Corner Country

The daytime temperature is becoming very pleasant at around 25 Celsius and little wind. On dirt station roads spotting lots of emus, kangaroos, some donkeys, we followed Charles Sturt and his exploration team up through Milparinka, visiting the spot where he spent 6 months waiting for rain in 1845, at Depot Glen on Evelyn Creek (named after Sturt’s sister). There was a drought and he was moving about 200 head of stock with him so they needed good grazing as they went. He set up a depot here, and left the place under the command of his no. 2 Robert Poole, with orders for his men to build a cairn on top of a red hill (Mt Poole) just ten kilometres away(!). This to avoid his men from getting distracted and bored while he was off north exploring the Great Stony Desert! So there was enough water in the creek to keep his whole mob fed and watered for 6 months, during a drought. Today the creek is bone dry and hasn’t seen water for over a year. Poor Poole died of scurvy the day they broke camp and is buried beside the creek under this Beefwood (Grevillea) tree.

Milparinka has a pub and some restored public sandstone buildings that are relics of its days as a gold town. As was Tiboobura, 40 km on, and the hottest place in NSW. Tibooburra’s highlight is Clifton Pugh’s nude murals, and others by Russell Drysdale, Rick Amor and Eric Minchin in the Family Hotel, which Pugh owned for three years until his death in the 1990s.

Tibooburra is the gateway to NSW’s most remote national park. We followed the Jump Ups Loop road through the Sturt NP past various watering points, through dry creek beds, across gibber plains and spotted some of its 450,000 kangaroos. After several days on the road the night we spent at the Cameron Corner pub was great light relief – full of banter and baby boomer music. Cameron Corner is where the NSW, Queensland and South Australia borders meet; you have to open the gate to get through the 5,600km Dog Fence. James Woodford’s book The Dog Fence is a great read about its history and the characters who maintain it.