On the road to Alice

Took off pretty early in the morning – but still one of the last out, ha ha. Gee, these grey nomad types are in some kind of race to get going – possibly to snap up the best spots at the next campsite!  Anyways, drove west to the end of the Barkly Highway, where it meets the Stuart Highway at ‘Threeways’.  After a brief ice cream at the roadhouse we turned south - destination Tennant Creek. 

Hmmmm, what to say about Tennant Creek.  Lets just say that there was a big shiny new police station and a party going on all night that we weren't invited to.  Sydney Morning Google told us that there had been a crime spike in Tennant Creek in the days before we arrived, and the court roster was full!  Apparently someone carted in a bunch of kids from outlying regions to compete in a football competition, without providing for them while in town, so left to their own devices...

Spent the arvo setting up and swimming in the (bloody cold) pool, if you call jumping in, getting wet and getting straight back out again swimming that is.  Rich and Dylan tried to chase a willy willy that formed in the camp but couldn’t quite catch it.  Took a drive up to the gold mining museum where we saw the old workings of an old mine – Dylan was convinced that he had found an overlooked piece of gold bullion.  

The 'social museum' was really well done and both Rich and Kel enjoyed reading about and looking at old photographs explaining the hard history of Tennant Creek.  Couldn't help but notice though that the white history of the town had few references to the original inhabitants - like two separate worlds.  

Didn’t get much sleep that night due to aforesaid party and the pride of feral cats prowling around the camp site.  Wondering if it is normal to see this many cats in the desert.  

Slightly bleary eyed, we took off again for our next stop on the Stuart Highway, just south of the Devil's Marbles at Wycliffe Well.  For the uninitiated, Wycliffe Well is the UFO capital of Australia.  According to their brochure, they spot one here every couple of nights!  This is because there are 'ley lines' in the sky that intersect above WW - an interchange on an intergalactic highway so to speak.  It struck a chord with Rich’s ‘I want to believe’ sentiment and we loved the quirkiness of the campsite.  Someone has gone to a lot of trouble, decorating the whole place with alien art and other bizarre features - Elvis, giant pig, man made mountain lookout.  They even had their own alien preserved in a glass cabinet!



Elvis spotted

We scored a nice spot and the kids made friends with the resident donkeys, emus and camp ground assistants.

Later in the arvo, we ventured out to the awesome Devils Marbles for a look around and a few sunset photos of the rock formations before heading back for dinner.

We finished the night off with some portraits of us and our alien friends and a bit of UFO spotting, Dylan even seeing one moving slowly and satellite-like across the sky (after which he refused to walk to the bathrooms by himself).

  

Farewell Queensland, hello NT

Picked the caravan up and spent the night in Mt Isa – heading out to the ‘Buff’s Club’ for dinner (and a show).  Ariel reached a personal milestone in the morning, losing her first tooth (with a little encouragement).  Let's see if the tooth fairy does a better job of remembering this time!

Later in the morning Rich received some very sad news that his close work friend Graham had passed away suddenly.  As well as being a work colleague and friend, Graham played a special role in our wedding by piloting Kel to the Basin in his boat.  We were in shock at this news and were in sombre spirits for the rest of the day, reflecting on Graham’s life.  Had an unremarkable lunch at Camooweal before setting off again over another flat, mostly featureless 15 kilometres to the NT border.  

After crossing, continued along even flatter and more featureless country to the Barkly Homestead.  Truly an oasis in the desert, with extortionate fuel prices to match, we had a decent pub meal and stayed the night. 

We were lulled to sleep by the thunderous purr of their diesel generators. Apparently, the reason that the price of fuel and goods at Barkly Homestead was high was because they had to burn 500L of diesel every day in their generator to keep the power on.  SOLAR, anyone?!

NT is a little short on big things, but it seems to be well supplied with the big nothing!

Boodjamulla (Lawn Hill) National Park and Riversleigh

Next day we unloaded all of our camping gear from the caravan onto the 4WD, loaded up the caravan with inessentials, left the caravan at the caravan park and began the long, bumpy trek along the endlessly corrugated road to Adels Grove, Riversleigh and Boodjamulla National Park (home of the Lawn Hill Gorge).  This is easily the roughest road that we have been on yet - about 2.5 hours on gravel and dirt - and no-one told us that the Gregory River was in our way...

 

Yes, the dam wall that you see is the road!  About 0.5m at the deepest point.



Another of the three river crossings on the way in

Kel's 4wd prowess brought us, including Flynn the newly named car, through unscathed.  On the way we stopped at the Riversleigh World Heritage site to check out the in-situ crocodile and bird fossils and for Kel to reminisce.  

Upon arriving at Adels Gorge, we found a lovely shady campsite and set up camp. Discovered an unfortunate packing fail - the plug had become separated from the airbed :((( The kids explored "the island" and we finished the day with dinner and a campfire.  Rich started getting hot and cold sweats while cooking the sausages, climaxing with a huge burst of vomit (away from the sausages) before going for a lie down.  He emerged a little later a little more lucid – put this event down to a bout of heat stroke.

Had a day of rest at the campsite, including some dreaded schoolwork.  We went for a swim in the crocodile infested rapids (well, one stationary freshwater crocodile anyway).  The kids enjoyed floating down on the rubber rings.

Rich was given the mission by Kel to find a solution to the missing airbed plug – which he did by sculpting a potato.   Would it pop out in the middle of the night???. Another dinner by the campfire and then gingerly climbed into bed.

We woke up on a still inflated airbed – Rich is a dead set McGyver legend! Our third day at Adel’s grove consisted of more swimming, Rich getting a massage from a senior citizen and then an afternoon walk around Lawn Hill Gorge where we bathed in the beautiful cascades before taking the trek to the other waterfalls. Rich went for a swim there – everyone else was a bit too chicken due to the resident freshwater crocs. Got back in time to cook dinner, again by the campfire.  Potato plug had shrivelled during the day - but wait, there's a carrot - fit for purpose!  Woke up to an intruder overnight - a feral cat that got into the tent through a hole (about the size of Kel's foot) and went berserk.

On our final day, got up early and headed back to the gorge where we hired a canoe and paddled us and the kids upstream. Upon arriving at the waterfalls, Dylan and Ariel jumped overboard and enjoyed a swim amongst the waterfalls.

Packed up camp in the morning and took the long corrugated drive back to Mt Isa, having a close encounter with a couple of Willy Willys along the way.  From a distance they looked like smoke from a fire.  Up close their size and fury was seriously impressive! 

Earth's treasures - garnet hunting and Mt Isa

After leaving Winton not so early, we decided to see how far we got before making a decision on where to stay the night.  We admit there was a greedy gleam in the eye when we thought about the lovely claret red stones that our fellow traveller had by the handful.  So in the end, we followed the map they gave us and turned off the highway onto a non-descript cattle station called Marandon.  After travelling along a long sandy track for 14km or so, and opening and closing several cattle gates, we realised we had gone too far. An 18 point turn later, and some friendly advice from some of the station-hands that happened upon us led to another completely secluded campsite next to the garnet fossicking area.  The farmer kindly lets anyone onto his property, provided they follow a few basic courtesies, to collect as many stones as they can find.

After setting up, we headed off into the hills in search of garnet. Once we ‘got our eyes in’ we realised the stuff was everywhere and the desire to find the biggest chunk was hard to ignore. 

Pretty sure that Kel won this with her ‘eagle eyes’ truly in form. After dinner, Rich headed back up the hill for some late night fossicking and a phone call home to wish Alice (who was heading back to England) well.

After some early morning fossicking (and getting the kids to perform some hard labour for their breakfast), we were back on the road with our haul of garnet.

Dragged the caravan along the dirt road, and back on the highway, through Cloncurry and onto Mt Isa - Bob Katter country!  (and Rob Katter as it turns out - they are in two different levels of government, clearly getting set to take over the world).

Mt Isa announces itself well before you arrive with the chimney stacks at the mine, which is right on the edge of town.  Kel came here about 12 years ago and many of those recollections remained true (see favourite below). 

No fun stuff and not even any fighting - how is a person supposed to have a good time around here?

First stop was the Mt Isa museum which provided us with an insight into the formation of the town, its growth and identity. On one side of the river is the town, on the other is the mine itself.  They mine several elements here - the focus seems to be on zinc and copper at the moment but in the past lead and silver have also been extracted.  We also heard that there are only 6 productive years left - which of course lead us to wonder what happens to the 20,000 odd townsfolk then?  We also found it interesting that residents have access to regular blood tests to monitor their lead levels.

Had a tragic fast food dinner, made slightly more acceptable by the great view of from the lookout.  

Oh the shame - lucky you can't smell us too!

Australia's dinosaur trail

Our next stop was Hughenden, site of the world’s emptiest (but most excellent) skate park, and most refreshing (if not a little green) public swimming pool. Oh – it also had a visitors centre boasting a decent dinosaur / fossil exhibition.

Muttaburrasaurus

Muttaburrasaurus in the flesh



We headed to Richmond the next day, another of the three fossil centres out here.  Millions of years ago, this area was covered by an inland sea.  It's pretty hard to believe when you see the dry channel country that has replaced it. 

There have been many fabulous marine fossil finds on surrounding cattle stations over the last couple of decades.  There are a couple of fossicking sites here (tourist brochure – “you’ll dig Richmond”) so we set out to try our luck before the heat set in. 

After a paltry amount of digging (okay it was pretty hot) the digger went on strike and the fossicking was moved to a more obvious location.  Here we found plenty of evidence of life under the sea.  We then moved to another location where the kids took a 4WD driving lesson with Rich while Kel braved the hot sun to look for more fossils.  Back in Richmond, we checked out the Kronosaurus Korner fossil museum where many fine specimens of Kronosaurus (pre-historic crocodile-like thing), Pleisiosaur (long necked swimming dinosaur), Icthyosaur (pre-historic dolphin-like thing), turtles and Nautilus could be seen.  The fossil displays were pretty stunning.

Kronosaurus

Minmi - not marine, just unlucky

Pliosaur

Winton was our next destination, again at the end of a very long, empty and sometimes scary highway. We decided to bar the caravan parks and head out of town to stay in Bladensburg National Park.  It took 20kms of pretty rough dirt road to get to the secluded camping spot.  It was dusty, hot and for the first time – completely empty.  Be careful what you wish for!  Alert but not yet alarmed, we decided to give it a shot.  After setting up, did the 40km round trip into town for an ice-cream, some water and a bash on the outback drum kit.  

No shops open to top up supplies so improvised with a hot dog meal back at the campsite followed by a wonderful night and campfire under the stars completely alone (except for the sheep(?!) and the feral cat Rich stalked for a while with his slingshot).

Next day’s mission was a trek out to Larks Quarry – site of the dinosaur stampede.  A couple of hundred kms south of Hughenden and Richmond, this whole area was once the forested foreshore of the inland sea.  Possibly not a surprise to hear that we were running slightly late (it was 9:00am), resulting in a ‘relaxing’ drive along a 100 km dirt road at 100km/hr to make the 10:00am session of the guided tour.  Fortunately we arrived alive and in time, if not in complete marital harmony. 

The kids enjoyed the first 10 minutes or so of the tour in the large metal shed with great acoustics. Rich and Kel were initially a little bit suspicious of what appeared to be fossilised footprints of a one-legged dinosaur hopping after its prey until we were assured that dinosaurs ran one foot in front of the other. Once suspicions were allayed, and the kids were seated comfortably on the ground, Kel and Rich were able to fully appreciate what was on show here.  The older gentleman presenting the information has surely devoted his life to this place.

 We headed back to camp in a much more leisurely fashion and enjoyed lunch and another afternoon of tree climbing, bone collecting and swinging out over the river.

We then spent the later part of the afternoon at the ‘Age of Dinosaurs’ museum where we were presented with some very interesting dinosaur bones. What set this exhibition apart was that they presented the bones (holotypes, no less, for the zoologists out there) and then showed a computer generated model of the bones moving inside the dinosaur and Jurassic Park like mini-movies to provide some context for our younger audience members.  A seriously impressive (not to mention massive) couple of dinosaur specimens!

Finished the day with another night under the stars at our secluded campsite with a campfire, this time not completely alone.  Rich decided at some point during the night that this place was ‘the middle of nowhere’.  Rich went to bed watching the feral cat, David Attenborough style through the gauze of the caravan.

The next morning we were approached by neighbouring campers and their kids who had a bit of a chat and provided us a map of a garnet fossicking area in the direction we would be headed on the way to Mt Isa.