16 - Travelling south from Charters Towers 24/8 - 9/9/19

Entry 16           Travelling south, southwest from Charters Towers 24/8 – 9/9/2019

After our night at Ingham, sitting in our camp area listening to the opera from a point about 150 metres slightly to the rear from the stage area, ‘which didn’t seem to inspire us’, we managed to be travelling by 8.30 am the following morning with a planned destination somewhere near Charters Towers. Late morning, we spoke via phone with the Smicks who suggested Macrossan Reserve located about 20 kilometres east of Charters Towers. Early afternoon we met up with the Smicks at Macrossan Reserve a lovely setting where we set camp for the night about 500 metres from the road with a rail-line about another 200 metres inland. Road traffic noise was minimal with the occasional train locomotive driver honking their horn several times when passing.

Sunrise colours

We were planning to travel with the Smicks over the next couple of weeks with another couple joining us the following day. The following morning, we made our way to Charters Towers where we spent some time wandering around a community fair with Mary happily purchasing a dress for $1.

We then attended to some chores, topping up our water tanks and filling our fuel, in preparation for travelling along some less travelled outback tracks with limited resources. Our other couple joined us, (The Boondockers) Rosco & Chris. A quick conference with consideration of proposed routes, and we were on our way.

We continued travelling west towards Mt Isa when at about the 300-kilometre mark inland from the coastal town of Townsville we turned left at a location called Torrens Creek travelling south for about 75 kilometres stopping for the day at Shirley Shearing shed campground in Moorrinya National Park.

National Park road

It was a great setting where we got acquainted with The Boondockers and with a bonus of having the campground to ourselves.

Sunset

Sunrise

The following day we continued travelling south setting camp at our targeted destination, the township of Aramac about 200 kilometres down the road. Aramac was to be our base for several days whilst exploring the surrounding areas with our main target item the “Lake Dunn Sculpture Trail.”

After a couple of days spent driving, we designated our whole second day at Aramac as a rest day, after spending the last couple of days focused on travelling, re-energising our bodies.

The sculptures are the handiwork of a sheila, “Milynda Rogers,” who resides on a local grazing property and needed a platform to share her creations. It was an early departure for our Lake Dunn Sculpture Trail, with a circuit covering a distance of about 200 kilometres – leaving our caravans at the Aramac Caravan Park. The brochure listed 35 sculptures but we found 38 located in trees, on top of rock outcrops, on tree stumps with some on the ground. The number of sculptures is increasing with more to come. It was a long pleasurable day, for us a 7 ½ hour day outing which included a long lunch break at Lake Dunn.

Frog and dragonflies on windmill tower

Dragonfly

Possum

Possum

Eagle with snake in beak

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree

Koala

Goanna

Bush Spider

Steve and the girls

Frillneck Lizard sneeking up on Steve

Steve taking on the Frillneck Lizard

Echidna

Echidna

Jabiru

There were a few other interesting locations along the days route, Gray Rock, Horsetailer’s Gorge, Lake Dunn and the interesting location of the “Healing Circle.” It was described as an ancient sacred healing circle connected to six others in the world.

We enjoyed our dusty travelling route of the Lake Dunn Sculpture Trail amongst picturesque outback country.

The following day was another much-needed rest day which also involved a discussion of our planned route with an agreement for a deviation of about 150 kilometres to Longreach for a visit.

On previous visits to Longreach we try for a photograph with our caravan under the wing of a Qantas 747 plane located in the Qantas Founders Museum. Unfortunately, on this occasion the area was fenced off, possibly to do with some construction for the whole area to be covered by an overhead canopy due for completion the following year.

We set camp at Apex Park (a dusty paddock with loo’s) just out of Longreach with our group expanding to 4 Bushtracker Caravans and one Jayco Caravan.

We were all happily chattering away when a vehicle stopped nearby with Queensland Opera written on the side of the vehicle. Four people got out and approached our “mob,” in a setting with about 30 other caravans scattered about in the campground. They were promoting an opera performance scheduled for that evening and sang us one of their performance songs. Well none of us had ever experienced a personal opera performance which was even more special camped out in a bush setting. That would be another ✔ for one of those special life experiences. They left us with a bunch of pamphlets, requesting if we could hand them around the campground which we did.

It was the same opera performance we had listened to at Ingham a week prior. It seems Opera Queensland was travelling around the state to promote opera to the people. The further into the outback regions they travelled the less the entry fee became. It had reduced to $5 per person from $20 at Ingham. We thought this was a great opportunity for us to experience opera as a member of the audience rather than sitting outside listening to it as was our experience at Ingham.

That evening we were off to the opera. When they were making their introductions, they described the setting as the best they had ever experienced. The stage was positioned under the wing of a 707 plane with the people providing the introduction standing on the wing of a 747 plane, positioned above the 707-plane wing. It was an amazing setting.

We did enjoy our opera experience. That night finding it difficult to go to sleep, possibly due to the excitement of our opera experience?

The following day we left the mob at Longreach travelling to the town of Isisford for some exploration by ourselves. Isisford was another town struggling to survive with most businesses closing in recent times. We had a look at the towns campground not expecting to stay. As we were driving through the campground, we started to pass by a Bushtracker Caravan when the occupants came running out, yelling, Mary and Steve. It was Grahame & Nerilee whom we had camped with in early April for a few days. We chatted the afternoon away catching up with one another’s news into the evening and the following morning. We said our goodbyes and we made our way to the town of Blackall.

Stone Pitching, thousands of rocks placed to form a leak proof reservoir

One of many closed stores

We set camp at Blackall’s outer perimeter bush camping area with our focus to experience the towns artesian spa pool. Unfortunately, it was closed for the day due to a staff training day and to top off our disappointment the information centre was closed due to a non-staffed day. We returned to our camp for a reassessment of activities at Blackall to find the Longreach mob setting up around us. That ended our days thoughts for Blackall’s points of interest, with the rest of the day spent chattering. We did manage to fit in an overdue phone call with both our sons and Steve’s parents. By bedtime it had been decided we would break camp mid afternoon and start heading to our next planned destination, camping in an undetermined bush setting nearby the road.

First thing in the morning we were off to the Blackall artesian spa pool. It was a nice-looking pool area with water from the artesian basin but rather chlorinated, not what we had envisaged and not as promoted with the Blackall literature. We visited “The Black Stump,” the site of a stump used for surveying in 1888, resulting with one of those folk lore sayings for other areas not surveyed as, “beyond the black stump.” We thoroughly enjoyed a guided tour of “The Blackall Woolscour” museum, a living authentic museum. We managed to fit in a skype with our overseas daughter. It was another rushed day.

We left Blackall at about 2.30 pm with a group of four caravans minus one who was heading in a different direction.

Our next target location was at the small town of Adavale about 250 kilometres south of Blackall along a dirt track which we thought was probably a stock route. About 85 kilometres down the road we found a suitable location to camp for the night.

The following day we made our way to Adavale arriving early afternoon. The road was dusty adding to some hazardous conditions.

We travelled over 100's of stock grates

Very intimidating

Stopped waiting for the truck dust trail to clear

Other road hazards

Smick coming to a stop, still with a dust trail

Adavale was a town with a pub, a few houses, a cattle yard and not much else. We had a helicopter working in with some motor bikes mustering cattle into the cattle yards. As a result, we kept waking up during the night to the sound of cattle mooing into our ears. It was rather annoying for everyone.

One of our group spotted a loose wire under our caravan and Steve got under for a look to find a cable tie had broken, luckily an easy fix. Whilst under the caravan he did a cursory inspection of the caravan undercarriage and found a broken leaf on the leaf springs. Michael and Steve spent an hour under the caravan securing a temporary fix. Luckily, we had phone reception and after a couple of phone calls, a replacement leaf was on its way coming from Melbourne to be delivered to Cunnamulla located about 450 kilometres away by road.

Our second day at Adavale we drove to a location called Hell Hole Gorge National Park. It was about 80 kilometres west of Adavale and required some low range 4WD work getting into the gorge. Another interesting location or something like a little oasis in a large desert country.

On our return to camp we stopped at the local rubbish dump where we obtained some wire for just in case?

Our last night at Adavale finished with shared sweets, a fruit pudding, custard and cream.

We had about 110 kilometres of dirt road before reconnecting with hard paved bitumen roads. Smick led the way a few hundred metres in front providing constant updates of road conditions helping us to travel a smooth ride with our broken spring. John and Petria (The Murray Marauders) following behind, monitoring anything untoward happening with our caravan we may not have been aware of.

One of several stops where Steve was regularly inspecting our undercarriage

We all stopped at the town of Quilpie for fuel, food, reinflating tyres, having a general discussion checking how everyone was and decided on a target for a lunch stop at Toompine. Toompine was a pub built at a proposed town site where the housing failed to eventuate.

Leaving Toompine we travelled to another small town of Yowah where notably everyone was tired from a long day’s travel of about 300 kilometres. Steve was the first to bed at about 7.30 pm, oblivious to when Mary came to bed and he didn’t surface till 7 am the following morning. The Smicks led us on a drive around the highlights of Yowah, incorporating a couple of interesting building structures, the town artesian pool, caravan park, the town lookout and the towns dump where we obtained some better quality wire and disposed of the bits we had collected at Adavale. We were all back at camp in under an hour.

The weather forecast had been for strong winds and we were getting buffeted by very dusty conditions. We all relocated to another area of the campground with nearby trees, hoping for some protection from the dust storms. Petria had made fresh scones for everyone. We were trying to scoff them down as quick as we could but alas the dusty conditions provided plenty of crunch with the hot scones.

One of the local ladies had a vegetable garden where we purchased a bunch of spinach picked before our eyes and Mary made a spinach damper for tea, lasting for several nights.

Freshly made

Cooking in the pot

We farewelled the rest of our travelling companions who continued south. We were now waiting for the arrival of our spare caravan parts, propping at Yowah with phone and internet access, monitoring the tracking of our delivery.