Diamantina National Park and Lark Quarry

20 August You can tell a really good night by the willingness of the eyes to focus the following morning! We were fresh and raring to get on in to the Diamantina NP. The park was until recently the 507,000 hectare Diamantina Lakes Station, established in 1875, owned by Janet Holmes a Court, then purchased by the Queensland Government and gazetted as a National Park in 1992. The landscape is varied as the Diamantina River courses through the extensive Mitchell grass plains and red sand dune country, cutting a braided series of steep sided waterways deep into the sediment. The Goyder and Hamilton Ranges jump up as a barrier to the flow except at Hunter’s Gorge (where we camped beside Mundewerra Waterhole) where the water piles up in a flood and has scoured deep waterholes. The birdlife is plentiful, with Spoonbills, Pelicans and Kites cruising at altitude on thermals and probing and sifting the very clayey water.

We took an afternoon to drive the 87km Waracoota Drive that takes you through the dunes and claypans explaining much about the history and culture of the place. A highlight for us was to be up well before sunrise to walk the gorge and climb to the top of the jump up where the kites were circling, as the sun painted the rock faces and ledges in a cherry glow. Time for more good byes as we headed north east towards Winton, crossing the Tropic of Capricorn as we went. This was a significant moment for another reason, because from this point on we had no real plans, and were working on the basis that provided we could find some Telstra coverage to get the blog despatched everything would be fine. So Winton it was.

The immediate goal was to visit Lark Quarry on the way, 110 kms short of Winton. This is where the only record in the world of a dinosaur stampede is fossilised in the sandstone. The journey there was a delightful drive through jump up country, with many mesas and ever changing vegetation. The heat was becoming a real issue as temperatures rose into the high 30’s, 39C at one point. Realising the only way to view the 3300 dinosaur prints was by guided tour at set times, and we could not reach the place by 2pm for the last tour, we pulled up at Old Cork Homestead, another ruin, and made early camp beside the waterhole there. A welcome and pleasant spot. It’s a big difference between last year’s Kimberly waterholes and those here. In outback Queensland the land has been eroded to vast tracts of sediments that make any sort of movement after rain almost impossible. Here the rivers cut steep and deep into the soft clay making access to the water nigh on impossible. If you do venture in you emerge veneered in sticky clay. Don’t step on the spot where you drain the sink – instant removal of sandal will follow!

Lark Quarry Conservation Park is a good modern building (as usual, architect unknown but we saw everyone else taking credit for it, mostly the politicians) that covers the dinosaur tracks. These were discovered after much careful detective work by the palaeontologists and geologists who hit the jackpot when they excavated a particular layer they calculated would be about 95 million years old, and likely to be fossil bearing. It is an interesting story. The many tracks of quite small Coelurosaurs and ornithopods (standing about chicken and kangaroo height respectively) are seen gathering beside the water’s edge, overlain by the 50cm long prints of a large Carnosaur (2.5metres at the shoulder). There you can see how the smaller creatures were caught napping and they turn and run in all directions. Speculating on time as you examine aboriginal artwork is one thing but this is another dimension altogether.

With the morning passing fast we made for Winton, arriving in time for Barramundi at Tattersall’s Hotel, under a welcome sweep fan. The prospect of spending two hours in the van so we could get the next blog up and running was not cause for celebration, so we tarried and enjoyed cold beer in a real pub.