suffering but it meant the road was ‘fairly’ dry which was good for us. Even so, and disappointingly for us, most national parks were still closed with wash outs, road repairs and other maintenance needed before the high tourist season started (around end of May).  We could have ventured in to a few but the grass was very high (1-2m) adding a little extra danger with croc and snakes aplenty. Death adders are in the area and they are not nice! Needless to say we were a bit nervous to get out and explore too far from the car.

Coen, the halfway mark to the Tip, is an interesting place and a good stop over on the PDR between Weipa (as well as the Tip) and Lakeland the beginning of the PDR. Once a huge mining town (and site of some bloody wars with the local indigenous), Coen now provides a great stop for supplies - if the truck has arrived with the goods! When we were there many of the shelves were bare. We camped at Charlie’s mine.  It is a gold mine, but its heyday has passed.  Charlie is a wonderful character with a story for every occasion and topic.  The spot is quaint – Charlie-art everywhere.  Floors of the toilets (named ‘Tony’ and ‘Julia’) and showers, one of which is delightfully open to the stars, are decorated with faux rock and precious stone art.  His ‘house’ is a little Whitecliffs crossed with the cave houses of Guadix - he’s Maltese and Maltese Crosses decorate many things or are woven into the artwork. We spent a couple of days there exploring – going to the coast, to Archer River etc and scratching at bites – mozzies, ants and spiders. The itch can drive you mad but it’s worth it to be outside under the velvet darkness of the night sky lit only by a few candles.  We went to sleep to the calls of a pair of bush curlews and woke well before dawn with their raucous cries accompanied by a cow calling somewhere in the darkness. It was a bit reminiscent of our stop over at Musgrave Station where we were kept awake by a crazy rooster calling almost all night and being answered each time by a cow mooing – super weird duet!  

At Coen, we were serenaded daily by a myriad of birds and animals and witness to the daily affairs of a family of sunbirds – they are very small ~11cm and are brilliant yellow, the males have a royal blue bib. The feed is lush in spite of a less than ideal wet and cattle were our companions much of the way – on the road, in the bush, in the creek gullies - beautiful creatures.  A short drive along the Coen River bought us in earshot of what we thought was a mass of birds only to discover hundreds of flying foxes in the trees along the banks of the river – they looked like plump purple fruit dangling high up in the branches – but didn’t smell all that good.  The verge of the road was fringed with flowers of all sizes and colours and of course we had to stop for a closer look.  At one spot the smell was heavenly - a smallish herb thing which smelled like lemon verbena.  I don’t think most people appreciate how stunningly beautiful and fascinating our country is.  Two days later we were within cooee of Pajinka - the Tip. 

Crossing the Savannah …

Ever since Burketown, we had been travelling the Savanah Way a ‘road’ (AKA dirt track in some places) which stretches almost 4000 Ks from Cairns to Broome.  The vista changed a little as we went further east, but along its route it is predominantly tropical savannah grasslands with a huge variety of tall grasses, savannah trees including the Cooktown iron bark which is supposed to be rather toxic but is resistant to termites. Termites! They populate the area in vast expanses of mounds of varying shapes and height - some bulbous mounds up to 2 m, others the magnetic NS aligned shards 3m or more. Interestingly the magnet termites exist only in Australia and one species (there are 2) exist only on Cape York and where they exist off the Cape they build rounded mounds. Amazing eh? All to do with heat and not being able to go underground during the wet – perhaps! The colour of these amazing structures depends on the soil from pale grey, through brown and red – well of course!

Where the Savanna Way comes up against the great eastern dividing range, there are astonishing caves and lava tubes.  With Lindsay on board we simply couldn’t not go there to peak his fascination with all things volcanic.  So we stopped in at Undara - it is a place you should google!  It has some of the longest lava tubes in the world. The people who manage the areas offer a range of tours and we joined a small party.  We were treated to an amazing commentary, dabbled in a little geology of the local rocks, explored a couple of lava tubes including a walk through one which had collapsed. Undara is a national park set in the savannah. Tall bottle trees (not boabs) and massive fig trees exist in scraps of remnant tropical rainforest hugging the passage of the lava tubes which extend for a hundred or more miles. Small bats live in the tubes, but not much else.  Aborigines once camped at the mouth of the tubes but there is no evidence that they ventured in – pitch black inside so that’s not surprising.  We walked in to a couple ~4-500 metres and learned about rock formation, saw how they monitored for any movement in the walls of the tubes and lots of interesting things.   The trees growing on the ground above the tubes have sent roots into the tubes and they will eventually cause cracks to open up too far to support the rock ceiling. We walked for a couple of hours and much of that was going down or coming up stairs – the tubes are underground, der!  The tourist park which runs the tours is built mainly of old wooden railway carriages.  Looks terrific and the atmosphere was  exciting as they were setting up for a weekend Country Rock and Blues festival due to start that night.  What a magic setting! From the tubes we took our selves off to see the Kalcani crater – remnants of one of the many extinct volcanoes in the region. Like the intrepid/nutty explorers we are, we walked to the rim of the crater – only 600 metres but uphill and in the heat of midday – madness! Next day after venturing into and out of the bowels of the earth and to one of the summits, not surprisingly we suffered stiff and sore leg muscles and twinges in knee, ankle and hip joints - but it was really worth it.

Up and onto the Atherton Tablelands we put up camp Atherton. This time it was lovely – last time it had rained the whole time.  The caravan park is on the side of a hill and we camped looking out over the mountains and so. We stayed a few nights to explore the area, soak up mountain views, enjoy glorious sunsets and on the Saturday travelled a little way north to Mareeba to join in ANZAC day commemoration.  We sat in the RSL surrounded by the locals and loads of servicemen and women, current and ex, and watched the commemoration at Canberra on a wall sized TV screen. Playing on another screen were snippets of war films and marches in other cities – quite an emotional experience as Grandfather Percy Hill was at Gallipoli and I was wishing I had brought the medal I have of his to wear. 

Being to true birdies that we are, a trip to Jularta to visit Kingfisher Park was a must.  We spend hours in this world renowned bird watchers spot, wandering amongst ginormous trees, through a tiny orchard of orange, chestnut, almond and other exotic trees we couldn’t identify. And sat by a stream to watch and listened to a veritable symphony of little birds – finches, honey eaters, monarchs, silver eyes, kingfishers, fan tails and other species darting about bathing, catching insects and doing other bird things. It was really delightful. And not to miss any local feathered creatures, we did a boat-float on a huge manmade lake at the Mareeba Wetlands on the way north to Cooktown the following day. The lake was created by collecting water left over from the surrounding irrigation systems and is now home to fish and insects, water plants and many bird species.

Venturing into Capt Cook territory ……..

Cooktown was an interesting stopover for me.  I had seen lots of early paintings and etchings of the area when Europeans first landed there and it looked just the same - if you ignored the buildings!  Fabulous views from Grassy Hill. After brekkie at Finch beach and a stroll through one of the oldest botanical gardens in Australia, we packed up and pointed ‘the Beast’ towards the Peninsula Development Road (PDA) on our quest to reach the tip 800 odd Ks north. First stop Coen.  The road was in pretty good condition and we were impressed with the big road trains – they seem to take it slow and easy and slow when approaching oncoming vehicles and through creek and river dips unlike some of the 4WDs we have passed roaring down the road not slowing at all and creating dust clouds which hang in the air and reducing visibility to almost zero so that you have to stop to let it settle for fear of running into any oncoming traffic. Scheezzz!   

Finally we were heading to ‘The Tip’ – Pajinka.

Further north….

We made camp for a few days in the land of the Min Min lights, Boulia, on the banks of the Burke River in far west Qld.  Early each morning, the brolgas woke us with their squawking as they and flocks of other birds flew in to water holes along the river.  This was not our first visit to Boulia but this time we decided to check out a bit more of this corner of our wonderful wide brown land with its big sky, astonishing colours and blessed silence.  We explored all roads out of town, lunched by a permanent water hole along the Burke River watched by a small mob of cattle that we had dislodged from the shade of some coolabah trees – tra la la. Then well rested, we took a long day trip to the Diamantina National Park and the Gates of the Diamantina River so named because this is where a vast network of ‘braids’ – small streams, which make up the Diamantina - are gathered together and channeled through a narrow gap in the surrounding rocky hills, before once again trickling or flooding, depending on the time of year, across the plains.  It was an amazing real life geography lesson!  Like the intrepid explorers we are, albeit in air-conditioned luxury, we took the 100 odd K scenic route back from the Gates … hmmmm.  The only way you could tell you were on the right track, in fact any track, was if you saw faint wheel tracks or an occasional little post in the ground maybe every 5-10 K.  The ‘map’ seemed to contradict itself repeatedly (else it was written by someone who had never been there!). It was an adventure through clay pans, swamps, passed towering dunes, little side trips to permanent water where strange, alien-looking flowering plants stood wavering tall and spindly pumping out a heady scent, where cattle hoof prints sunk a foot (no pun!) into the mud along the shore, and where insects of a zillion varieties buzzed and flourished and birds struggled to rule the roost!  After a few wrong turns and not a little head scratching, we made it out of the ‘circuit’ close to dusk with a huge sigh of relief and headed back to town in fading light.  It was a fascinating day.  Having been bogged in remote places a few times when we have gone off ‘exploring’, we now take our sat phone everywhere, plenty of water and fuel, survival food, recovery gear and all that kind of stuff, plus our resources and common sense (sometimes) – we have survived all manner of things for a combined 140 years and we expect to do so for a lot more yet.

We decided to head for Burketown in the NW before turning east for the Cape to enjoy as much of the far west as possible but also to avoid the roads more frequently travelled by the grey nomads tracking north for the winter in long lumbering convoys – dare I say ‘caravans’. That NW journey took us through Mt Isa via Dajarra once the biggest cattle railhead in Australia trucking livestock from central and far west Qld to the east coast. An hour or so out of Dajarra, we came across a couple broken down by the side of the road and stopped to help – of course.  We couldn’t do much but they appreciated a few of our tools and encouragement. So there we stood in the blazing heat, and I mean very blazing heat, for a couple of hours trying to keep the sun off the poor guy lying half under the van and their spirits up – next time it could be us needing a hand, right?!

Mount Isa was just a pit stop to do washing and stock up on supplies before heading NW to Camooweal 13Ks from the NT border on the Barkly Hwy. And yes, of course we drove the distance to put our wheels in NT albeit only for a few minutes, but with a promise to return sometime soon. Then we chose the road much less travelled and headed north to Burketown via a dirt road deemed not suitable for caravans. What they really mean is for people who don’t want to get dust in their rig – hah! By this time we were carrying sufficient fine red dust to coat a beach full of sand and the car was a new rust coloured grey so a bit more wouldn’t be noticed.  When you think about it more than 75% of roads in Australia are dirt so if you are going to see Australia you’re going to end up with dust in your ears and everywhere else.  We left Camooweal too late that afternoon to make Burketown over 300Ks north so stopped at Gregory Downs, a cattle and horse station near Lawn Hill national park with ‘hotel’ and camp spot.  It was one VERY HOT night with no power and so no aircon, but we were able to use the fan powered by our little generator until the fuel ran out and we were too tired to refill. We survived and were rewarded next morning with a deliciously cool, relatively speaking, morning wandering under the trees watching birds.  Quite delightful.

Just as an aside we are using our DreamPot – a magic device which you fill with things like corned beef, a few vege, heat it up for a short time on the stove, pop it in the container and voilà you have a ready cooked meal when you pull up stumps at the end of the day. Cooking doesn't get much simpler than that.

Burketown pub was an oasis after the heart and dust of the road so we sat there for ages nursing ice cold drinks before hitting the road again.  Destination Normanton and the Gulf via wash outs, dry creek beds, dodging wandering cattle and the amazing Leichhardt falls – an astonishing swathe of water, rocks pools and falls dissecting the road – well worth a wander.

That section of the trip was a jumble of wild night winds, cattle, a detour 100 odd Ks out of Normanton, horses, having to jump in and out of the car to open and close gates, glorious curtains of stars at night and just the teeniest whisper of concern about the reason for the detour and where we camped – the winds seemed a bit ominous.  But the morning dawned clear and so with an honour guard of a small group of young cattle seeing us back onto the road, we took the detour – as well as a wrong turn which meant we had to backtrack over 30Ks.  We finally lumbered into Normanton, but not before ogling a ginormous croc sunning itself near the mighty bridge into town. We did the things you have to do – dinner at Karumba watching the sunset over the Arafura Sea, drinks (and dinner) at the Purple pub, drives around the water ways oohing and aahing over the beautiful waterlilies and water birds and most important keeping the seat down of the toilet to keep the tree frogs out and our feet away from the water to avoid becoming a croc snack. We were entertained morning and evening by a family of comical apostle birds, visited by skinks and a couple of cane toads, focussed our binoculars on man sized jabiru, flocks of brolgas, and swatted mozzies instead of flies – we had well and truly arrived in tropical Qld of the wet variety!

Up the track!

We started on the Birdsville track mid-afternoon one day - not sure which such is the joy of our quasi and brief stint at nomadic life - just to get a little distance under our belt before night fall.  We were aiming to stop at a roadside camp site 70 or so Ks north which promised wetlands and birds but although we found the camp site (a desolate place), we didn’t discover the wetlands in spite of talking to the homesteaders who advertise the spot. So we kept going and camped south of the Cooper crossing just as the sky was turning fluorescent pink.  Spectacular!  We sat out under the stars and listened to some wonderful music thanks to a new toy I had bought, a lovely little Bluetooth speaker which belts out a wallop of sound). Life doesn’t get much better than that.

The landscape changed quite a lot as we drove – from scrubby bush, grass and gnarled trees, dry river beds, lush lagoons, dunes and gibber plains and back again. And we fell in love with the outback all over again. We lunched AKA gorged ourselves sick on humungous hamburgers, at Mungerannie pub which is about halfway up the track.  There we found amazing wetlands created by hot water spirting from a bore; our first encounter with the local bird life was tracking, albeit only with binoculars, a pair of brolgas lazily strutting along the grassy banks of the lagoon.  We discovered a number of such oases along the track and each time were surprised and delighted anew at the contrast with the surrounding desert landscape. The second night we pulled up just 90 Ks from Birdsville.  It was one of those fatal decision moments – do we keep going and arrive after dark or stop and arrive a little fresher in the morning?  You guessed it, we stopped to wring one more night out of the desert sky. It was pretty sandy, but we found some hard packed wheel tracks headed in a couple 100m and turned our rig around to park just a tiny bit off that little track and …. double groan, the wheels started spinning in the sand.  Not a good feeling when your rig weighs over 5 tonne!  Help was not at hand … gulp. But we were well prepared for such things, equipment wise at least – lovely new recovery equipment and a sat phone.  In the morning after a night of nightmarish scenarios keeping us from proper rest, we unhooked the van and dug the car out, which was not too hard but a bit nerve racking. The hard, slow part was winching the van inch by inch closer to the wheel tracks so we could hook up to the car.  It took us over 3 hours of digging, hauling a little, digging some more etc etc BUT we made it!  [Note to self – do some strength training when we get back home]. And oh boy the next day, muscles we had forgotten existed, ached and groaned and I discovered overripe bananas where my legs should have been – florid bruises smudged back and front, top to bottom, almost.

Welcome to the desert! We were well and truly in the desert somewhere between the Simpson, Tirari and Sturt’s Stony deserts and for quite some time, drove between large N-S aligned dunes. These have some international notoriety as the largest number of parallel dunes in the world at 1000 plus.  Then Birdsville popped up on the horizon!

Birdsville was interesting but it was hard to imagine what it would be like when the famous races are on and thousands descend on the place.   We spent a few days there making a few repairs to water inlet and outlets as well as brake wires etc but also drove out on every road for a look see.  That included a trip out to Big Red which we climbed – the dune is bright red der! and they say it is the biggest in the thousand odd dunes lined up across the Simpson Desert.   And of course we had a few cold ones and a meal in the famous Birdsville pub.

The town’s water supply is a combination of systems - river water and artesian water which jets out of the ground at over 170 PSI wow! and has to be cooled from 45-50 degrees before being pumped up to storage tanks to reticulate aroud the town.  Quite fascinating to see steam rising off the water as it gushed out – particularly as the ambient temp was over 30 degrees!   

Water is a fascinating phenomenon out in this vast desert system with mighty rivers/creeks such as the Diamantina and Cooper flooding regularly.  The end result is lagoons and wetlands and billabongs along the way. Incidentally the road from BV to Bedourie is called Bilby Way as these little rabbit-like creatures are endemic to the region – we didn’t see any. Bedourie is a levy town like Burke, surrounded by high embankments to protect it from the regularly flooding Eyre creek. Creeks are such a misnomer – most of what they call creeks are huge rivers systems which at certain times of year flood for 10s of Ks across the countryside.  Hence the need for levies even so water and remoteness mean that access is a frequent problem. There are some notable characters who have made this special corner of the world more liveable – Tom Kruse who kept the mail and supplies up to homesteads and stations along the Birdsville track. And way further north on the Cape, ‘Toots’ Holzheimer, mother of eight, who like Tom, hauled general freight, groceries, mining equipment and other necessities on dirt track that most men would never contemplate.  Adventurers or …. ?

100s of Ks to Birdsville

We finally made it to Birdsville after spending a few days on ‘the Track’ from Maree – an experience on our ‘want-to-do’ list. It is a place we will return to because it is remote and getting there allows you to appreciate the amazing beauty that only Australia can offer (biased of course) – colours to take your breath away, an amazing variety of plants - in a small 500 mm circle around my feet I spotted over 6 different species of plants. In the desert! And that’s without getting down on my knees to look closer. Bird life abounds in a vastness which makes no concessions for anyone – surprises lurk around every corner, over every sand dune ridge.  It is all very different and quite intriguing.  From the reports you hear, the Birdsville Track was different to what we had expected. I had imagined a different kind of remoteness – all very Tom Kruse, floods and bogs (more on that later), poor roads, risks and various challenges.  What we found however was a better road surface than what we have experienced on the Oodnadatta Track.  The signs welcoming you to Birdsville say ‘population 200 odd +/-7000’ so I guess they maintain the roads in reasonable condition to keep the tourists coming (or maybe we were just lucky).  Thousands descend on Birdsville for the famous horse race and if the Cooper is flooded, as it sometimes is, then cars line up for days to get across on the car ferry which is up stream way off the track.  But I digress ……

We took it easy getting this far because we don’t have pressing destination deadlines which is absolutely wonderful, but we both also realised that we need to slow down and smell the roses – or dust! We made overnight stops along the way to top up our water tanks and take on supplies and extra fuel.  We are now carrying 210L in our tanks (and another 20L inside) plus 185L of diesel (incl 50 L backup) so we slosh a lot as we go along.  We then headed for Heysen country and the Flinders Rangers.

Having spent some time on an early trip to the Ranges, we didn’t do much exploring, choosing only to drive through a couple of narrow gorges - Brachina and Bunyeroo Gorges which were rocky river beds for much of the way; the last time we were there we had driven one of them at dusk so really didn’t see much. Absolutely beautiful, but quite rough driving over the rocks at times. Reminded me of the Finke river gorge in central Aust. Got a few strange stares as we bopped and bounced along with our caravan in close pursuit (thank goodness). 

In spite of an apparent emptiness, there is such a lot to see on the trip north to Maree which is the start/end point of both the Birdsville and Oodnadatta tracks.  Glorious purple mountain ranges on both side some of the way, countless old stone ruins crumbled along hundreds of Ks as reminders of failed attempts and dashed hopes to farm the area in the 1800s, humungous coal mines at Leigh Creek, sunsets to make an artist weep, and lots else like ‘Talc’ Alf. He’s an odd ‘take me as I am’ character who uses cast-off slabs of local talc to carve political and religious statements and theories on the origin of a number of things.  And he has a story about each one if you have time to spend with him! We picked up some stuff from him last time we were through there.