​The end of an awesome odyssey - October 2017

Our good old van, our home away from home for the last 8 months, has a new undercover home. Safe and sound. What a champ she was! She’ll be getting new undercarriage before we head back out on  the roads less traveled - not the Canning Stock Route but road/tracks such as Tanami, Buchanan, Strzelecki and  .....

We’re back! Our ‘odyssey’ was one hell of an adventure, long both in distance and time. Was it worth it? Oh, most definitely yes! My mind is still digesting all that we've seen and happily that will continue for quite some time. From remnants of the Supercontinent of Ur in the Pilbara dating back 3 billion years and living fossils in World Heritage Shark Bay to dinosaur footprints along the Dampier Peninsula. From ancient rock paintings depicting Yingarna, the Creation Spirit who emerged from the Arafura Sea to populate West Arnhem Land, fast forward to rich goldfields, stock routes, jasper deposits and European exploration and settlement. A history still in infancy which rests as light as a mist net on top the ancient history of our land. I have learnt so much!

Pieces of ancient earth crust engraved with over a million petroglyphs, Burrup Peninsula/Murujuga, WA

Rock painting of the female Creation ancestor, Yingarna. Photographed on the sacred Injalak Hill, Arnhem Land.

Board walk over some of the stromatolites, living fossils, in World Heritage Shark Bay.

Deep glorious veins of jasper at Marble Bar, WA

We joined in the Malandarri aboriginal cultural and arts festival in Borroloola. Everyone joins in!

The ancient ‘lost city’ in the Carabirini Conservation Reserve, NT

Once done on the hoof so to speak, cattle droving has in the main been replaced with huge road trains. This one was coming in from Finke, NT.

Buchanan Highway a stock route forged by Nat Buchanan and ‘Greenhide’ Sam Croker in the late 1800s. Routes like this criss-cross Australia.

What started out for me as an interest in flowers and plants became quite a challenging and exciting experience. The more I looked, the more I saw. The more I delved for answers or identification, the more and deeper I learned to look. I will now go back and back and back again to my pix because there are many plants I didn't identify and some, perhaps quite a few, I got wrong. I identified almost 150 different species during a short period of a couple of months. Not too shabby for a novice. And of course there’s the fungi!

And we came home to this! Our beautiful orchid after 8 months of fending for itself, truly! What a valiant plant is it and quite lovely. My father potted it for me more than 20 years ago and I have done little to it since. Must love neglect. And our birds were back the morning after we arrived home. They have obviously cruised by every day looking.

Sadly the cupboard was bare else we would have celebrated with champers - again!!

Lindsay and I are determined to learn more about this amazing country and have already quite a list of places we want to explore in the future. People who I discovered, or rediscovered, on this trip. People such as John McDouall Stuart, Alfred Canning, George Goyder, Augustus Gregory and Len Beadell, all surveyors, explorers and history makers - inspire and fascinate me (and I’m no history student). Hopefully we can trace more of the routes they established and/or explored in some of the most arid, inhospitable and remote regions of Australia. Water! Springs and native wells punctuate many of those tracks - I now know. Boy how gruelling, albeit exciting, it must have been!
But to return to more urbane pursuits ........ I will miss the quiet sound of the winds hustling across the plains, waking to the dawn chorus - and so much more! Thank you for being such marvelous travel companions. I hope to share some of your journeys.

What’s on the cards for us next year? We will be gypsies again albeit this time in Ireland and Scotland, but in a much much smaller van. And we will also be heading out to sea in a wee expedition ship to explore the remote islands off the Scottish coast - must read up about the Norsemen! The trip back home from the cool climes of the UK will be via ......... ? well I'll leave that until next year except to say that on my current reading list is ‘Book of the Marvels of the World’ ....
Travel well and let questions be your guides!

A challenge!

​Cobar to Hillston - October 2017

The pits at Cobar! This is deep but who knows how far the tunnels travel underground. I do know that it took 8 -10 mins for an ore truck to cart its load to the top.

Copper, lead zinc and gold! West and east we continue to gouge out the bowels of our land of Oz. Minerals and, to a lesser extent, cattle - our mainstay still it seems. We traveled from Cobar to Hillston on the Kidman Way, a stock route linking cattle stations many of which were owned by Sir Sidney Kidman.

What a feast but it didn't last long.

For us Hillston means peace, quiet and yabbies/gilgies/marron! A delightful spot along the Lachlan river where Lindsay always puts in his net and pulls out a feast. Fecund is a word that springs to mind for Hillston. The area produces so many varieties of fruits, vege, seeds etc. and John Oxley said it was ‘uninhabitable and useless ....’. Boy was he wrong! The river and ground water make this area hugely productive.

This board hangs in the dining room of the local Clubhouse Hotel

But we were southward-bound for home under a gibbous moon.

From dawn chorus and baby pink clouds in the morning to a gibbous moon at night. Glorious!

Of no significance, probably a weed but .... it's sweet. And the insect! What’s a post without a flower?

​Dry country beauty - late September 2017

Eremophila bignoniiflora - Bignonia emubush. Although eaten by emus and sheep, the fruits and leaves have a strong laxative effect on humans and were used as such by Aboriginals.

Eremophila sturtii - Turpentine bush. Gorgeous! Branches are reputedly fly-repellent and were used on outback stations for thatching meat-houses. 

It was an Eremophila kind of day - in fact many days! Everywhere I looked round Bourke, Byrock, Cobar- all dry country. Eremophila just thrive. Quite pretty driving along with bushes big and small in full bloom beside the roads. And in stark contrast dark-leafed White Cypress started to appear. But enough of flowers - for now. We spent a few days in Kidman Camp, North Bourke, just hanging out before heading further south. It's a lovely, relaxing spot on the mighty Darling river.

The water hole in the foreground was created by the local council for recreational use out of respect for the sacred nature of the aboriginal rock holes. The area looks desolate but no no no!

While there, we took a very interesting day-trip out to Byrock - and surrounds. This is dry country and it might look rather desolate - apart from the Eremophila and mulga and and lots of other plants - but .... you just need to look and voila! Let me tell you a little about this area.

Not a particularly  good photo but the flower of this Wavy Marshwort is a very pretty fringed lily and comes in yellow or white; I have seen both.

Ah another in the Eremophila story. This is longifolia. Yep long-leaf emu bush. It was used for food and medicinal purposes. The flowers were eaten and the leaves were boiled and the water used to treat skin ailments and stomach ulcers.

Cassias are wide spread in the dry country. This is commonly known as Punty Bush; its botanical name is far too long!

Byrock is the place of the Ngemba people, Stone country people and home to some important natural rock holes carved into a large granite outcrop. It was an important source of water for the area. According to Ngemba mythology, their creator Baiame started his journey near Cobar chasing after a wild bee. On his feet he put bird feathers. His eventually found the honeycomb and it is believed there is still a bee's nest there in a deep crack in the rocks but mortals can't reach in far enough to get it. He dug the rock holes with his stone axe. Obviously there's more to it than this, but it's a charming story. What interested me was the diet of these stone country people. We think the country looks empty and inhospitable but they had fruit such as quandongs, wild bananas, mistletoe, currant bush, wild plums and bush oranges. They ate wild spinach, yams and reeds, and seeds from native grasses, kurrajong and mulga trees. And there was a good source of meat - kangaroo and wallabies, pigeons and bush turkey, snakes and tree goanna, and crayfish - and when they met up with River people they ate freshwater fish. A fascinating peek into another scrap of history and another way of living.

Geijera parvifolia - Wilga tree. Its seeds were ground to make flour and its wood was used to make boomerangs and other items. The leaves were chewed to relieve gastric and were also mixed with the leaves of the sandalwood tree, boiled and placed over rashes

We spent quite some time there wandering over the rocks and checking out the plants and birds. And then we went to the pub for a cold one - as you do!

The bar and furniture in this pub are all made from local Mulga. The pub stands on the site of a Cobb and Co Staging post dating back to the 1800s. There are many old stage coach post locations up through the centre of NSW - and elsewhere.