Birdsville track to Birdsville

On 16 August we had to say our good byes. As we headed north east out of Marree they went north west for Coober Pedy. Our track now was for Birdsville. The Birdsville Track of course is the subject of much conversation because many city folk and others set off for the Birdsville Races that are coming up in the first week of September. The track is not difficult but the remoteness means you should not go out there unprepared, but they do. There is a memorial (that cannot be reached) to the Page family, who, in 1963, perished having broken down about 100kms south of Birdsville. They had left their car and gone in search of water (they were found over a month later in different places), breaking one of the cardinal rules. Surprisingly they were local people from Marree and would have surely known the risks they were taking, in December. They are buried out there, all five of them. Whilst in a morbid frame of mind, and in a similar vein, we were told in Innamincka of a family of four who two or three years ago got into trouble. A pilot spotted the square white patch that was all that was visible of the roof of their Land Cruiser, many kilometres off the main track, in the dunes where the wind had covered them for over eighteen months. All were there.

As you start north from Marree, and travel just 27 kms, you come to Lake Harry. The old station there had a long history with the cameleers, but became big news when a date palm plantation was set out in the 1890’s. A bold experiment that perhaps ought to have worked, but there’s not a sign of the 2622 trees they planted. A lot more money was allocated in 1910 by the SA Government and a bore was sunk that provides piping hot water at a well head that serves the cattle that are still occasionally watered on this old stock route. All has come to nothing however, and the place is a sad ruin today. What is special though, is the solitary hot shower head that stands proudly over its tilted old concrete base. We leapt at the opportunity, stripped off and enjoyed a grand wet down regardless of passing traffic. There are several bores along the route. At the half way point we stopped for a night at Mungerannie Hotel. A well equipped pub with good facilities and excellent camping along the wetlands which are created by an artesian outflow, it is an essential stopover on the Track.

We were told a sad tale at the Mirra Mitta bore, that rushes out of its pipe at 98C and creates a wetland that goes for over a kilometre. The tour buses stop here. Last year a touring toy dog was being given some relief when it slipped in and boiled on the spot. Oh dear.

Northwards again, we kept working away at the 515kms of the Birdsville, passing through the dog fence again, along the route taken for many years by Tom Kruse, who carried the Royal Mail up from Marree. In the bad flood years, and there were several in the early fifties, the Cooper Creek spreads 5 kms wide and closed off the country for months at a time. Kruse had a truck on both sides and a steel punt named the MV Tom Brennan (12 feet long) was used to carry everything across the swirling creek. Stock included. For Helen her new passion for things botanical continues and grows. She was grumpy when we sailed past a fenced area containing rare Mt Glason Acacia that she read about several kilometres past. Her diary is full of lists of plant species and birds spotted.

The open gibber plain turns redder and the sand dunes appear. Here the Tirari, Strzelecki, and Sturt Stony deserts meet. Old Mulka Homestead and Mulka Store, again in ruins now, appears on the left. Here George Aiston ran a general store that served the country around. He did well selling water that he leased from the government who had sunk a bore. Drought finished him, but he managed to trade for several decades before dying in the 1940’s. He corresponded with scientists and others on a wide range of topics, all over the world. The interior photographs showing his living room and his rare collection of armoury, swords and pistols, are extraordinary as you stand amongst the rubble now and consider how lives have changed. Finally the dunes scale down a little and the water tower of Birdsville appears on the horizon amongst welcome trees. We have arrived...where are Max and Linda?

With friends at Muloorina

It is said, of the contacts you meet travelling like this, that you meet a new best friend every day. It rings true because it seems the people you do meet and get along with, are met all in good spirit. It was a delight to meet up again, and we carried on as if we had known each other for years. Jill had purchased a large round of pork to roast, and we had corned beef and chicken, and good champagne suitably iced in the wash bucket beside the main road in the mud! Muloorina Station is where, in 1963, Donald Campbell and his team set up camp and attempted the world land speed record. They were thwarted by weather and so they mothballed the Bluebird at Muloorina over winter, to return again in 1964, when Campbell successfully broke the record at over 400 mph. This was stuff of boyhood dreaming and it was special to arrive on our first morning when we drove out to the Lake’s edge, and read an old bronze plaque set up on the edge, overlooking a seemingly endless and so flat salt bed. His record was set 20 kilometers out, as far from humanity at that time as it would have been possible to go. Strange to achieve something as abstract but of our world, out there, where its irrelevance was complete. Another sign advises not to drive out onto the lake bed, especially because the tyre tracks may stay there for the next twelve years. So there were of course graceful figures of eight and sweeping S curves heading off into the distance! And it is a shame really, because the sense of something special is strong and it is thoughtless to go there. But hey, when you’re eighteen! The variety of plant species in such a hostile environment is amazing – Daisies, Chenopods, Grasses and the Pea families can be seen all within a few square metres.

The waterhole at Muloorina is about 1.5 kilometres long and is charged by a hot spring that smells typically sulphury, but is good to sit in. The hole itself is deep though, and very cold. Helen predictably was straight in and loved it for ten minutes whilst the rest of us retired after 1. We played solidly for two days and three nights, covering a lot of ground in the process. The last night was very windy. Tables and chairs blown over, dish cloths into the bushes, and a neighbour’s rubber dinghy swept across the lagoon and left, winded and forlorn, crumpled against a fence. Bill was not happy after a night spent tossed around in their Ultimate van. We were pleased that the Crossover only rocked a bit and felt very secure.

Strzelecki Track south to Arkaroola in the Flinders Ranges

11 August. I have now strapped the spare wheel on the roof instead of the back door because the door was destroyed by the corrugations last year, with the considerable weight of the wheel and tyre. We’re feeling excited with the prospect of re-visiting Arkaroola at the northernmost end of the Flinders Ranges. There is a wonderful drive there that we missed last year, so we will do that and catch up with much needed showers and a restaurant meal. We head southwards on the Old Strzelecki Track, towards Arkaroola.

Yesterday, before leaving and heading south, we visited the many creekside camping spots where all ten residents of Innamincka in the 50s used to desport. Policeman’s and Ski beach; sublime places overhung with red gums and patrolled now just by Pelicans, Galahs, Corellas and the odd shag. We were reluctant to leave the cool banks, to head into the Strzelecki Desert. Taking the Old Strzelecki Track (first opened by Harry Redford the cattle duffer who drove 1000 stolen head through there in 1870 - he was caught, sent to trial with ample evidence against him, and let off by a jury so impressed by his feat of derring do they couldn’t find it in their hearts to send him down....!), we found a marvellous road with no traffic to speak of. The Telstra god shone his beam of communications for two minutes in the middle of nowhere, and our messages popped into view. We grabbed the opportunity and SMS’d as many replies as we could. Must have been a gas project in the vicinity- indeed, Moomba oil fields. A dust storm enveloped us so we felt cocooned and thankful to be in a small air conditioned world of our own. How those explorers kept it up year after year beggars belief. It was strange to visit Montecollina Bore, shrouded in driven grit, where water almost too hot to touch spills into a sandy dam, cooling as it goes and forming a magic wetland for birdlife in the process. These are Australian Shelduck.

Heading on southwards, we turned off the Strzelecki Track that goes on to Lyndhurst, and continued south towards Lake Callabonna and then Lake Frome. L. Callabonna unfortunately can’t be accessed without a permit from the University of SA. It is where hundreds of Diprotodon and other megafauna skeletons are to be found where they had become mired in what was a great bog. Apparently there are whole skeletons sticking up out of the chalky mudflats. By 5pm we had had enough and we turned into a clearing and parked in a creek bed beside some lovely red gums. These moments when we set up for a simple meal after toasting the sun with Bowmore or a glass of decent red, are very special.

The road this morning took us to Arkaroola and it was the worst corrugated stretch we have seen since the Mitchell Plateau road last year, and that is saying something. However we are settled into the place, within reach of showers and the bar, a meal is booked tonight. Another episode of “Rome” is to be seen on the laptop before we stretch out for another night under the stars, sort of.

Arkaroola is a significant and famous place. Mawson (of Antarctic fame) studied the geology of this region in the early part of the last century, and developed some break through theories about geology and more particularly glaciation, that he tested and proved through his subsequent visit to Antarctica. He was involved in the development of radium that was mined and carried out by camel back in the 1920’s. He taught Reginald Sprigg at Adelaide University, who as one of his best students went on to be involved with Sir Mark Oliphant in the development of the base material for the first atomic bomb. The material for that dreadful weapon was mined, in utmost secrecy, at Arkaroola. Reginald Sprigg purchased the place when he retired, and with his wife Griselda, they developed it with eco-tourism in mind back in 1963. What forward thinkers.

Our first night’s highlight had to be the buffet meal accompanied with a bus tour of very hungry troupers. I have never seen rib eye steaks the size of those we ate. The troupers were impressed too and I had the sense that we were benefitting from their presence. I was thinking of pudding and sidled up to the buffet again, as the sticky date was brought out, in a large tray and camouflaged as mince under a blanket of mash. The nice old chap in front of me, impressed by his timing as he slipped a second rib eye onto his plate, took a step backwards, grasped the ladle firmly, and scooped a pound of pud onto his plate, beside the carrots. His companion, seeing me pouring the recently arrived cream over mine, not the gravy, nudged her fellow, pointed (politely) at my bowl and was rudely rebuffed. The drive into Arkaroola is long and arduous and after such privations he was not to be put off!

There is excitement this morning because we are going on the Ridgetop Tour this afternoon, after a short drive up a gully to have a look at the old Bollabollana copper mine and smelter. It is hard to imagine constructing a complex series of buildings out in this remote location, but, as happened all over the bush in the 1870’s, there was activity everywhere. Water was available and must have made all the difference. Today at Arkaroola it is 20 years since the creeks were fully charged, and the 200mm rainfall still quoted as average hasn’t been seen for many years. It is 15 months since we were here last, and they have received about 35mm. Thank you very much! Hardy plants survive, though young Red Guns are stressed; Helen was excited to find a new Eremophila – see pic on left.

Some of you may remember that a few years ago Mitsubishi advertised the Pajero by getting it to the top of what appears to be an impossible peak. That is at the end of a quite magical drive into the tortured and wracked rocky landscape running 20 kilometres or so from the Arkaroola HQ. That is Sillers Lookout at The Ridgetop. Eleven game grey and silver nomads (there is a difference) were strapped into the back of an open sided Land Cruiser and we were carried up rocky slopes that had us boggling. The Pajero made it yes, but the Land Cruiser is amazing. Porsche tried to get their Cayenne up there to impress the glitterati but apparently the LC had to tow it up the last climb! Geoff, my faith is shaken!
The customers, a little sore but doing stretches between exclamations at the splendour of the place, were fed tea and lamingtons to the complete satisfaction of everyone. The $99/head cost had us pulling faces when we paid for the tickets, but there can be no doubt, it is worth every cent.

With our duties at Arkaroola now complete, and a blog to be posted, we left on 13 August as early as caravan park conversations would allow (three quarters of an hour later than should have been the case) and made for Leigh Creek, where we posted our first blog last year too. There is a little village called Copley on the way, that we visited last year as well. They sell quandong pies and coffee of Carlton standard (well, we’ve been on the road a while now). Don’t miss this place! In Leigh Creek we purchased a range of meats all cryovaced for the weeks ahead. The blog took us ages as we knew it would, making it later and later for our meet with Bill & Jill Johnson of Fremantle, at Marree, 120 kilometres north. There had been about 5mm of rain to the north the previous night, and we were hearing messages over the UHF about dodgy conditions ahead. By 4:30pm we pulled up in Marree, next to our friends’ van totally covered in thick clay. I felt sure after waiting since 11am they would be either very irritable or very drunk, but it was all smiles and hugs from these lovely new old friends. With no time to waste we high tailed it north towards Muloorina Station, near the shores of Lake Eyre, where we set up beside a fine lagoon with pelicans patrolling and the sound of great merriment as we started the job of catching up.

Our expectations for being able to do regular blog posts are dashed I’m afraid. I am writing this a day short of Winton in central Queensland in the hope we might get some NextG coverage there - the first since Leigh Creek. There is much blog to catch up on but we’ll make sure we have at least this much up tomorrow, after we have inspected the dinosaurs.

Innamincka and Cooper Creek

It is Saturday evening, 8^th, and I’ve already lost a day somewhere. As is becoming usual (and one of the best parts of this travelling lark) the sound of the Tilley lamp provides a comforting backcloth to the frogs and cicadas, sounds of birds’ wings and the turn of diary pages as Helen catches up with her day. History again. We are on Cooper Creek about a quarter of a mile downstream of R. O’H. Burke’s “Dig Tree” at his Camp 65. Innamincka is about 70 kilometres to the west. The tragedy and irony of that ill-fated expedition is well described here; and it is good to be here almost on our own, to absorb the place. Three aircraft departed yesterday – the airstrip is right next door! This area has a future – gas fields all about, but you don’t see much of them. Santos owns the place with the Kidman Company sub-leasing to run stock. A delightful old fellow sits under the shade of the information hut and yarns about his days flying for the Kidman Coy all around this area in the 70’s. His tale of dropping medical supplies to stranded cattle stations during the floods in the early 70’s, with medicines stuffed into the middle of loaves, and dropped from 20 feet from the open door of his Cessna 172, are the stuff of yesterday’s outback.

Sunday 9th, and time for a nice drive! We camped beside Cooper Creek at Cullyamura waterhole last night, all alone again and happy as Larry (what put a smile on his face?). Except for the sleeping. Very hard mattress and not a decent night had yet. However we managed a relatively early start this morning and set off on back roads that are thankfully fairly good, for the short 2.5 hour journey to Innamincka. Whilst the main roads are stony and slow at 40kph, cut up by the heavy trucks that service Santos et.al., the back roads are good and take you deep into the gibber plains where distant mesas edge the horizon and you start to feel almost, you know...intrepid. Innamincka’s history is interesting. It was the centre of medical support for the whole region until 1951, sporting two unmarried registered nurses and a lovely purpose built hospital constructed in 1928.

The nurses married the policemen and so there was a regular turn over every two years. Marvellous photographs of the social life that people out here had, with tennis parties and annual picnic races, but things went pear shaped and by 1952 the place was a ghost town. And so it remained until 1993 when the National Parks reconstructed the old Australian Inland Mission hospital and it stands today in its former glory, but as a place for information. The pub next door, and the general store beside it just about describes Innamincka township. Ten kilometres east, along the banks of the creek, is the spot where Burke died under a Coolibah tree, marked with a modest rendered memorial with the simplest iron plaque “Robert O’Hara Burke died here. 30^th June 1861”. After such a journey somehow that is all that need be said at that spot.

We are camped again on the creek, but where the midges dive for the light. Two kilometres walk along the bank takes you to a place called “the choke” where rock banks crowd in and reduce the otherwise broad creek to about 10 metres. The stone is an iron rich sandstone that has blackened with a dark oxide coating. For an area of perhaps half an acre this rock has been covered in petraglyphs, pecked into the surface over thousands of years by the once resident aborigines. What a wonderful place this must have been millennia ago; a crossroads for indigenous culture and trade.

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.

The Long Paddock; and Mutawintji National Park

It seems these travels into The Centre become journeys into the past, unavoidably. Last Monday 3rd August we departed Bendigo greatly relieved after doing battle again with Telstra to get this internet connection sorted; leaving the city gates at about 1:30, we headed for the Cobb Highway past Deniliquin to Hay, to spend our first night camped beside the Darling River. Those with more than a little familiarity regarding stock will doubtless know the stories of The Long Paddock - that droving run from Wilcannia on The Darling (where wool bales were loaded for carriage to Adelaide) to Echuca/Moama where the cattle on the hoof went to feed the gold rushes in Victoria. Known as the Cobb Highway now, it was of course also the famous route taken by the Cobb & Co coaches, taking up to 17 passengers at a time, and many days between. It is thankless looking country, but a tinge of green among the bluebush at the moment, with grassy verges beside the road and lots of yellow flowers (weeds?) blooming in the pasture.

You can’t help being carried along by stories from the past; there seems to be little future for these places to focus on now. We heard in Hay how there are families still, whose names appeared on the honour rolls of these towns a hundred years or so ago, enormous properties, whose Riverina heritage was strong through awards for best Merino fleece or the like, whose still local descendants live now in abject poverty. Certainly there are regular reminders in the many irrigation channels, now redundant, of how use of the land has changed so much from the heyday of The Riverina. Now families on the land are grouped together into cooperatives and selling vegetables to the supermarket barons. Thing is, there is a myth about The Riverina still being part of the backbone of the pastoral economy, that seems to live on in the city. Am I wrong? (Helen demurs, with a reminder of Banjo Paterson’s poem about Hay, Hell and Booligal. You can’t escape the fact that things are changing in the bush very fast.

We spent a night in Wilcannia beside The Darling. The locals were having a ball at about 4am, their calls reaching us across the river from the township across the way. This was once a lovely old town, now largely closed up except for the police station, courthouse and the aboriginal’s pub. Nowhere is the march of change more evident than here and it is very sad; even with the sun shining on once bustling streets edged with sandstone building you’d die for in Carlton, it fails to encourage any sense of optimism for these communities. But with miles to do we turned west out of town , with Mutawintji National Park in our sights, where rock art can be found. Leaving the bitumen of the Barrier Highway towards Broken Hill, we turned north through arid country. A strange isolated patch of Spinifex made plain our northward passage. Strange because it ran out within a kilometre and we saw no more Spinifex for several days, and still have seen hardly any. Helen was bubbling with excitement as we arrived at Mutawintji NP in the heat of the day, because she had found three walks we could do before dinner, only eight kilometres! I’m very aware as we go, that men have a poor record on the stopping stakes. The woman in the camper next to us now has already confirmed that her partner refuses to stop for anything unless it is lunch and at a pub. So naturally I volunteered to join her on two of the walks provided I had a good night’s sleep between. We climbed up onto the ancient ranges and looked down into lost gullies where yellow footed rock wallabies can be found and other marvels. And far too many feral goats. I nearly always stop now when commanded, and generally comply in most things. Brownie points have to be hoarded carefully.

We would dearly love to keep you better informed; however we are in the hands of Mercury, who’s ways we ponder with curiosity. In a sandstorm, nowhere really but having left Innamicka four hours behind, a two kilometre window of NextG communication opportunity opens as if from the gods...we get our stored messages and frantically SMS who we can. Thank you Mr Telstra (and Moomba oilfields), we are pleased that American fellow has departed. Then nothing. So this will come to you hopefully on the 13th, from Leigh Creek west of the Flinders Ranges.

Preparations

Jacqui in Mitre 10(5.5 to the locals) said “so when are youse off then?”
This said in a tone making it plain we were already at least a month late, whenever we were to go. Making excuses and admitting we were not REAL grey nomads, I told Jacqui we had made changes to our rig that had caused us to be very much late departing in 2009 but Lake Eyre looks interesting.

“Yer’ll be the sixth couple from Woodend that’s up there that I know of” J replied. A keen sense of approaching departure from one’s community comes with the foreknowledge that isolation and remoteness is why you go otherwise just meet at the market next Sunday! Going to see Lake Eyre somehow doesn’t qualify especially if there’s a queue at the bar of the Marree pub and most of them are from around here.

But we are not deterred! Of course everyone with a 4WD (and probably more than a few 2WD ers too) wants to look across L. Eyre. Those who know are telling us the lake last filled properly in ’74, has only filled 3 times in the past 150 years or so, but I remember Lance Lessels taking off in his Falcon from Williamstown back in about ’88 having heard the call. Any way you look at it is an event of such scale, and in these drought years one of such importance for the deserts, that the possibility of seeing those spaces carpeted in flowers and birds is not to be missed. Where there was one tour operator last year, there were 34 at the last count.

Our minds were made up for us really because Bill & Jill Johnson who we met amongst so much hilarity on the last trip called to tell us they would be in the Marree pub on 13th August and would we be there? We’ll meet up with them and then head north together to Muloorina Station, an oasis of greenery on the Frome River that flows north into the south end of the Lake. And that is the extent of the planning really. Unlike last year, when we had lots of time and lots of goals, this year will be very different. We’ll part company with the Johnsons too soon as they continue south on a clockwise return to Fremantle, and we’ll possibly flirt with the Simpson Desert (very much depending on local advice), head northwards on the back tracks as far as Mt Isa, or more likely incline eastwards towards Longreach. Reading James Woodford’s book The Dog Fence is a good way to get in the mood.

Six weeks, leaving 3rd August, takes us to the middle of September. Our first thought was to go as far as Ravenshoe, west of Cairns, to meet with young friends who used to run a Bush Heritage property “Eurardy” north of Geraldton in WA but that is very ambitious. We’ll just go where we go and see what we find along the way.

When we finished up last trip I had a list of things I wanted to change on the Tvan, but could not get the manufacturers to take any interest. Experience of the cold and wet when we reached the Clare Valley was miserable and we realised that dealing with a lot of canvas (essential when it’s wet) to make a decent living space on a daily basis of set up/knock down is too much. I had ideas of having a reduced canvas shelter made that would better suit the way we preferred to use the Tvan, so I called into the Caravan & Camping show out at Caulfield where the canvas and pole manufacturers could be found. Katie came along with me and we whisked along with no time to spare, through the aisles of jerry cans and every imaginable bit of trailer craft you could poke a stick at. And there it was. A burst of appreciative recognition and a statement of the obvious all in one. The VistaRV Crossover winked at me seductively and within seconds I was on board and in love. Katie assured me Mum would buy the idea – and she was right!

The provenance is recognisable if you’ve been a Tvan owner because there is a similarity in approach to both layout and construction, but this is a mini caravan with a thirty second set up time, and easy in bad weather. I think a Mk 2 Tvan should have been out by now, because a gap in the market has appeared, and VistaRV owner Louie Cretella has slotted his product in very nicely.

Louie who owns Prompt Sheet Metal in Bayswater, has supplied laser cut sheet metal parts for the camper trailer industry for many years. With some help from a well known designer Lou has produced the next generation – a van that would make the cross between the Tvan that relies on canvas when the weather’s no good, to a caravan that can still go everywhere but has a table for four inside, and a fast set up time. The quality is not to be beaten and production is up to 2 a month now and rising. Take a look at http://www.vistarv.com.au/

Sometimes, especially if you are a designer, you might see a product evolve for all the right reasons, and this is one that is worth spreading around – a bit like the smile on Lou’s face! He was remarkable in getting ours finished in half the scheduled time, including changes I had asked for, all done without a complaint. So Jacqui we did have a real reason to be leaving so late!

We’ll probably re-visit Arkaroola at the north end of the Flinders Ranges before propping up the bar in Marree, waiting for the Johnson’s. Other than that we invite anyone of a mind to (and who like me might be utterly fed up with our TV diet of detective dramas), to tune in on a weekly sort of basis, to enjoy some of the travels to come.

Game anyone?