Advertisement
Published: September 3rd 2013
Edit Blog Post
A town paved with goldIts the end of the day. I am sitting by the mighty Burdekin River at yet another free camping ground. Well actually it is Fletcher Creek which is a pretty little tributary of the big river. Its an oasis really as the surrounding countryside is really quite inhospitable. The air is filled with the sounds of crickets or cicadas, birds are making their last caw caws before the sun goes down and the night turns black. There is a lovely balmy breeze with a little prickle of chill rustling through the leaves on the massive river gums above my head. They are whispering
Wayne whispers "beeeutiful, we'll see stars tonight for the first time".
And as I write this you could pluck them out of the sky like grapes off a vine.
After two days finally a shower (cold) and a hair wash. I feel almost human again.
It was an early departure from Emerald City where we left behind Mumma (I never got her name)
and her seven babies. I spent a lot of time thinking about them wondering how she would cope and would they be well cared for.
We head towards Clermont and onto Charters Towers. The road is boring so I pull out a map of Queensland and ask Wayne to tell me a story about places he has been to across the state.
Finally we arrive in Charters Towers. It's a town of contrasts. At one time great wealth, as is shown by the lovely buildings that adorn the main street and the top of the town. Now it's really much like any other outback Queensland town but what made it unique during the gold rush was that you did not have to leave, everything you could want for was there so they called it "the World".
A mountain of rock and rubble looms like a shadow over the township. This is where the gold diggings were. It was a pretty wild place in it's day there were over 30000 people and 90 pubs.
We drove up the hill to look at the view and to see the mine shafts (29 of them) before stopping for lunch
looking out towards the rooftops of this place.
Best ever potato chips can be bought from the BP garage.
Today was history day. In June 2012 we started a trip from to Palm Beach via the Bunya Mountains and a beautiful homestead called Jimbour house near Dalby. It was at Jimbour House where Ludwig leichhardt commenced his epic journey to The Gulf of Carpentaria. And so we find evidence of him again here at this beautiful little creek next to the big river. Of which only a surveyor (aka Wayne Hayes) would have spotted it and mentioned the significance. Wayne found a portion of a tree on a plinth with an "L" blaze on it which was a symbol of Leichhardts journey as he discovered this country.
This place is called the Dalrymple National park. It is 40 km north of Charters Towers. It's not just a camping ground there is more significance to this place than just a creek.
There is a ghost town (my interpretation as there is nothing else to describe it) here it's called Basalt and it sits on the great bend of the Burdekin. We drove about 3 km from the
main gate and found a map which indicated that Basalt (private property) was wholly within the national park.
On the maps there are streets laid out but you can't see them when you are here, there is even a road across the Burdekin but you can't see it either. There are signs that say "keep out" and the only hint of anything different is a massive purple bougainvillea and a few basalt stone walls. Even so it was fascinating to see a man's vision laid out before you only to know that the deluge of a heavy wet season wiped out his dreams forever.
Dalrymple National Park has a neighbouring park called The Great Basalt Wall National Park and there is a massive seam of basalt threading it's way through hundreds of miles of Queensland through both parks. But the Americans during World War II used the basalt walls as target practice. This is the one place on the mainland where any new geological activity would be likely to happen as recently as 10000 years ago there was activity here.
I picked this stop over simply for convenience and it was free - but wait there's even
more. During WWII an entire boys school was relocated from charters towers to make way for an American field hospital. It was called All Souls and they were relocated for a year. the boys thrived so much at this location that their health improved remarkably, their education improved and many were able to attend university with the first aboriginal university scholar in Queensland spending time in the tent city by this big bend in the mighty river.
Come here it's lovely the Rivulet is really special.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.144s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 50; dbt: 0.111s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb