Walking in Dinosaur Tracks

Welcome back! 

Channel Country is dinosaur country and Winton has more than its fair share of dinosaur relics.  Our first stop was the museum on the way into Winton where we saw the bones of a huge plant-eater and a small(ish) meat-eater that were found together. The site was on a "jump up", a cool name for a rocky, flat-topped outcrop. These are only small but they give amazing views over the flat lands around them.

We had a lot to see in two days so we headed out at dusk to check out the "musical fence". This is a fence with wires that can be hit to make different notes but the real feature was all the other percussion instruments made out of old drums, pans, hub caps, anything! There was an entire drum kit too!

The sun set on the edge of the dusty town behind a strategically placed sign. It was pretty spectacular! It's funny how several towns seem to have the same claim to fame. Didn't Longreach just convince us that it was the birthplace of Qantas? No matter which town it really was, Winton wins the special sign award!

We stayed in a house - luxury! It was amazing having so much space but the artesian water was pretty high on the stink-o-meter. It was back to a quick underarm splash whenever possible.

We had a huge day the next day with a mere 110 km drive to another dinosaur site. This one though was all about footprints, not fossils. 95 million years ago, groups of two different dinosaurs came to a waterhole to drink. A large meat-eater then chased them. They all left frantic footprints in the mud which eventually fossilised. There were over 3,000 footprints! It was a really interesting place. 

After the tour, we went for a walk in the desert scrub nearby. It was really cool. We climbed up one of the jump ups for fabulous views. It was really interesting.

We then drove nearly all the way back to Winton to go to Bladensberg National Park. The roads here were unmade and really dusty in places and passing road trains created clouds of dust that would temporarily blind us.

Like many large historical farms in this part of Queensland, Bladensberg was sold to the Qld government in the 1980's or 90's as part of a push to preserve special locations as National Parks. The original homestead was still there and you can only begin to imagine what it must have been like in the old days when this is the outlook from the homestead:

The highlight at Bladensberg for us was driving the rough 4WD track to Scrammy, another jump-up. There were waterholes (muddy of course), rugged cliffs and ravines. It was amazing!

Growing on the top of the jump-up were the most amazing warped trees I've ever seen. They twisted and contorted. They bent back on themselves and bent down to the ground and back up again. They were so cool! 

The landscape here was like something out of a Dr Seuss book.

Winton was as far north-west as we would be going. It was time to leave Channel Country and head south-east for a bit to pick up our original bookings that we had before we had to change our plans due to covid restrictions. We didn't want to double back on our tracks though so we did a longer loop through some smaller towns. Even these had caravans going through them! One of these towns was Muttaburra, home of yet another dinosaur., wonderfully named the Muttaburrasaurus After Muttaburra, I dropped John off about 30kms out of Barcaldine and he rode in.

Barcaldine was very appealing, largely due to the large green trees that lined the streets, something we haven't seen anywhere else. We've been craving Asian food as we've been getting basic pub meals at most places and I was rapt to get a curry in the open-air eatery across the road from our cabin.

We were up early thanks to the people in the adjoining cabin who got up and banged things over & over from 5am so we walked to the Tree of Knowledge monument at dawn. This is the site where shearers went on strike in 1891 to demand better working conditions. They went on to form the Australian Workers' Union which led to the Australian Labour Party. (Funnily enough, they made the same claims about a tree at Bladensberg.)

The tree was mysteriously poisoned a decade or two ago so they built a huge sculpture around it. It wasn't attractive from the outside but inside was great! They hung huge wooden wind chimes from an enormous box-like structure and the space they left was the shape of the original tree. It was pretty incredible.

We wandered around the pleasant town. Once again we missed a movie being shown in a gorgeous vintage theatre by one night....

I don't know what the neighbours thought of the huge windmill in the main street that squeaked and squealed non-stop but it looked nice!

The drive from Barcaldine to Emerald was a sedate one as it was highway all the way, however it was fun! About half an hour out of Barcaldine a large road sign appeared. It said "Fatigue Zone. Trivia games help drivers stay alert". We were scratching our heads trying to work out what they were getting at when, a few kilometres later, another sign appeared. It said, "Fatigue Zone. Trivia question. How many shearers were jailed in the 1891 strike?"

Sign 3 said, "Hint: more than 10"

Sign 4 said, "Answer: 13"

What a classic!

Just after these signs we started noticing that the termite mounds near the road were decorated with clothes and hats! This went on for many kms. In between there was a dead pig as well (after roos, pigs would have to be the next most common roadkill).

A while later we were heading for the town of Alpha. The next sign said:

"Fatigue Trivia. What is the first letter of the Greek alphabet?"
Sign 2 said:

Sign 3 said: "Answer: Alpha"

There were more later too. What a great way to keep people alert on such long stretches of road!

We came to a sign showing that we were crossing the great Dividing Range. We saw our first real hills since we left home. The trees suddenly got bigger and we drove past green paddocks and orchards as we approached Emerald. We drove into Emerald and it was like we had arrived on another planet. There were green trees, green grass, neon lights, chain stores, people of different nationalities, good coffee and Thai takeaways! Plus everyone's cars are clean! I suddenly felt like we had been out in the sticks. It's all so incredibly different.

We used our night here to stock up (and get Thai takeaways!) then set off the next day for Carnarvan Gorge. This is a long way south but this is where we pick up our original route that we were supposed to take before covid changed everything. On the way we passed spectacular mountains. We learned this was Minerva Hills National park. We're thinking about changing our plan to come back here as it looks amazing!

Our 'cabins' at Carnarvan Gorge were really a blend of a tent and a cabin. I suppose it's glamping but I can't really see any advantage of doing it this way. We soon learnt the disadvantages though. As the temperatures dropped outside at night, they did the same inside. We froze during our second night. Of course, in summer, it must get so hot. They provided both a heater and an air-conditioner. What a ridiculous waste of energy.

One surprising thing about where we stayed though was that it had a French café run by French people. The pastries were sensational! They even made a special French hot chocolate for me!

We arrived in the early afternoon, unpacked then headed to the ranger's office of the national park to get info. On the way we saw numerous wallabies that were reasonably tame.

We decided to hit one of the harder walks - the climb up to Boolomba Bluff. I wasn't really quite fit enough for strenuous walks but there's nothing like getting fit on the job! It took us about 1.5 hours to climb the steep path and steps. 

There were some cool rock formations en-route.

It was all really beautiful.

The view from the top was spectacular. As one enthusiastic girl we passed said, (she looked about 12 years old), "You can see over all of Queensland!" That was a slight exaggeration but it was still pretty amazing.

Afterwards we wandered along a short walk near the ranger station. The ranger had told us that sometimes you can see a platypus at dawn or dusk. As it was dusk, we thought we'd take a look. Much to our amazement we saw one! We've never seen a platypus in the wild before. We stood very quiet and still and watched for a while as it dived and surfaced. Awesome!

On our main day there, we tackled the big gorge walk. It was sensational! It started off with a creek crossing - one of many we would end up doing.

The track meandered through rainforest that included rare, ancient plants. There are interesting side gorges to explore as well. The first side gorge we went to was The Ampitheatre. This was amazing! We entered through a crack in the gorge. That's the crack above John in this photo.

We found ourselves in a big cavern carved out by water. The cavern was open to the sky and continues to get carved out each time it rains. From the inside of the cavern, the entrance looked like something from a sci-fi movie.

The next gorge was Ward's Canyon. We climbed up past a waterfall to a stunning gorge at the top. A type of growth on the rocks make the water look bright red in places.

We saw an ancient plant that is only found in several places in Australia. The gorge was beautiful.

Our last destination was the Art Gallery. Over 2,000 old aboriginal paintings and carvings line a long canyon wall. They seemed in very good condition considering they were exposed to the elements. 

We could have gone on further into the gorge but the next point of interest was another 8kms return and reluctantly we decided not to do it. It was just as well as the 12 or 14 kms that we did left us recovering in our room for the rest of the day!

On our last morning we got up before dawn and made our way to Mickey's Gorge. Walking in was a bit tricky as there was no sunlight yet but we were rewarded with a special atmosphere and we had the place to ourselves. The sun started to shine on the cliff above us making it glow.

The glow reflected in puddles in the creek.

We went up a side gorge which got narrower the deeper we went. It was so cool!

This gorge had more unusual tree ferns that were a different shape to any we've seen before.

We returned to our accommodation and finished our visit with a breakfast of croissants and pastries. You can't beat that!

Til next time.

Heather and John.

Dinosaurs, dongas and the f**ckin' long-term guy.

Hello again! A heads up that this is a long post!

Picking up where I left off last time, the small town of Thargomindah was interesting. We met 'Surly Shirley' who ran one of the pubs and she wasn't as surly as her reputation indicated. She was happy enough to chat for a bit but we could still see where the nickname came from. It's fun meeting characters like this.

There was a 5km walking track around the town that had various points of historical interest on it. We walked it and were absolutely amazed at the money that had gone into it. Every historical building was either completely renovated or re-built by hand. In some of the buildings were holograms, movies, information sheets or models. You swiped your card and blinds automatically lowered and movies started playing. We were surrounded by modern technology even though we were in very remote country! It was so weird. A footpath ran the entire way and was lit along its entirety by solar lights! We did part of the walk in the dark and it was fun. We still can't get over the government money that has gone into such a tiny town.

This area is Channel Country, arid, scrubby land that has thousands of creeks and rivers running through it in wet times. I had imagined these rivers to create oasis-like environments, but they just create temporary water supplies. These creeks and rivers flood a lot from time to time though so some of these towns had old 'flood trucks' - trucks that were converted to be able to cross flooded areas.

We did another walk that was supposed to be around a lake but was actually just through the desert and somewhere vaguely near a lake. It was very bleak but interesting. It's sooo flat!

Heading west out of town, we drove through some spectacular red soil country;

Many times we would be driving along then suddenly a weird smell would infiltrate the car. We later learned that this is from the gidgee tree. It releases this smell whenever it's humid or raining. It was certainly raining and the regular floodways that crossed the roads soon gathered water which made for fun driving!

We turned north-west to Eromanga, home of the dinosaurs. The huge dinosaur bones were incredible. I had no idea that Australia had so many dinosaur fossils. That's just the leg of a dinosaur that I'm standing beside.

Next stop was Quilpie. Quilpie was really interesting, and not always in a good way, although our opinion could be clouded by the fact that  the town was chock-a-block full of tourists. The only room we could get was what we thought was a motel room but was actually a 'donga' behind the pub. (A donga is a portable room, often used as a site office at quarries, mines etc). 

It was actually better inside than it looked on the outside - at least it had plenty of bench space which is something places usually lack. However it had other drawbacks.

One of these drawbacks was  "the long-term guy" in the donga next to us. (He was staying there for a while for work so the person who checked us in called him the long-term guy). When we came back from our simple pub meal, he was sitting on the chairs between his donga and ours, sharing his advice with whoever would listen. We suspect he might have been fairly well lubricated. All we could hear from our room was a non-stop tirade of expletives, even though he wasn't angry. He helpfully advised a tourist on the f**ckin' roads, the f**ckin' best way to drive to places and to watch out for the f**ckin' roos. When the tourist finally escaped, he was replaced by an apprentice who must have worked at the same place as the long-term guy. We heard all about his opinion on the f**ckin' job and the f**ckin' apprentice's job so far ("You're not too f**ckin' bad, just work f**ckin' hard and you'll f**ckin' be ok"). The tirade went on for hours with the apprentice only getting the occasional word in. John put earplugs in so he could sleep but I found that the conversation was so f**ckin' monotonous that I fell asleep to it anyway.

The other issue was the water. When we were in Cunnamulla we learnt that artesian bore water can smell but it was manageable there. The water in Quilpie stunk. The sulphurous stench rose up from the taps and the toilet but when we had a shower the steam seemed to make it worse and it almost made me gag. Needless to say that after the first shower, I survived with splashes under the armpits. I wasn't getting back into that shower again.

Quilpie was swarming with caravans. There was the usual staff shortage here that we saw everywhere so far in our travels.

We did a walk along a nearby river and found that the whole track had turned to mud. We slipped and slid in the tacky muck.

You would think the rivers around here would be beautiful but they're all so muddy. We didn't see a clear river in all of channel country. I assumed it was because they had just had rain but apparently the rivers are usually like this.

We drove out to Baldy Top and Table Top, two flat-topped mesas. It was fun clambering around the rocks and checking out the stunning views.

Dead trees seemed to be becoming petrified in front of our eyes.

This was peak visitor time as there were a series of music concerts across the region leading up to "the bash" and we had targeted Quilpie as we could get tickets to one of the shows. The concert was held at the base of Baldy Top at sunset and the location was spectacular. 

The show had music and dance and was a bit weird. They covered the history of the area and even had diprotodons (these ancient creatures have been found in the area) which were well done. It was an interesting night out.

The drive from Quilpie to Windorah was the last time we would be on the main road with the hoards heading to the bash, The roads have been amazingly good - they put our local roads to shame - however they are often only one lane wide and the edges of the road are horrible red, sticky mud. The mud is bad enough for us let alone the poor people trying to tow caravans on them. In some places, there's no mud because it's rocky. Of course, this creates the danger of breaking someone's windscreen with a stone. Consequently, there's an unwritten rule about passing on these roads. One person indicates that they will pull over and the other person doesn't get off the road. As we aren't towing anything, we usually get off the road and let the others pass. If we want to pass a slower vehicle ahead of us, they usually pull over and let us pass. We've only had one selfish bugger who refused to get over. At the end of these days, our vehicles are covered in mud. We had to scrape it off from around the wheel hubs and sometimes.

We arrived in Windorah. Ahhh - what a fantastic place! With a population of about 80, this little place gets swamped by tourists yet has retained its small town charm tremendously.

One of the advantages of having a car that 's not towing anything is that we tend to travel faster, so we arrived in Windorah before most people. We had booked a cabin out the back of the only hotel in this tiny outback town and it was wonderful. Lily, a local  16 year-old, served us and she was terrific value. What a character for such a young age! When we asked about fuel queues she told us to get it straight away as the queue was really short. We took her advice and we were so glad we did. Within half an hour the queue was down the street. Another half an hour later the local cop came out and set up witches hats to form lanes to the different bowsers. The fuel queues completely blocked the main street. He asked one driver with a camper trailer on the pull out into the next queue line and must have flustered him 'cos he backed straight into the car behind him, right in front of the cop. Even though the cop had his back to us we just knew he rolled his eyes at these dumb tourists! He also started breathalising people - it was the middle of the day!

There were some cool sculptures in town.

I dropped John out of town along a dirt road and he rode back in. It was another classic bike riding road with not a person in sight.

The roads through channel country are usually unfenced and we always have to watch out for stock. They keep talking in tourist brochures about the what great sheep and cattle country this is and one even stated that it's "the best cattle-fattening country in Australia". Seriously, it's all like this photo below. Who do they think they're kidding?

The edges of the roads often look like this.

I saw a solitary sand dune on the way back to town and I scrambled up it. It was awesome!

That night, we queued for dinner but it only took about 3/4 of an hour to get our meals, a pretty good effort really. Lily was still there - she had switched jobs from being the receptionist to being the bargirl. Yep, age doesn't matter in these parts when it comes to serving alcohol (she's 16)! Check out the name of the drink the Lily is pouring for me!

It actually wasn't very good port at all!

Lilly was a tad generous with her serving sizes......

They were very switched on at this pub. They had a couple from Victoria helping out and we got on really well with Barbara. We chatted over a few drinks and would have continued on much longer if the owner hadn't turned the lights off on us.

We would love to have stayed longer here but we had bookings at Longreach so we sadly left. En-route we went for a walk in Lochern National Park which was a bit uneventful. We did see lots of emu tracks though.

Arriving in Longreach was like arriving into civilisation. It was a big town! We had a slab hut cabin which was supposed to be quite fancy. It was nice but is impractical and I didn't like it at first. The simple slab walls had gaps between them that let noise and dust in and would surely let mossies and flies in if there were many around. The exposed beams were lovely but they supported a tin roof with no lining at all. There was absolutely no insulation. The room was hot when we arrived and we froze at night. Imagine the energy wasted in heating and cooling these places. The second night was so cold that even our faces were cold. However the charm of the place grew on me. Maybe it was because I listened to part of The Drover's Wife at the museum where Henry Lawson wrote about the gaps in the slab hut walls. Or maybe it was the incredibly comfy bed, It maybe it was just all that homely timber but I grew to love it.

First impressions of Longreach weren't good. After the tiny outback towns we had been in, Longreach was massive and was clearly a tourist town. Hotel after motel after caravan park lined the strip of highway heading out to the two big sights - the Stockman's Hall of Fame and the Qantas museum. Cafe's and restaurants had names like Merino Cafe, Jumbuk Motel and Stockman's Grill. It was all so tacky and tourists were everywhere.

Our visit to the Stockman's Hall of Fame was great though! I thought it would just be all about famous stockmen but I learned a lot about outback life in general. I was amazed at some of the old stock droving routes - it must have been madness to drive thousands of cattle across vast deserts. Likewise, the early settlers had such a tough life out here.

I liked this scrawled poem....

The Hall of Fame covered everything from bull-riding to whip-making to the creation of the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

One night we drove out of town and just parked the car on the side of the road to look at the stars. They were spectacular! We shared our patch of road with a lone kangaroo, Gosh they're everywhere.

One animal I've been trying unsuccessfully to see for the whole trip is a brolga. I dropped John 30kms out of town for a bike ride and as I drove back into the edge of town three brolgas walked across the road! I pulled over and watched in amazement as they drunk from a puddle beside the road then wandered down a side road. There were two adults and a half-grown chick. Wonderful!

While John rode his bike I explored the town on foot, trying to get fit for a big walk we have coming up. I soon realised that although it's such a tourist town, once you get away from the main tourist accommodation strip, the town itself is very real. It was comforting to see.

The Qantas museum was pretty cool. I can't believe they flew all those early flights in open cockpits!

My uncle flew a Catalina like this in the war.

We were heading out of town on our last day and saw this. The guy was riding into town for his Sunday coffee!

Catch you next time!

Heather and John

The Perfect Storm

Hello again :)

We arrived in Cunnamulla after our long drive, not sure what to expect. We had booked to stay here for three days. We left in such a hurry to get across NSW before they closed the border that we had a lot of things we still needed to catch up on.

First impressions weren't great - dilapidated houses sat raggedly on dry, scrappy lawns and caravan after caravan lined the wide streets. Our accommodation in Cunnamulla's "Boutique" Hotel was a pleasant surprise. Although the room was tiny, it was really nice. The only downfall was that they use artesian water here and it smalls sulphurous, It's not very pleasant to smell but it's lovely soft water.

Over the next three days we grew to really like the town and its people. It had some real characters. What amazed us though was the number of caravans in town. It turned out that there was a perfect storm of circumstances that drew everyone together. Firstly, covid had sent many people like us rushing for a border - in some cases any border that let them escape lockdown. Secondly, it was the start of school holidays in Victoria, NSW and Queensland. Thirdly, the "Birdsville Bash" was a week or two away. This is a huge event. About 10,000 people make their way to Birdsville to dress up in costumes and race on foot down the huge sand dune there. And lastly, rains had just happened right through the area. When it rains, the clay roads turn to a sticky, slippery mess and most dirt roads were closed. This had the effect of funnelling all those lockdown escapees, holiday-makers and bash-goers along the same few roads. 

It was incredible seeing hundreds of caravans and campers in small towns. The townspeople were overwhelmed. There was nowhere near enough staff. We were served meals by 13 and 14 year-olds and grandmas. The local cafe roped in every family member they could. Anyone could walk into these towns and have a job within an hour. Accommodation was booked out everywhere. Once we realised this we frantically booked ahead and had to take whatever we could get. We ended up altering our trip to wherever we could get a room. It's something we didn't expect to experience in remote outback Queensland. 

On our first night we ate a great meal in the pub then had sticky date pudding delivered to us in our room so we could watch the footy! It was fun but we won't talk about the footy results.... 

Much to our surprise, the weather was quite cool. It was lovely and sunny during the day but still only reaching a maximum of 14 degrees or so. I took to wearing my big coat everywhere - even in our room!

We spent a lot of time in the dining room of the pub with a map spread out working out where we would go. In between planning sessions though we got out to check out the town. We heard there was a local football game (rugby union apparently - I have no clue about any football except AFL) on between Cunnamulla and Longreach. The Longreach team travelled over 700 kms to get to Cunnnamulla just for the game! We heard it would be on at 5.30 but we heard music playing a couple of hours earlier than that so we wandered over to the footy ground. Music was playing, people were gathered around and there was a real party atmosphere. The players were standing in their teams on the ground so we asked someone when the game would start. "It's just finished", we were told! Damn! Still, it was fun just hanging around checking out the crowd. Hats were the thing - but only Akubras or baseball caps. I couldn't get over the way the local girls dressed in boots, jeans, a buckled belt and pink checked shirts. The clothes were straight out of an RM Williams catalogue. Classic! Even the kids wore the cowboy clothes.

After the match they auctioned off some jumpers. One of the players was obviously a stock and station agent and entertained us with his rapid-fire auctioneering skills.

We kept trying to buy fuel but the queues were horrendously long so we'd leave again. In the end we had no choice but to line up. This is our car half way along the queue. It took just under an hour to get to the front of the queue. 

They had four pumps but only one was working. I went in to pay and the guy behind the counter was Indian. We're in the middle of nowhere and the petrol attendants are still Indian! When I asked him why only one pump was working he just shrugged his shoulders. 

On that note, one of the surprising things to come out of covid is that all the tourists are Aussies. With the exception of the Indian petrol attendant, all the people we've met have been anglo-saxon with a smattering of aboriginal locals. It's a bit weird.

We had heard about some sort of a movie at the old railway station so we went to it on our last day. We were blown away by the money that had been spent on it. The screen was 15 metres wide, the rows of seats were luxurious reclining theatre seats and the show, about the importance of the railway line to the town, was incredible. A hologram station master led us through the interesting history and locals appeared in the movie to tell their stories. The funding, from government grants, must have been huge!

Two sisters from Sydney had been employed to play music at our pub each night for 10 nights. Kristina and Tash were lovely girls and we spent our last night sharing stories with them (and we might have introduced them to Cointreau!). What a great way to see the country!

Moving on from Cunnamulla, the next town along the caravan highway was Eulo, home of the world lizard-racing championships! This has to be the worst 'big' something ever!

Below the big lizard was the lizard racetrack - a small circular enclosure that the lizards race around. The world record holder completed the lap in a couple of seconds. All lizards are returned to the exact location they were taken from after the race.

Next to the racetrack is a special memorial to Destructo, the cockroach who beat the champion lizard in 1980. Sadly, he was accidentally stood on after the race. You've got to love a bit of Aussie humour!

Nearby was a lookout on a small hill. The view over the arid landscape was amazing!

Pushing on to Yowah (don't you love the names?) we found a remote, dusty town based around opal mining. We learned enough about opal mining to understand how hard it must have been to mine in the past. It's a very isolated place and must get so hot in summer. Opals were for sale for thousands of dollars!

The roads around here are so remote. I love the vivid red soil.

We arrived in Thargomindah and had a great cabin in a caravan park. The artesian water here didn't smell and was incredibly soft. We washed hair and clothes and felt all lovely and clean.

John did some bike riding here. He picked a road then I drove 40kms along it, dropped him off, then he rode back. These roads are through unfenced farms. So in addition to watching out for roos and emus, you have to watch out for cattle and sometimes sheep on the road.

John had a great ride and that drive was one of the best I'd done so far - so remote yet so beautiful and not a caravan in sight!

Hope all is going ok with you, wherever you are.

Heather and John :)