10 - Hughenden, Ravenswood, Burdekin Falls Dam to Collinsville, Queensland.

 

Entry 10 – 10^h to 18^th Oct., Hughenden, Ravenswood, Burdekin Falls Dam to Collinsville, Queensland.

Leaving the town of Hughenden, we were up early, enjoying a walk around town whilst the air temperature was cool, if about 25 C degrees can be interpreted as cool at 7.30 am.

It was a drive of around 250 kilometres for the day and we spent the night at a free camp about 20 kilometres east of Charters Towers.

Once we were nearer to Charters Towers, the daytime temperatures had cooled to about 32 degrees, felling far more comfortable than the 36 plus degree temperatures we had been experiencing over the last couple of months.

Over the last month we had been researching our planned route, south through the middle of Queensland, regularly seeking out available information. Having decided to abandon those plans due to the extreme heat, we were in need to obtain information about our new route, still travelling south but several hundred kilometres closer to the cooler climate provided by the Coral Sea.

Our initial research showed people were currently complaining about the many biting insects that appear near evening in the coastal locations for the first couple of hundred kilometres south of our next targeted town of Townsville. We had previously experienced these conditions elsewhere in Australia and hadn’t enjoyed those biting mosquitos or midges.

With the then, more comfortable feeling daytime temperature we decided to head south down one of those less travelled roads about 75 kilometres inland from the ocean. About 60 kilometres down the road we arrived at the historic township of Ravenswood.

Gold was discovered at Ravenswood in 1868 and it had experienced several booms and downturns over time. In 2020, mining recommenced using open cut methods and was expected to last into the 2030’s with currently about 300 staff employed.

We set camp at the showgrounds, which appeared to be an old oval, now a dust bowl with a rather dated, not so clean toilet block expecting to pay $15 a night. We went to pay our fee at the caretaker’s office and read a displayed sign posted by the local council for us to select a site and that fees were waived until further notice. Suddenly this looked like a very inviting location and we even had power to operate our air-conditioner. Word was the caretaker had taken ill and we suspected (under current conditions) they may had needed to be quarantined. An unexpected bonus from the year of covid-19 pandemic!

We spent a couple of days viewing Ravenswood and continued south for around 80 kilometres, arriving at Burdekin Falls Dam. There was a nice grassed caravan park with just a bit of a view of the dam waters. It was a location more appealing for the fisher people with a boat. It was great viewing of the dam wall with the road we were travelling along, continuing at the base of the dam wall. For us non fishing folk, the location of the road along the base of the dam wall was the most unique feature of this location. We did a couple of runs along the dam wall with our tow tug to obtain some realistic photographs of its size.

There was a mob of peacocks roaming about, visiting us a few times each day. We generally knew the location of the peacocks, within a vicinity of about half a kilometre due to their rather loud calls. Day one with our first encounter of the peacocks doing their circuit of all the camp sites in the caravan park was such a delightful, unexpected experience we provided them with some bird seed as a thankyou from us.

The following day at about the same time we had fed the peacocks we stepped out of the caravan to see the peacocks sitting nearby our door waiting for their food treat. After the scurry involved at “feed time,” all the birds sat down for a rest, including Mary with picture attached showing her legs up resting.

Our next planned destination involved around 135 kilometres of dirt road commencing on the other side of the dam wall. It felt surreal driving across the floor of the Burdekin River with the towering dam wall on our other side with the caravan in tow. 

We had been made aware there was a road crew with heavy machinery attending to maintenance of the dirt road.

We could hear the chatter of the road workers on our two-way radio notifying everyone of a sighting of an approaching caravan, (that was us) and a comment, ‘I haven’t seen them yet.’ That would have been because we were travelling at a slow cautious speed and we utilised the two-way radio to notify we were still coming.

 

They certainly knew how to welcome our arrival, anointing us in a cloud of dust.

We were the subject of chatter over the two-way radio for the next 10 minutes. Can you stop their caravan, caravan you can now proceed and please be careful of heavy road vehicles. It continued with notifications of our progress at various check points.

As it transpired there was the steady flow of tip truck road trains conveying road surface rubble along the length of our 135-kilometre route. We were watching several kilometres ahead for signs of dust clouds emerging above the tree canopy, indicating an oncoming road train and at times of one coming up from our rear. Then we would start looking for a safe spot to pull over to the side of the dirt road (at times barely a track) to allow for safe passing.

At about the 100-kilometre mark we thought we could see a large area covered by water ahead. It turned out to be the largest solar panel farm we had ever seen with around 2.44 million solar panels covering an area of around 50 square kilometres.

We came to a T junction with a main bitumized road. It was around 80-kilometres to the left for our planned south bound route or a few kilometres to the right, a location of a free camp in the town of Collinsville. We thought time out at a free rest stop for the night as appropriate, after a bit of a tiring days driving.

What a most pleasant surprise Collinsville free camp location turned out to be. There was a new amenity block with a fee of $2 for 5-minute hot showers, water hook up for around 50 caravans, a grassed area with several tables and seats protected by overhead roofing, free wi-fi, a dump point and a staffed information centre. It was an easy walk to the town centre, there was a worker’s club opposite the free camp entrance where we partook twice with a delicious meal at a special price of $10 each and we were struggling to fit in our last few mouthfuls. Twice we started out on a walk and greeted whoever was seated at one of the shaded tables, resulting in a conversation, one lasting a couple of-hours and the other closer to 5-hours. Each time we struck up a conversation we put our walk off to the next day. At least we got to look at the old jail cells at the information centre. Thus, one planned night at Collinsville transpired to four-nights, one over the maximum permitted of 3-nights. It did help with our last two nights being over the weekend when the information centre was unstaffed and with only a few campers occupying minimal space.

Collinsville was a coal mining town, with an emphasis on it’s historic past, but in present times it was much in decline with substantial deserted looking housing and businesses.

It was time to move on from Collinsville with scrutiny of travel brochures, electronic information and enquiring with fellow travellers around camp for locations we may enjoy to visit.