Written by Adele Machin
Sunday 22 June 2014
Brisbane – Moura 8hrs
Our adventure started at 8am on a misty morning which didn’t lift until we reached the Toowoomba range. From then on until Moura there was very little traffic and the roads were much better than the last time we travelled them a couple of years ago. (Then we could have lost our car in the potholes.)
You know you’re on holidays when the road goes off into the distance with telegraph poles on each side resembling a picket fence, the music is on with the Bee Gees and Dire Straits are playing “Telegraph Road”.
We had a bit of a scare when taking a shortcut to Moura through the coal mine (thanks for the directions Greg B, an interesting drive) when something hit our car and then flew off into scrub. John searched for the item, but couldn’t find it. The car didn’t feel right for a bit but then came right. What happened we’ll never know. lt looks intact.
It has been a warm day reaching 25 degrees but is cooling off quickly now.
Monday 23 June 2014
Moura – Longreach 8hrs
Woke up to 10 degrees and a beautiful day. John took a fabulous photo of the river we were camping near.
Dawson Creek
A long straight road common in the outback
The landscape was mainly flat, and when I say flat you could mainly only see the sky and no land. The Drummond Range was interesting and we followed the railway line up through the hills. John took a great pano of the landscape from a lookout.
From the Drummond Range lookout
Between Barky and Longreach there was so much road kill and slaughter of kangaroos, wild pigs, rabbits etc and quite depressing. The road was also really rough, if seal can be rough, and hard to drive on with a trailer.
We camped at a free camp in Longreach by the river and caught up with some friends we hadn’t seen for years, Colin and Renate, who are travelling north to Normanton. They had mentioned on Facebook that they would be in Longreach around this time so we hoped we’d get to see them. There were hundreds of caravans at this camp spot but very quiet considering the crowd. The caravan parked next to us tried to drown us when they did their washing up. (Didn’t have the water going into a bucket did they.) Anyway I managed to yell out and they came and put a bucket under the pipe.
John’s brother Brian and his wife Val will be travelling with us in the outback and we are to meet them at Winton tomorrow. Yesterday our friends Colin and Renate thought they saw John in Longreach, approached the person only to find it was Brian. (I always say they look alike but of course we never think we look like our siblings.) Renate was a bit confused though as she didn’t think Val looked like me.
We had a good night, lots of laughs and after a few drinks we got to bed reasonably early.
Free camp at Longreach
Tuesday 24 June 2014
Longreach – Winton 2hrs
You’re really in the outback when the earth is red, the wedge tail eagles are flying and there is road kill.
The morning was beautiful, 10 degrees, and we left around 8.30am to try and get to Winton by 10am. This run was through mostly flat country and not as much road kill. (It’s not wise to travel at dusk on these roads.) The seal was much smoother than yesterday and we made good time by getting there at 10.15am. The reason for the hurry was we were meeting other travellers in the Red Centre (RC) group and were booked to go to Lark Quarry to see a dinosaur dig by 12noon.
We met up with the other 3 cars who will be travelling to Alice with us and made it to Lark Quarry on time. The last time we had been out there was 2002 and the road was so rough and corrugated that our eggs scrambled. This time 50% of the road was sealed and the rest was dirt but not rough. Coming back one of the team, Val, decided she wanted to go back another way in the hope of getting some good photos. The first 5 mins of the trip was beautiful scenery and we stopped to take a panorama of the area, Val didn’t. The rest of the trip (1hr) was a dirt road, pretty rough and flat as. No photo opportunities. This road will forever be known to us as ‘the Valerie Way”.
Terrain from Lark Quarry
The Mail road from Lark Quarry back to Winton (The Valerie Way)
Back to Winton camping ground to set up as we didn’t get time to do that on arrival. Had a chat and met two new arrivals who are coming with us across the Plenty Highway to Alice only and then they are leaving us and traveling up to Darwin.
After dinner we went to see some local bush poets who were really entertaining. During the performance they asked for volunteers and John was picked. He had asked me not to laugh too loudly when we arrived so attention wasn’t directed at us, but alas that wasn’t to be. John was very entertaining, I have it on video for prosperity as it will probably be the one and only acting opportunity for him. (Though I did hear today that Hoges is doing a new comedy show in the bush so maybe John might get a part.)
Early to bed and early to rise tomorrow as we need to leave before the others as John and his brother have some business to do in Middleton.
Wednesday 25 June 2014
Winton to 100klms west of Boulia
Awoke to 14 degrees. Nice and warm which was unexpected as it started to get quite cold last night.
Today we’re off first to Middleton to find John and Brian’s uncle Walter’s grave. John and I found it in 2002 and we now want to show Brian and mark it out properly with pickets and chain and get GPS readings to pass onto other members of the family. I’d arranged through the Pub owner to ask the property owner if we can go on his property and erect something and he is happy for us to do this. The Pub owner is coming out with us as she is interested in the history of this property and hadn’t heard of this death. I have a paper cutting of the story from the Townsville Times in 1932 telling about his death.
We left 1hour earlier than the others, picked up the Pub owner (Val) and went to the property. I was a bit worried when we arrived there as there had been some new roads graded and I thought they may have graded over the grave. I had photos we had taken in 2002 that showed the grave from the house and also one with a mountain in the background. The house had changed and it was hard to read the direction from this photo. The one with the mountain was better and eventually I found it still with two of the posts in the ground and the other two dislodged posts nearby. (There had been a fence erected around the grave by the property manager in 1932 and this was the remnants of that.) John and Brian erected 4 pickets with white chain between, took photos and coordinates, and we set off to meet the others at the Middleton pub. It was a great feeling to have marked the grave so Walter will be acknowledged now by those family members who pass through.
Walter Lovell’s grave
Looking back towards Middleton
From Middleton we travelled through flat red land to Boulia. An oncoming truck threw up a stone onto our 1 week old windscreen and nicked it on the edge on the drivers side. We had a patch to put on it hoping that it would save the window. All will be revealed later if this works.
Boulia is the home of the Min Min. There is a centre which shows the Min Min story but we didn’t have time to go through it. (John and I had done it on previous trip.) We went for a walk around the town, let our tyres down in preparation for the rough roads we were expecting and set off for the Donoghue Highway. The plan was to travel about 100 kms to the Georgina River to camp for the night. The road was like a motorway, with the dirt road well graded and often kilometres of seal. So different to 2002 where it was the worse road in Queensland.
Eventually by about 4.30pm we arrived at our destination. One of the drivers wanted to camp in the river bed but the other 4 didn’t as this is a golden rule in the outback not to do this. There was a little bit of bantering from the one person but eventually we found a really nice place, with plenty of firewood and set up camp. Strangely there weren’t any flies.
The night became really cold and we all retired to bed reasonably early.
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| Our first bush camp fire by the Georgina River | Basic over night camp at Georgina River |
Thursday 26 June 2014
Georgina River to Plenty River (just outside Jervis Station)
We woke to 5 degrees had a nice cooked breakfast and set off around 9am. A reasonable run today, dusty drive with some rough spots and lots of bull dust but on the whole the road had been graded so not too bad. The scenery was ever changing but mainly flat and some rather large termite mounds. We called into Tobermorey Station where I was hoping to have an ice cream. We had stayed there in 2002 as it has a nice grassy spot for camping and amenities aren’t too bad. The shop then was really good but it is now very basic and no ice creams. How can you have a shop without ice creams? Anyway after a toilet stop we set off again to find a nice spot to have lunch.
Just before Tobermorey Station we stopped to take photos of the NT sign and changed our watches to NT time.
We found a spot for lunch with a few flies, and then took off again and around 4pm looked for a spot to camp. We found a really nice spot near a river, the river being sand, and all setup to have showers as we were all pretty dusty. There were thousands of flies when we arrived, I’m sure they were waiting for us, so we all grabbed our fly nets for some relief. Just before dusk they disappeared. We had a great fire and John tested his photographic skills with a great shot of the fire. We all had lots of laughs and eventually retired to a pretty cold night.
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| The Northern Territory border | Camp at Plenty River | A BIG termite mound |
the camp fire
Friday 27 June 2014
Plenty River to Alice Springs
We awoke to 1.5 degrees but it soon warmed up. A quick breakfast, pack up and off by 9am. Once again this was a reasonably easy trek and about 150klms from the Stuart Highway we hit bitumen. We called into Gem Tree Camping ground for a look and lunch and then off again to Alice.
As we travelled today the nick in our windscreen started to spread with a line moving across from right to left and looked like a map showing us the way. We thought of putting an arrow at the end of it and dots where towns were but in reality we needed another windscreen.
When we neared Alice we all dispersed to go shopping and we went to find a window repair shop. Windscreens O’Brien were in town and the bad news is it couldn’t be repaired so we needed to get a new one. That will be done tomorrow.
We found our caravan park where the whole group had booked into and setup. We had the luxury of an ensuite toilet/shower which meant a lovely looooong hooottt shower. After setting up we went and looked for other MySwaggers.
There is a line dancing night at the hall tonight so some of us “girls” attended and got some exercise dancing. Its actually harder than it looks and we all got a good workout.
Saturday 28-Sunday 29 2014
Alice Springs
It has been really cold and windy with the first morning being 5 degrees and this morning 2 degrees. We’ve got a secret weapon which is an electric blanket so we are at least snug and warm at night.
We stayed at the MacDonnell Range Holiday Park which is a Big 4. This is not a usual place for us to stay as we prefer bush camping but the whole group will be here and it gives us a chance to meet everyone before setting off on our Meander around the middle. There is a meet and greet time for the whole group of 15 families who are travelling together tonight. During the day some went sightseeing but we stayed in Alice to get our windscreen fixed, restock the fridge, checked the camper, fill the water tank etc. We have been in Alice before so decided to sightsee when we return back here for 2 days in a couple of weeks.
We drove into Alice to get some Beer/wine/spirit supplies only to find cops stopping us at the bottle shop. We had to show them our licence, tell them why we were buying and where we were staying and taking the grog afterwards. We also couldn’t buy wine until 6pm – 9pm and only one cask or one bottle.
The travellers came from Victoria/Western Australia/South Australia/New South Wales and Queensland. Mostly there were families with young children, a couple of ladies travelling together and families like us without our children. It was a diverse group which made conversation interesting. John the guy who organised the trip came from South Australia and he has done a great job organising polo shirts with our names on, stubby holders and put together a great Participants handbook.
The camping ground puts on free pancakes for breakfast every Sunday morning so we all rolled up for our share. The camping ground was really full as it is school holidays so there was a long queue for the pancakes. The record for pancakes per person is 14 so a few were going to try and beat the record. That would mean lining up 15 times. Good luck to them. I don’t think they made it.
Sunday is much warmer but in the evening it was chilly again. We’re off on our trek bush tomorrow leaving around 10am. Off to bed early.
