Joined: 20/4/2015 Gold Member 
Forum Posts: 234
| Site Reviews Total: | 0 |
|
| Site Reviews 2024: | 0  |
| Site Reviews 2023: | 0 |
| Site Reviews 2022: | 0 |
| Site Reviews 2021: | 0 |
| Site Reviews 2020: | 0 |
| Site Reviews 2019: | 0 |
| Site Reviews 2018: | 0 |
|
| Site Nights 2024: | 0 |
| Site Nights 2023: | 0 |
| Site Nights 2022: | 0 |
| Site Nights 2021: | 0 |
| Site Nights 2020: | 0 |
| Site Nights 2019: | 0 |
| Site Nights 2018: | 0 |
|
I left Broome early, my destination this first day was east of Halls Creek where I was hopeful of finding a waterhole to camp by. The forecast for that region was in the low 40s so if I could have a swim late in the day it would be a bonus!
On the main highway just past the turnoff to Derby I saw this beautiful old Boab beside the road.
An hour or so later I came across a sign post saying, “The Boab Rest Area”, if the large Boab near Derby is thought to be around 1,500 years old, then the specimen here would have to be quite a bit older again as it was considerably larger. It was interesting that this tree had quite a bit of it’s wet season foliage on display, more than I had seen on any other on this trip.
A quick stop at the Fitzroy River to stretch the legs and then I was off again.
The road between Fitzroy Crossing and Halls Creek is pretty flat and uninteresting, the only pics I took along the near 300 ks was at the Ngumpan Cliffs near the rest area of the same name.
East of Halls Creek and north of Caroline Pool is a track that after 14 ks leads you to an old stone hut. It was constructed in the 1880s and was the last stop for travellers heading to the newly discovered gold fields at Old Halls Creek from the nearest port at the time, Wyndham.
Made of river stones from a nearby (dry) creek, it was as basic as it gets.
I then arrived at Old Halls Creek which is quite an historic place, it was the site of the first gold discovery in WA. In 1885 Charles Hall found a 28-ounce nugget beside a creek which in time bore his name. Charlie and a mate Jack Slattery sailed up the coast to Derby and then made their way up the Fitzroy River before cutting across country to the Elvire River. They struck gold virtually everywhere they went and by the time they returned to Derby they were carrying over 200 ounces of gold.
The gold rush was short lived but it’s location helped establish the Ports of Derby and Wyndham.
During the rush most of the town was just makeshift tents, strangely after the gold was all but gone Halls Creek developed into a small centre for local trade. It had a Post Office, Hospital, Police Station, two stores and a hotel all made from more substantial materials, mostly mud!
There are quite a few ruins in the area and a most interesting cemetery, although due to time and heat restraints I didn’t revisit the cemetery this time. The main building ruins have had a roof erected over them with a cyclone mesh fence built around it to help preserve whats left of the mud built walls. It’s a pity that openings weren’t built into the mesh barrier as it is virtually impossible to photograph the remains now.
The town was moved in 1948 to a new location on the main highway where Halls Creek is now, this was due to better access and availability of water, the last resident abandoned the old town in 1954.
I now pushed on to Sawpit Gorge where I was pleased to find water still there after the long dry season. Boy was that refreshing, after more than 800 ks driven and it being stinking hot, I spent a fair bit of the rest of the day in it.
With a bit of cloud about I was hopeful of a nice sunset, and maybe a bit of colour on the nearby cliffs. I scrambled up to a vantage point and over a short period of time captured these images.
The next day I travelled further east crossing back into the NT, I was now on the Buntine Hwy.
Early morning cloud looked threatening but it soon burnt off.
I stopped at a very significant place along the road, Kalkarindji, better known as Wave Hill.
In 1966 Vincent Lingiari led the workers and their families off Wave Hill Station and began a ten-year strike. It was thought at first they were after better conditions and pay (which were atrocious) but they were after much more, something that was theirs already, they wanted their land back. It’s an involved story but a fascinating one, it eventually led to Aboriginal Land Rights and a whole lot more.
There are a number of interpretative signs and shelters along what is now known as the Wave Hill Walk Off Track. The track which has been heritage listed, begins at Jinparrak (Old Wave Hill Station) and ends at the gravesite of Vincent Lingiari.
Vincent’s granddaughter, Selma Smiler, said “acknowledging the track has fostered a wonderful community spirit, we want to keep the Gurindji alive for future generations, we’re proud to tell the story along the Walk-Off track, my grandfather would be proud too,”
Thousands attended a festival and the grand opening of the track in 2016, the 50th anniversary of the Wave Hill Walk-off the birth of Aboriginal land rights.
Three bough shelters built along the track have been recognised for their innovative design, winning an award from the Australian Institute of Architects in 2017.
Paul Kelly wrote a wonderful song about those events, one that most of us have heard. “From Little Things, Big Things Grow”
I pushed on finally pulling up stumps at Elliott on the Stuart Hwy, it had been a long day (just under 900 ks) the pool at the Caravan Park got a work out, no one else about so it was all mine!
One thing that partly concerned me there were the “Bats”, as I was doing some laps in the pool that night in near total darkness, Bats would swoop down and have a drink from the pool as I swam up it. I sure hoped their radar was working as I reckon they were so close to my face at times they must have missed me by millimetres, loosing an eye by getting smacked in the face by a Bat would be an interesting story but not much fun for Big Col!!
Next morning I drove a few ks down the road and then turned left on to the Barkly Stock Route, not many drive to Melbourne this way but hey, what else would you expectl!!
This Stock Route was created in 1877 when Nat Buchanan crossed it for the first time. With long dry stages and at times very little feed, this was tough country for man and beast, many drovers and their stock were lucky to survive the crossing (some didn’t) it was into this foreboding country I now drove.
The road ahead seemed to go on and on, which it did!!
And then after a hundred ks or so I saw something that at first I couldn’t recognise, as I got closer it became clearer that I had at last come across something different, a couple of shrubs!!!
After hitting the Tablelands Highway I headed south and then took the Ranken Road, another route through not often travelled country where again the feeling of isolation and desolation was all about me.
The soil composition at times was slightly different so that was something interesting/different as were a couple of trees that I saw along the way.
I then came to the Connell’s Lagoon Conservation Reserve, a fenced off area to protect it from cattle when drovers take them through the area. There are some unique native species found there so protecting it ensures their long term survival. I took a track up to an old water tank and trough, you can see the importance of creating this refuge for outside of it’s boundaries there was hardly a blade of grass to be found.
Further on, another tree and then nothing again.
Travelling such vast distances through such barren country I never get bored, I think of all sorts of different things and I remember being puzzled about those isolated trees. Why did single trees grow with no others for maybe a hundred ks and where did they come from, a parent tree, seed or just what. Why did and indeed how did they survive? Kept my little brain occupied for awhile anyway!!
As I approached the Barkly Highway the vegetation did change and shortly after I was in the big smoke again, the thriving metropolis of Camooweal.
I had never been there before but for some reason I thought it would have been a lot bigger than what it was, nothing like what I expected.
This next pic puzzled me at the time, it was an event that I wasn't aware of and the timing/date of crossing the Simpson Desert didn’t ring true. (First Crossed by Madigan in 1939) and to get to South Australia from Birdsville you don’t have to go into near the Simpson, you just keep heading south. (The Birdsville Track crosses Sturt’s Stony Desert and parts of the Strzelecki Desert).
Still a great effort and a very worthy and generous gesture.
A mural depicting that event!!!
I stayed that night at Mt Isa, after spending a few hours laying in the parks pool I looked a bit like a wrinkled prune (but a cool and refreshed one!)
A pic of that nights sunset from the towns main lookout.
My first stop the next morning was an art site that I hadn’t been to before. This region was inhabited by the Kalkadoon Aborigines, their ferocity, determination and skilled tactics used to defend their lands from European incursions, made them the elite of all Aboriginal Warriors.
Alas government sanction retribution with huge numbers of police with far superior weaponry caused their near total annihilation. Massacres with deaths in there hundreds occurred and in only a few short years more than a thousand had been wiped out.
This site is called the Painted Rocks, beside the Warrigal Waterhole. The track to it started out ok but deteriorated pretty quickly.
An interesting rock formation just near the art site.
My next stop was at the Corella Dam, it was created in 1959 to supply water to the Mary Kathleen Uraniam Mines township.
Beside the road not far from Cloncurry is an Aboriginal Memorial that marks the boundary between two different indigenous peoples, the Kalkadoon and Mitakoodi. It was built in 1988 as a bicentennial project, it has been frequently vandalised and in 1992 it was destroyed by an explosion, boy there are some low life around!!
Not far from there along side the banks of the Corella River is another memorial, this time to Burke and Wills.
From near Cloncurry I headed south towards Phosphate Hill Mine, then Chatsworth on my way to Boulia, definitely taking the back roads there. At Wills River (named by Robert O’Hara Bourke to acknowledge his 2nd in command) I took these pics showing the current bridge and the old crossing which was laid down in the late 1800s
Twenty five ks before Boulia I came across a sign post, all it said was Police Barricks pointing down an obscure track. (Pity about the spelling !) That was all I needed to stumble across another significant historical site.
It was here in 1875 on the banks of the Bourke River a Native Police Force was stationed, a number of stone buildings were constructed and although not a lot remains today, you can still see from whats left, those buildings were quite substantial for the time.
In 1882 an account of the site in The Queenslander Newspaper noted that:
“By-the-bye this is the most respectable looking native police camp I have seen in Queensland, there seems to be a place for everything and everything in its place”
In 1875 Boulia didn’t exist, it was established in 1879 and then in 1884 the Police stationed at the Barracks site were moved to it and so the buildings were left to the elements.
The reason that particular site was chosen in 1874 was due to a waterhole that even in the driest of times held water, that waterhole today is called The Old Police Barracks Waterhole. In this current extreme drought there was still water although considerably lower than normal.
For the modern day traveller a picnic shelter has been provided and I’m told the fishing there can be quite productive.
The first Europeans to discover this site were the Bourke and Wills expedition in 1861, they camped nearby at a site writing in their journals, “the (Bourke) River was broad and deep flowing clear as crystal between clumps of melaleucas and gum saplings”
Wills also wrote at the time, “the country has the most verdant and cheerful aspect with an abundance of feed and water everywhere”
Not so now.
As I approached Boulia the intensity of the current drought became more obvious, it would be a fore runner of what I would see over the next day or so.
Although that tree looked quite dead the few needles (leaves) that it still had, had a tinge of green to them so it was surviving but probably only just.
As time was getting on that day I just took a few pics around Boulia before continuing my trip, I had been there on quite a few occasions previously. Their main water tank on the edge of town had been painted years earlier, before it was all the rage to do such things. It would have been a bit of an eye sore where it was located so they decided to change that, many places are now doing the same thing as well as using such sites as tourist attractions.
Robinson Park in the centre of town has the sides of their amenity block painted with a number of local and rural scenes. I’m not sure of the accuracy of those as indicated by the Bourke and Wills headstone, or the Brush Turkey (the nearest one to there could be 1,000 ks away).
The oldest stone building in town is the heritage listed James Edward Jones built home from the mid 1880s. It is now the Boulia Heritage Complex which houses farm machinery, Indigenous artifacts, early pioneer history and ancient fossils.
In particular it is home to a 100 million year old fossil of a marine reptile which were abundant in the area when it was an inland sea. It is a Plesiosaur fossil which is 80% complete and is among the worlds best discoveries.
The centre was closed when I was there but previously Jen and I had been through it so it didn’t bother me, plus it was getting quite late and I still had some ks to do.
The rest of that day and indeed the next part of my trip home can be viewed in my next report.
Regards Col.
-------------
The worst day above ground, is a whole lot better than the best one under it. Live life to the fullest while you can.
|
Topic: The Outback, Heading For Home (Pt 9)
