August 18 to September 1, 2013 - Alice Springs to Winton

August 18 to September 1, 2013 - Alice Springs to Winton

Somewhere way back there it was said that we would be taking a short break from blog writing as Alice would be taking all of our attention.

Hmmm.

It must have sure taken some attention!

For all of those wonderful people wondering about what may have taken place in Alice all those months ago, please see the blog entry that Pat has set up with all of her photographs from that time (if she hasn't already sent it to you). Basically, this will include people wearing silly looking hats, birds, plants, and people wearing hats of varying degrees of distinction.

Anyway, here is the news. We are currently in Sydney house sitting, and it is now next year already. Time can really fly when it gets the chance. However, just because time can't be too fully trusted, that does not absolve you all from knowing what took place from between our leaving Alice and all that booming and banging over the Sydney Harbour Bridge just two days ago now.

Here we go!

. . .

August 18, up cracking with dawn!

And agog!

Bruce is pretty well all packed; enough time to see Pete's nephew Mitchell duelling down the straight with Steve Monghetti (Monners) in the Alice half marathon.  Then, farewell it is to Kim, Mitch and Bec; been a wonderful two months!  

Oh, and the chooks!

See you all at the wedding next Easter! 

Agog it is, then, and the open road once again.

We got a plan: visit Davenport Ranges NP; revisit Daly Waters pub which we first visited back when Captain Cook was being made into a sandwich; go to Borroloola; visit the dinosaur stampede at Winton; the Diamantina NP (there are supposed to be night parrots there); and then Birdsville for the races.  After that, wander down to Sydney so Pete can have his little operation. Birdsville races are the 6-7th of September; we need to be in Sydney on the 25th of September. We will be spending a lot on fuel in a very short time!

Not a hard first day, though, a few hundred Ks to a roadside rest area at Taylor Creek. Lots of chatty neighbours here, all looking for shade in a sunny world. Jeanette and Virginia have retired to a country retreat near Streaky Bay on the Eyre Peninsula after many years working in Alice, Norm is a farmer at Lock also on the Eyre Peninsula. A pleasant few hours swapping expectations and being told of all the places we won't have time to visit on this little trip. Indeed, of some 'must see' places we had not even heard of

In the morning an English couple confused us by driving their van to another part of the camp site. Apparently, they have discovered that it's far easier to collapse their van's pop-top if the door of it is facing down-wind. We file this information in the repository of new wisdoms!

It is now officially getting hot again in Central Australia. Many of our fellow travellers get up early and are gone off before the Sun can wreak much damage on them, but we have some garnered wisdoms of our own. We are the last away (as usual), departing at 9:30. Why waste the morning's cool only to arrive at a destination in the heat of the afternoon? 

Familiar terrain for us, if only going backwards now. We pass Wycliffe Well with its UFO centre, then Wauchope and Devils Marbles, then turn down the dirt road to Davenport Ranges NP.  Rough old road. A side mirror bit its dust not once but twice, and on that second occasion became a little bit smashed.

Only a little bit!

Pretty enough road, though, half empty creeks and isolated farm houses amidst the great and drying outback.

Whistle Duck Creek camp ground had too many options, we had to drive around for a while to find the nicest spot. 

Oh, oh! 

We have become softheaded townsfolk in those two months in Alice. Forgot to cover the fridge vents on Bruce Van, lovely dusting of red on everything inside. 

Oh well!

In the night we hear a pair of boobook owls, a nightjar and some feral donkeys.  In the morning we are up early and walk the 2km back to the waterhole where we discover a whistling kite and a flock of wood swallows; and we see a beautiful splendid fairy-wren but not with a camera at the ready.

Namatjira could have painted here; see photos.


Davenport Ranges NP - native hibiscus; 3 shots of the picturesque gullies; moonrise and sunset from our camp.

Davenport Ranges NP - reeds at the water's edge; whistling kite circling overhead; the track from our camp to the waterhole; escape from the heat at the waterhole.

After the walk we broke camp for Tennant Creek. We had intended to stay for another night, but while it's a really beautiful place, today is very windy - hot and dusty. As said, we are still a little 'town' soft just yet.

We adopted the newly learned strategy of turning the van door down wind to bring the pop-top down. Well taught, that man!

In Tennant Creek Pete bots a rolly from a kind man in the camp ground that night (the one that's not on the main road) and in the morning we shop at the indigenous-run supermarket and then buy and fit a new super-duper side mirror which the man says may not ever fall off even under the roughest conditions.

Onwards, again!

Daly Waters, after all these years!

Back then, Pete had said to Pat "Let's just drive to Darwin and see how long it takes". We didn't really even have a map, let alone any idea what we might find in those two weeks. One of the places we did find was this pub just off the main road that had a few hardy souls camping in tents, and about as many in caravans. The pub sold one meal: crocodile and barramundi with salad, and laid on a man with a guitar and a voice as good as any county and western singer in the business to soothe the thirty or so hardy souls chewing on the croc in the beer garden.

A cultural oasis in a tough old desert!

However ...

Some things change, some things do not!

Same menu, same sort of bloke with the same sort of musical equipment, just bloody hard to find any space in the camping ground or in the bar garden at the pub.

And we stayed two days so heard the same jokes told in the same order by the same musician. More birds here now, though, the lord taketh away as it giveth!



Daly waters: White-breasted woodswallows on an overhead wire; peacefule dove; black-faced woodswallow (with a yellow head!); a tiny double-barred finch; rainbow lorikeet; the main (only) street.

Next morning, we head back down the highway to the Borroloola turnoff, then off east along the Carpentaria Highway.  We pass rest areas where small birds drink from pans under the water taps.  The tanks are kept filled for passing travellers to use.  We lunch at one of the rest areas, chatting with another Victorian couple.  They will stay at Cape Crawford - a roadhouse/pub/caravan park in the middle of nowhere.  Well, not actually nowhere - it's about half way between the Stuart Highway and Borroloola, so almost 200km from the nearest somewhere; and to the south there's the Barkly Highway, but that's about 400km.

So, really, the middle of nowheres!


Carpentaria Highway: Unknown yellow flower; a grevillea; white-throated honeyeater on a tap; brown falcon; small birds drinking include grey-fronted honeyeater (with the bright yellow flash), the bigger long-tailed finch and the tiny double-barred (black bars across white chest) and zebra (black and white striped tails) finches.

A couple of nights in Borroloola. Time spent chatting; time spent in a museum. The usual.

In the camp ground we met a couple working as producers on a project to document/record/save indigenous languages in the area. A long discussion took place on the merits and insults of the John Howard intervention. Both sides were expressed. But, really, these two are involved in so much more than just a project here; the indigenous issues of Australia have become fully central to their lives. With the change to Bunk Abbott just around the corner, what becomes of their lives in a  few tomorrows from now is a large and complex question. Canberra here they come?

In the afternoon we also chatted with a couple who have been camping on the McArthur River (after which the McArthur Mine is named) near where it runs into the Gulf at King Ash Bay.  The following morning we check it out.  There's a big camp ground owned and operated by the Darwin Fishing Club, but you can camp anywhere along the river and pay about $30 a week to come in and use their facilities.  The local aboriginal owners welcome camping on their land here.

We also took the opportunity to visit the museum detailing Borroloola's Caucasian heritage. Pat was happy just to find a museum!!

McArthur River looking towards the Gulf of Carpentaria.

On our way back out we stopped at the Caranbirini Conservation Park, home of the 'Lost Cities' sandstone formation and a large permanent waterhole (with birds, of course). See below.

Then the driving began in earnest. Birdsville races and dinosaurs both a beckoning somewhere ahead. From Cape Crawford (such an ironic name for a place so far from the sea) down the unsealed Tablelands Highway across the Barkly Tablelands towards the Barkly Highway; we camp overnight at Kiana Turnoff rest area where only one other van is parked.  Anyone who meets Pete should ask him about the 'toilet incident' that took place here.

Next day, we lunch at Barkly Homestead and make it on to Avon Downs police station where there is a rest area with lots of people where we camp for the night.  Ahhm. People should also ask Pete just simply about the toilet here. These new age eco dunnies certainly lose their charm when your fellow travellers do not honour the instructions about what not to put down them. Dead microbes = living smells!


Birds at Caranbirini: A pair of green pygmy-geese; a collared sparrowhawk; a restless flycatcher (resting for a millisecond).



Part of the 'lost cities'

Along the Tablelands Highway: Common bronzewing; a sarus crane among the brolgas; little friarbird and brown-fronted honeyeater searching for insects; white-throated and grey-fronted honeyeaters facing off across the water.

We leave early in the morning and head to Camooweal for breakfast before continuing to Mt Isa (civilisation again!) where we stay two nights being tourists - visiting 'Outback at Isa' (museum, art gallery and native gardens) and Riversleigh Fossil Centre which is a museum containing information and fossils from Riversleigh. 

Somewhere along the way one of the arms of Pete's glasses had just snapped off and been repaired by gaffer tape (very useful item, gaffer tape - no camper should ever leave home without it). The broken arm was replaced with one that doesn't match the original; looks odd but works.

You need to be inventive in the outback; or have three weeks to waste waiting on a replacement.


Birds of Mt Isa: Little friarbird; whistling kite on nest; red-winged parrot; Australiasian grebe (without its breeding colours); little black cormorant with little pied cormorant behind; hardheads (male has white eye); grey-crowned babbler.

On the way to Winton we stop at McKinlay in the parking area behind the pub and meet some gem fossickers from Frankston. With Bunk Abbott just around the corner this may become the superannuation scheme of the future; finding the big one! Stopping for coffee and cake in Kynuna, we saw a brolga statue in the truck parking area. After ten minutes the statue actually became a real brolga.

An odd place to find a brolga!

In continuing the bird theme, at Winton we stayed at the Pelican caravan park.

Smallish town, a place to restock on food and pre-book a tour out to Dinosaur Land because the road is, reputedly, not one of Australia's finest once the bitumen runs out; and it's about 100km.

We have chosen a tour with the Carisbrooke Station folk; it will first take us onto their station and then to the Lark Quarry excavation site where one can see ancient footprints of several different kinds of dinosaurs allegedly running around in a wild 'stampede'!

Charlie, our octogenarian guide, had much to speak of, and more even to say. There is severe drought in the area because the monsoon failed this year but Carisbrooke's successful use of innovative 'key line' irrigation makes it less so for Carisbrooke for now, anyway. However, a larger and longer term problem is appearing for the locals. The eons old Mitchell Grass plains are receding; being overtaken by once abutting gidgee trees for reasons no-one can fathom (perhaps we should ask Bunk Abbott?). Charlie spoke of lots of other stuff, also; of the history of grazing in the area; and of the many plants and animals endemic to the region. A wealth of local non-indigenous knowledge but, alas, an avowed fan of "Joh Petersen".

We also got fed a lot: morning tea (billy) and cakes (from the Winton visitor centre); lunch, bread and meat and salad to be sandwiching with; and afternoon tea that involved homestead baked cakes (by Charlie's daughter-in-law, his son runs the station these days, while he himself lives in town) once we had done Lark Quarry.

The usual graphics based movie was on show there at Stampede Land; a visual reconstruction of little dinosaurs fleeing from a big one in a stampeding manner. According to the guide there, though, some archeologists think it might not have been a stampede at all. Hmmm. This is why we came out here?

Theories masquerading as facts; ain't Science a wonderful thing! 

In any case, the footprints are so clear that some of our tour companions even suggest the whole place might be man-made as a tourist attraction.

Oh good; now we've got conspiracy theories also to keep the water clear and cool!

Still, not a bad way to spend a day. After an 8am start, we are back in town (Charlie drives on these rough roads as if they were bitumen highways) by 6pm.





Some views of the spectacular Carisbrooke station (top 4); a very ancient rock formation which we unfortunately can't remember anything about; small and large dinosaur footprints; and Charlie preparing billy tea for us.