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Published: August 22nd 2012
18th August 2012
We left our interesting BP campsite at about 7:45am and headed inland along the Overlander's Way (the way between Townsville and Tennant Creek). The landscape changed as we drove, becoming less tropical and more temperate woodland. We saw a bustard and an emu, and drove through sections of golden wattle and fern leafed grevillea. We had morning tea at a rest point on the outskirts of Charters Towers, and lunch at White Mountain lookout. We stopped at Hughenden to see the Flinders Discovery Centre, which has a very good replica of a Muttaburrasaurus skeleton. The Muttaburrasaurus is a herbivore that got up to 10m long, and was found near Hughenden, at Muttaburra. Around Hughenden the scenery was open grassland with few trees and the occasional cattle or sheep.
We camped at the Lakeview Caravan Park in Richmond, which is by a lake with a bush tucker garden, and Alex and Kyle had a play at a water playground before dinner.
19th August 2012
It was a colder morning than we have been accustomed to on the coast! As we set off we saw about half a dozen feral cats. We also saw
many kites' nests in the power poles, as there are few trees between Richmond and Julia Creek. We stopped at the very good information centre in Julia Creek, composed of the old prison building and three fettler's cottages. The lady in attendance told us there is a feral cat plague and that a local shooter shot over 300 in one night (the council pays $5 a tail).
We visited the Mary Kathleen memorial park on the outskirts of Cloncurry, which remembers a nearby old uranium mining settlement. We had lunch at Chinaman's Creek Dam, a scenic picnic spot and source of the town water. After lunch we visited the John Flynn Centre/ Royal Flying Doctor museum in Cloncurry. It is very inspiring to see how such a cutting edge organisation was created, when radio and aviation technologies were quite new. The RFDS now transports over 40 000 people every year.
We are camped between Cloncurry and Mt Isa, at Fountain Springs, a free camp. The land is hillier and the vegetation is taller here than near Julia Creek. We had a nice chat to two French travellers, Julia and Julian, by the fire.
Monday 20
th August 2012
After a chilly night, we left Fountain Springs campsite just after 8am and drove in to Mt Isa, the most noticeable features of which are two enormous stacks issuing plumes of smoke above the town. We went to the “Outback at Isa” tourist building and visited the Riversleigh mammal fossil display (based on the fossils retrieved from Lawn Hill). It’s a small display of models of what some of the animals would have looked like, and samples of the fossils, with a window to the fossil laboratory. There were some strange animals here 20 million years ago - carnivorous kangaroos and giant birds among them.
We fuelled up and drove on to Camooweal, where we had lunch. We drove on through flat open grasslands, re-entering the Northern Territory. We are back in spinifex country now and I can smell its sweet grassy odour. The clouds were streaky white across the vibrant blue sky. There was a big wedge tailed eagle by the road. We camped at Wonara Bore campsite (free, no facilities) and got a spot at the back next to the spinifex plains. There was a lovely sunset, and we made a damper
on the fire.
Tuesday 21
st August 2012
We left Wonara Bore just after 7:30am. We stopped for morning tea at Three Ways roadhouse, and fuelled up in Tennant Creek. We also went to the Old Battery information centre before continuing to the Devil’s Marbles campsite. When we got here, a tourist was feeding a dingo in the campsite, ignoring the signs to the contrary. This campsite is $8 for us, and there is a basic (pit) toilet, however the backdrop of the Devil’s Marbles is stunning. It’s quite a popular campsite. The "marbles" are weathered granite boulders, mostly shaped in spheres, ovals and other curves, and coloured red-brown. They do look like they've been scattered by a giant. After lunch we walked among the boulders. It’s very warm here today.
Wednesday 22nd August 2012
We left camp and headed towards Alice Springs. We stopped at Wycliffe Well, a caravan park and roadhouse which claims to be the UFO hotspot in Australia, and has some alien models out the front. We had morning tea at Barrow Creek's old telegraph station. It must have been a marvellous thing to have the telegraph in this
country when news had previously taken two months to arrive by ship. We had lunch at Aileron, a dusty roadhouse with large statues of aboriginals overlooking it, and no public tables. Then on to Alice Springs, along a very straight road, with an outlook of yellow grasses and red dirt under a deep blue sky. We have camped in the Stuart Caravan Park.
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non-member comment
That is so cool. It looks like it has just split straight down the middle. Almost as if struck by lightning