Advertisement
Published: September 2nd 2012
Borroloola
main streetSavannah Way 2. Borroloola > Hells Gate > Doomadgee
26
th August 2012
Back out the 30 klm ‘driveway’ from Lorella Springs we tracked (bounced) to re-join the Nathan River Rd. At this stage in the trip we could not afford to get distracted and take too many side tracks to look for exciting little spots as we were low on fuel and had to make our next destination Borroloola a further 180klm away.
The good news was that the road did not get any worse, it was consistently corrugated and the monotony of this was only broken by the numerous creek and river crossings such as the Batten River. We got in the habit of stopping every now and then and the routine was that I would walk around the outside of the Troll & Trackie and look for any damage/loose ‘bits’ etc and Trish would look inside the van. Stopping to check what damage had been done after a particularly rough section. I heard from the open door of the van words I cannot repeat, but loosely translated mean ‘Oh heck!’ I thought I better go and have a look what had created this commotion and there
Borroloola
Community Store to left of pic, looking down main street. scattered all over the floor of the Trackie was a whole stack of food including frozen ‘stuff’ and icecubes (for the one and only nightly Gin and tonic!). But, the fridge door was shut! It must have been flung open by a violent movement and flung shut again as the Trakkie righted itself, but in this movement the food etc had been thrown out! Bloody heck, no ice for Gin and tonics tonight!
We were pleased to pull into Borroloola let me tell you, and after filling up with 171Ltrs of fuel, it meant we still had 19 ltrs left, what was the panic about! Borroloola is an indigenous Community and the main destination and service centre for travellers along this section of the Savannah Way. The ‘town’ was founded on the site of Ludwig Leichardt’s crossing of the McArthur River and is one of Australia’s most isolated Communities.
The Savannah Way or 'Coast Track' follows the path of cattle drovers of the late 19th century as they moved herds from north-west Queensland to stock the new stations of the Northern Territory and the Kimberley. The drovers followed a well-worn Aboriginal path, but with this activity came confrontation.
Borroloola
Red Dirt Cafe at end of verandah. The local tribes went from almost total isolation from European Australians in 1870, to a decimated collection of displaced and defeated groups, over a single decade. Entire tribes such as the Wilangarra, including women, children and babies were massacred, and most adult males were killed, by police and quasi-police groups, and by drovers and station workers involved in the cattle droves of that era.
In the local Indigenous languages of Yanyuwa, Garrwa, Marra, Gudanji and Binbingka, Borroloola would be written as Burrulula. The name belongs to a small lagoon just to the east of the present day caravan park where we stayed.
By the turn of the century Borroloola had gained a fierce reputation as a ‘frontier town of total disrepute’. The drovers moving cattle between the Kimberleys and Western Queensland stopped in the town and a trade in rum, smuggled from Thursday Island, was established. This illicit trade inevitably attracted some interesting characters of ill repute to the town. It became known as a centre for criminals, murderers and alcoholics - a reputation it only lost when the town became a virtual ghost town in the 1930s.
We visited the Museum and read about all the
Bing Bong Point
with the Gulf of Carpentaria in background. eccentrics that the town attracted during this period, names like 'The Freshwater Admiral', 'The Redbank Hermit' and 'Death Adder'. One that Trish and I found really interesting was a Roger Jose, the ‘Hermit of Borroloola’. It was said that he was the brother of the Dean of Adelaide and in 1916 he walked to Borroloola from Cunnamulla in Queensland. He lived in a shed at the rear of Tattersalls Hotel until a cyclone destroyed it in 1938. He then rolled a damaged 1000 gallon corrugated water tank from the hotel to a site on top of the hill and, with his Aboriginal companion, lived in it until his death in 1963. He was an eccentric who took full advantage of the Borroloola library and reputedly knew vast sections of Virgil's Aeneid in Latin, (whatever that is!), and also had a good working knowledge of Shakespeare. We have to say that the Museum in the old Police station was a great stop and had heaps of really interesting stuff in it.
Borroloola has since become a hub for the Indigenous Community who operates the main supermarket, fuel stop and take away. The McArthur River Zinc mine has given some life
Bing Bong Point
trolling with live bait for stingers, stonefish, sharks, or Salties....... back into the town and we enjoyed our time here.
We travelled out to Bing Bong Point with the anticipation of being able to see the Gulf and get some good pics, but the mine has it pretty much all closed off and even though we were able to walk down the side of the loading facility to get to the water, it was not the pristine mangrove swamp/mudflats and sea we saw, just a loading facility at a port. On the way back we went into King Ash Bay. This is a fishing clubs caravan park, anyone can stay there as in any other c/van park, it is just that this one is owned and operated by a fishing club. Great place right on the McArthur River with plenty of shady sites, but you need to be a fisho to stay here for a while as there is nothing else here and it is about 40 Klm back into Borroloola, not that there is much there either!. Borroloola today services the nearby McArthur River Zinc Mine, one of the largest zinc bodies in the world. It is also a favourite fishing destination as well as a must do
McArthur River
at King Ash Bay, a fishos' paradise I imagine stop when travelling the Savannah Way.
After a couple of nights in Borroloola we headed off on the next leg which is along the Wollogorang Rd to the NT/Qld border. The road has not changed, in fact maybe a few spots a tad rougher, the creek and river crossings continue and some are huge and we can only imagine what it would be like to fly over in the wet and look at (this area is totally impassable at this time). The Fletcher, Wearyan and Foelsche Rivers are crossed before we come to the turn off to Seven Emus Station. Then it is on to the Robinson River, which it takes all of your imagination to wonder what this must look like in flood. After this the rivers and creek crossing are frequent and each one is unique, but now the country has changed. We are travelling through open savannah and seeing more cattle than at any time during our trip, there are literally thousands of head of Brahman here and we are forever passing mobs around water holes or at the water crossings. Trish just loves their colourings and we take lots of pics of them! We are
Borroloola
The local mechanic, don't break down! now at the NT/ Border and about to cross back into the eastern states and be in the same time zones as Matt and Penny and all our friends.
And then we cross the border and OMG, the corrugations are that bad I don’t actually believe it and get out to take a photo of them. We pass other travellers and funnily enough, no one is going fast anymore. Hells Gate Roadhouse eventually appears and we are looking forward to a break from the rattle and shake of the road. This remote roadhouse is quite well known and sits on the edge of the Barkly Tablelands. After getting very little in the way of service or conversation from the lady behind the counter, (strange when you are so remote and you should be aiming for every dollar you can get from passers-by), we head off again, slightly disillusioned. We were looking forward to Hells Gate as I believe it has a bloody history from the old cattle droving days and it was this period that gave this famous landmark its name, oh well, at least we have been there! We continue on and camp some 60 Klm out of
Borroloola
The local historical society museum, this was a great stop. Doomadgee and see vehicles going past as slowly as walking pace! The following morning it took us 3 hours to do 60 Klm into Doomadgee.
Doomadgee is an Aboriginal Community that was originally set up on the coast by Missionaries, but after a cyclone in 1936 it was moved to its present location on the Nicholson River. I first heard of Doomadgee through Palm Island (off Townsville) when Cameron Doomadgee died in Police custody in the cells there. I then read the book, The Tall Man and discovered that Doomadgee, where Cameron was from originally had a colourful and sometimes violent past. This would explain when we said to people we were looking forward to going there, most replied, we won’t be stopping there at all, we will be driving straight through! What we saw and experienced would suggest that Doomadgee’s past is the past, it is a different community today.
We were keen to come here because the Rodeo was on and we wanted to go, and that is what we did, and what a great day we had. As part of the Australian Indigenous Rodeo Circuit (AIRC) this was going to always be a big turnout,
Borroloola
only the good clothes lines have a barbed wire on the top to stop the washing blowing off ! and it was. We saw little kids as young as 5 jumping on poddy calves as their Dad’s ran alongside holding them up, the under 17 YO young bull ride gave us a young bloke from Borroloola who rode his time and scored a massive 77 points, most impressive. The station hack buck jump had all the ‘boys’ out looking for bragging rights when they got back to their respective stations and most did pretty well, but the ones that got thrown, you could tell very easily, they were not happy. The whole community plus many more from other communities were there all dressed up in the ‘right gear’, cowboy shirts, wrangler jeans, and boots – even the little tackers!
After a big day at the rodeo, we headed off out of town to find a great campsite on the floodplains of the Nicholson River, alongside a lagoon covered in water lilies and home to thousands of birds, another great campsite!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.215s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 10; qc: 49; dbt: 0.1388s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
Ronald Dunn
non-member comment
Doomadgee
Where the bloody hell are you. Never heard of these places. Sorry to hear about the gin and tonic.