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Published: June 25th 2015
White Mountains N.P
From the top of the Great Dividing Range 550mts Charters Towers to HughendenSo pleased that our readers were interested in the performance data, so please read on and I will give more details for those hungry for that sort of info.
Almost instantly things seemed to get better as we headed away from the coast; the number of sandfly bites keeping Geoff awake did not increase – well you become grateful for small mercies when being devoured by sandflies and the heat and humidity were also gone. Due to our late departure from Townsville, we pulled into a camp about 20 kms west of Charters Towers. We had already spent some time in Charters Towers on a previous trip and saw no reason to stop there, although Marg was keen to go to a camp on a river to the north, but that will have to wait for another day. Our chosen camp was beside the Burdekin River and quite picturesque, although views of the water were restricted to shards of silver reflecting off the water through the trees. Not a bad place to stop, but we were very thankful to be a fair distance from the massive railway bridge that crossed the river and we think was coping with a backlog
of trains due to rains further to the west.
Hughenden was the next place an easy 270kms down the road. After getting slightly lost in a town of a dozen streets, we found the info centre and got directions to the RV park. It was adjacent to the showgrounds and separated by a rusty wire fence, frustratingly there was power, water and toilets in there, but we were on the wrong side of the fence (he forgot to mention that it cost us the princely sum of $6 for the night). Marg picked up a lot of good brochures covering destinations planned for the next week or so, and we were able to refuel at a huge price. We were also able to do a bit of water management there as well (euphemism for refill the water tanks and empty the black tank!).
Cracking on we headed for Winton and a free camp known as the Long Waterhole. Geoff re-named it Cow Pat Alley due to obvious reasons. As we have gone deeper into the outback of Qld, the countryside is showing increasing signs of the drought that has been happening over the last 5 or 6 years.
Long Waterhole (cow pat alley)
That's them officer - I saw them in the act... There is little grass to be seen and what there is, is tussocks of grey grass that seem to have been dead for years. There is the odd sheep or cow around, but not a lot and we are told that farmers are clearing their land of livestock in an effort to save the land and avoid the livestock dying of starvation. Tough times out here and the locals are very grateful for the huge numbers of grey nomads who pass through and spend their money in the little towns. Back to Cow Pat Alley, the ground is all of a silty nature and cracked into chunks about 30 x 30 cm with a 5 cm gap between each which makes walking across it difficult, although the cows making their infrequent trek to the water had made little tracks that had taken a lot of the crevices out along their pathway. The camping area is huge, and while we have heard reports of it being very busy since, we were one of about 5 or 6 taking advantage of the spot when we arrived. We had camp oven roast lamb down by the billabong (just as in the song) however
Australian Age of Dinosaurs
This is a "puzzler" hard at work trying to make a pile of fossil debris something we would recognise...good luck we did pay for our lamb shoulder! We stayed 2 nights as Geoff wanted to get the van wheel alignment checked. It turned out that there were no facilities here to do a caravan. We put Saturday afternoon to good use by a visit to the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum just out of town where we saw many huge bones and got the history of the finds in that area. It was well worth the $60 we paid for admission. They cover the history of the farmer finding a huge bone sticking up out the ground in one of his paddocks, to the request for 200 hectares and subsequent granting of 4200 ha of land to do further exploration and build their centre, to the volunteers who pay to work on the excavation and preparation of the bones, and of course the lecture and audio visual presentation covering the types of dinosaur remains that they have found. Two new varieties that have not been found elsewhere.
Down the road to Longreach, and we decided to go to the Apex Riverside Park located just out of town on the Thompson River. Well, it seemed every caravanner in a 200
Australian Age of Dinosaurs
All of Marg's wishes have come true... km radius had made the same decision! It was more crowded than a caravan park! The alternatives, however were not appealing, so we took what we thought was the last spot available. About 20 more caravans/motorhomes/campers arrived and found spots after us! It was Sunday, and the only places open in town were the bottle shops (and pubs of course), which says a lot about society. He forgot to mention he Laundromat which was probably the busiest place of all. We did however find out where the wheel alignment could be done by asking at a bottle shop (well we can’t get by just drinking coffee). Monday morning and we rang to “book in”; an exercise in wasted time as around here, everyone just rocks in to get the tyre they burst on the weekend replaced or otherwise fixed up. Did I detect a hint of wry humour in their tone when I rang? Eventually, with the backlog cleared the owner got around to putting the laser on the wheels and after a little adjustment all was fixed. When I found him again – he had a habit of disappearing, to pay him and fearing the worse he said “$20?”
Never had $20 come out of my wallet so quickly, and off we went!
From Longreach we took the Thompson Developmental Road towards Jundah (I had never heard of Jundah either, but it does appear frequently in the Qld. Regional weather reports in Ch2). This road was also our first return to the single lane bitumen, which has its ‘local rules’ such as little gets off the road for big. Every now and then (and most unpredictably) there are “opportunity to overtake sections of 2 lane road. Along the way we chose not to call into the town of Stonehenge, from where the military monitor the coast line using over the horizon radar (who would have thought?), and stopped at a place called Swanvale. Despite suffering from an identity crisis and not being able to decide if it is a scenic look-out or a camp site, this is a very pleasant spot. It is at the top of a ‘jump up’ and has magnificent views in all directions. We were one of three to make use of the spot overnight and have to say it was very, very pleasant. It was however the site of a massacre that night,
when someone failed to keep adequate surveillance of the camp oven and the sweet and sour pork spare ribs turned into (very) char-grilled chunks of...char. Bloody maid will not work when you want her too. The moral of the story is “never leave a man in charge of the camp oven , he was standing quite nearby chatting to other campers and did not smell the burning happening right under his nose.
We did get some good info about other camp sites further along our route, and in particular the Cooper Creek camp at Windorah. Little bit of history; Charles Sturt named the water way, and after considering it chose not to call it Cooper
River as it did not appear to have a current. The Thompson River (Longreach) flows into the Bulloo River which flows into the Cooper Creek. It is the only place in Australia where 2 rivers flow into a creek. We made haste to the Cooper Creek camp area as we were told that it was quite busy, however we did not have any difficulty finding a spot, and after looking around the options, I would say that there were heaps of opportunities.
We
Windorah solar
Don't tell Tony, but the rascals out here get all their day time power from...I can't say it... have not had phone/ internet coverage for a few days now (part of the reason this blog is a bit late), but went into Windorah to the info centre where they had a free wi-fi hot spot. “How is that”, I asked –satellite was the answer, which was to be expected, but was still surprised that it could be offered free. Then I was advised that they would have fibre optic and 4G next year...just wondering if Dandenong will ever get up to that! Might have to move to Windorah...
After bidding farewell to the Cooper Creek, and headed down the 260 kms of single lane Diamantina Developmental Road, and wasn’t that busy today with oncoming traffic every 15 minutes or so. Fortunately most were cars so we were the ‘big’ and they had to get off into the gravel for us – caravan to caravan and both put at least one wheel in the gravel. Oh, its very technical stuff. We are now in Quilpie which is in the South- West corner of the state. It has great Telstra reception and will be here for a couple of days catching up on the washing.
Just to finish
Coopers Creek camp
Doesn't everyone wake up to a latte in the morning? off this blog and in response to questions raised by Mr. Ron A.:”Ron would like you to also log the tyre pressures and perhaps graph the tyre pressures versus steady fuel consumption on the flat. Also if you could at some stage swap the air in the tyres with nitrogen which is supposed to help tyre life and fuel consumption. Were the fuel consumption figures obtained with the aircon on or off? There was a Japanese research paper (Watanabe et al in 2003) that outlined possible fuel economy savings of up to 0.0000274%!i(MISSING)f the dashboard lighting is dimmed by 50%!p(MISSING)rovided the stereo volume is also kept below 86dB(A). The effect of the radio aerial on the aerodynamic drag would also be interesting? In the next blog can we also get the oil consumption figures please”.
Our response, is as follows: we do not alter the tyre pressures for hills or flat, unless we are bogged beyond redemption and then Marg takes the valves out; nitrogen is not available to fill the tyres in the areas where we are travelling, but Marg is producing some gas that I will try if I can
Emus on the road
Some of the very few wild things we have seen alive on the road get it in a bottle. (how rude is that?) Figures are an average including when the air-con goes on in temps over 13deg C;(right about now it looks like he doesn’t want dinner tonight!); We did not give any weight to the Watanabe report as it had been repudiated in a peer review that said something along the lines of “it all belongs in the opium den where he resides”;the radio aerial does not affect fuel consumption as the wiley Japs have integrated it into a rear window; Oil consumption figures are not available because I have not been able to find the lever to open the bonnet. I left that to the mechanic in Bowen when I asked him to change the filter I had bought on eBay in Melb.
Hope all that helps Ron, and thank you for asking the probing questions that must be on all our reader’s minds.
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Eug
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You old dinosaur
Loved the pic of the young dinosaur eating the old one .... made me chuckle ..... loving all the pics and stories you guys xx