Possum Galore
A life ‘Down Under’!
Min Min Adventure - Day 5 - Betoota to Birdsville.
So…we had a dreadful night bush camping. We had not bothered to put the flysheet up and just had the tent inner because it had a lot of netting, we thought, to allow in any available breeze.
It was still 38 degrees at 10.00 pm! We were sweltering with no breeze at all. It’s a wonder I fell asleep but I did, I suppose because the previous nights sleep had been so broken. I awoke just after midnight to find the wind had picked up and it was now very windy indeed, in fact it seemed to be constant gale force.
I was worried about being smothered by the dust that you cold feel crunching between your teeth or that the tree we had pitched the tent under, for shade , would fall on us. I retired to sit inside the car for a few hours but eventually decided the fumes from the petrol canister, we had brought with us, was probably doing me more damage, so got back in the tent. I did fall asleep again for about two hours before being woken by the dawn cacophony! It sounded like every bird for miles around had landed in the tree above our tent and was screaming, panic stricken, about the terrible wind which was still blowing!
We just got up and battled to stuff everything in the car without it blowing away first and we left as fast as we could.
Will drove again and we headed towards Birdsville. There was more dirt road than sealed on this leg of the trip so again that was tiring.
Our first stop was to look at The Dreamtime Serpent on the side of a hill beside the road made from rocks collected locally.
The scenery was again flat and sparse and at times reminded me of the vast empty moorlands of the pennines. It was about a good two hour drive from Betoota to Birdsville so we got there pretty early on in the day.
We had a drive around (it’s not very big), went to the Information Centre, got a few supplies and then decided, beacuse the wind was still blowing and the caravan park had very little shade, to book a room at the Birdsville Hotel for the night. After all Birdsville is as far west as we are going on this trip and from tomorrow we will, in a round about way, starting to head back home again.
We visited the local Burke and Wills tree, took a peek at the Diamantina River and the billabongs at Pelican Point before finally being able to check into our hotel room.
“Are you going to Big Red later?” asked the receptionist. Big Red is the first sand dune of the Simpson Desert and is about 38 kilometres west of Birdsville.
“We are.” I said.
“Could I ask a favour?” she asked. “We have two guests staying from the Flying Doctor service who flew in today. Would you be able to fit them in?”
Zooey was packed with all our stuff but unpacked a lot of it and the upshot was we went out to Big Red in the evening to see the Sun set with Dr Helen and ‘Trigger’ the pilot.
Big Red was amazing. We had it all to ourselves and the dunes looked pristine with no other footprints. (Obviously the wind had helped with that). I did feel a little guilty to disturb the rippled sand scape with my footprints but we had to explore. It was the slowest sun set ever and I think it was because we had to be back at the hotel for dinner at 7.30.
We saw a flock of budgies and a hawk with a snake in its beak and a beautiful sunset on the very edge of the Simpson Desert.
Helen and Trigger were interesting companions. He flew for the Flying Doctor service now and Helen was over from the UK on a two year contract to work for the Flying Doctor service. They were on holiday and Trigger had borrowed a friends plane to fly Helen on an Outback Tour of Australia, as you do! They had flown in from Alice Springs and Birdsville was their last stop before heading back to work. Previously Trigger had flown company jets and had flown former Australian Prime Ministers on trips.
Helen had been all over the world and was an emergency trauma doctor. She had been the emergency doctor on various different car rallies around the World and now she had her own aerial chauffeur taking her on a whirlwind trip of the Outback. They were both lovely and I hope Trigger gets his gal.
Min Min Adventure - Day 4 - Windorah to Betoota.
So…our stay in the cabin was not as restful as we thought it would be. The air-con was noisy and there were lots of mosquitoes in the room. Will spent a good while getting rid of them but more kept on appearing. I awoke in the night to find he had escaped to the bunks beds in the other room. I spent a good half hour then killing more of the blighters before finally getting off to sleep again.
I awoke feeling nervous as we had once again changed our plans and decided, rather than head straight to Birdsville, to stop and spend a night bush camping by Browns Creek at Betoota in the hope of seeing the vast outback night sky.
It was all unknown and didn’t know what to expect.
We set off at 8.00 and after nipping to see the Windorah Solar array and quickly using the WiFi at the Information Centre, headed out into the wilderness again.
Will was driving today.
The scenery was very different now, endless flat plains with very few trees and the occasional sand hill. We stopped to look at some more Native Wells and then saw another ‘Point of Interest’ sign which pointed to the hole in Mt Henderson.
The road out of Windorah was sealed all the way to the Birdsville turnoff but after that there was a lot of dirt road kilometres to travel. Some of the dirt stretches were quite rocky and others very smooth.
It was always a relief when we came to a bit of road that had been sealed over.
It’s incredible that you can travel out here for hundreds of kilometres and not see another car.
The weather got hotter and hotter and at one point Zooey was telling us that the temperature outside was 44 degrees!
We stopped at Deon’s Lookout to admire the road ahead. Deon was a young man from Birdsville who had died in a helicopter crash years ago a few kilometres from the lookout. It was a nice memorial and a great view.
After Deon’s Lookout we only had 20 27 kilometres to go to Betoota. We had seen signs that the Betoota Pub was open. We had read in the information about the area that Betoota was a ‘Ghost Town’ and that the sign said ‘Population 0’.
The pub was indeed open and we went in for a pie and a drink. We found out the owner was away and that the two people there were just covering for awhile. It had been empty for sometime but is in the process of being renovated. They still had some way to go but it felt like a real outback pub.
Robyn was telling us they had been very busy the day before because it had been Melbourne Cup day and she hadn’t got to bed until after 1.00 am. I guess no one checks around here if you are open after hours!
We went to find a shady spot for our bush camp down by the creek. It was scorching and the flies were terrible. We spent the afternoon alternatively sitting in the creek to cool down and the retreating into the boiling tent to escape the flies. It was no fun at all.
Late afternoon we went back to the pub for a few more cold drinks and chatted with Robyn for a bit. We didn’t see any other customers both times we visited. WE left and headed back to Deon’s Lookout to watch the sun go down but were cheated as it sank behind a cloud. So we returned to our hot tent and Will cooked a pasta tea on the camp stove while I hid in the tent to avoid the mosquitoes and bugs attracted by the lights.
Min Min Adventure - Day 3 - Quilpie to Windorah.
So…I did eventually get some sleep, but no thanks to that flippin’ Barking Frog!
We were up, breakfasted, packed and off by 8.30.
First we went to see the Opal Altar in St Finbar’s Church, then nipped out to see what the other camping area in Quilpie was like. On the way we saw some emus so stopped to take pics. Unfortunately we walked straight into a patch of spiky weeds and Will couldn’t move in his crocs so I had to go back to the car for his boots. Yikes, those spikes were lethal. This ‘Outback’ malarky is full of challenges.
We never got to see the other campsite because it was through a closed gate. We headed back into Quilpie to the Airport to see where Amy Johnson landed years ago. I hope she wasn’t wearing crocs!
We then left Quilpie and headed off to Eromanga. I was driving today.
We hardly saw any traffic on the way to Eromanga, nor any wildlife. We,ve only see two kangaroos the whole trip so far.
Eromanga is Australia’s furthest town from the sea which is odd since we discovered at the Eromanga Natural History Museum that it is named after a huge inland sea that once covered the centre of this continent.
The Eromanga Natural History Museum is in the middle of nowhere but it was well worth the trip. We were in time for the 11.00 am guided tour. The young couple we saw up Baldy Top the evening before also rolled up for the same tour. Australia is a big place but the ‘Outback’ can be a small world!
Our tour guide was Shauni. She was brilliant.
The museum all started years ago after a local 14 year old boy found an interesting rock which turned out to be part of a fossilised dinosaur bone. The dinosaur that it came from was unlike any that had been found before. More excavations followed and the dinosaur was nicknamed ‘Cooper’. His species is still to be officially named but he is in the top 10 largest dinosuars in the World. Two 3d printed replica legs stand in the middle of the Eromanga museum and they one day hope to be able to display a full size replica.
They have 90 years of fossil recovery work lying on the shelves at the Museum encased in plaster to protect them until they can be properly cleaned.
They have gathered the remains of about five different dinosaurs like Cooper, each with niknames like Sid, Monty, Zac and Tom.
They also have bones from Diprotodon from near Eulo that we visited yesterday. Diprotodon is megafauna, ancient animals but younger than dinosaurs. They have been found in the mud wells near Eulo. Diprotodon was a prehistoric bear/marsupial with a rear facing pouch. We saw some Diprotodon jaws at the museum.
The whole visit was fascinating and we were glad we went.
We headed from Eromanga, north to Windorah, about another two hour drive. The road was bitumen all the way. Apart from two vehicles just outside Eromanga, heading south, we didn’t see any other vehicles for the next 260 kms! It is quite breathtaking to see the extent of all this road building out here when there is nothing but scrub for 260 kms between small towns.
The temperature outside rose steadily from the low to high 30’s, topping out at 39 degrees as we got near to Windorah. We stopped to have a look at Cooper’s Creek and and found wildlife in the toilet bowls at the roadside loos!
Windorah is very small. We found a shady camping spot at the town campsite but went to look at some nearby cabins before we set up the tent. The cabins were air conditioned and looked quite smart so we have paid to stay in No 6 for the night. We spent the rest of the afternoon sat in the cooling breeze of the air con rather than explore Windorah. Our neighbour next door is the Flying Doctor who stays here once a fortnight.
We had dinner in the evening at the pub. Will had Chicken Kiev and I had a huge Mixed Grill! We are avoiding all fish dishes as surely it cannot be fresh out here!
After having no signal, or WiFi yesterday we used the Pub’s WiFi to upload some pictures.
Tomorrow night we are intending to bush camp near Beetoota before getting to Birdsville the following day…so there maybe no more updates for a few days yet.
Min Min Adventure - Day 2 - St George to Quilpie.
So…we were packed up and off by 7.30 from our Pelican Rest camping site. We headed over the bridge we had seen the previous evening towards Cunnamulla. We had travelled this way before a few years ago so it was not new territory.
Not far out of St George I saw two dead dingoes hanging from a road side tree. I know Dingoes are not exactly welcome in these parts because of the damage they do to stock but really, do you need to hang them from a tree?
The road to Cunnamulla is pretty straight for the 300 kms, 3 hours plus, it takes to get there. Will was driving today and he was giving the finger to everyone we saw coming in the opposite direction, not in a rude way, he just raised the index finger on his right hand to every driver we passed. Some returned the gesture, others didn’t.
In Cunnamulla, we got some plastic camping bowls that we had forgotten and a pie! Mine promptly fell to pieces and I had to use one of the newly bught bowls to house it while I ate it.
From Cunnamulla we headed into new territory out towards Thargomindah. Again the road was pretty staright but the only difference I noticed was that up to Cunnamulla it was mostly ravens feasting on the roadkill, but after Cunnamulla it seemed to be just Whistling Kites.
We stopped at Eulo for a bit. It’s a small place known for its mud baths and for being an area where Diprotodon, a prehistoric marsupial bear/wombat fossils are found. We also had a look at the old Eulo Gaol before heading on to Thargomindah. We saw a dust devil or ‘Willy Willy’as Will calls them, a kind of mini dusty tornado on the way to Thagomindah. Going by the size of Eulo we began to wonder what we would find at Thargomindah, which was to be the site of our second nights camp.
It turned out to be underwhelming, with only an artesian pumping station and a 300 km round trip to see a Burke and Wills Dig Tree, in its favour. We did have a quick look at the Buloo River at Pelican point but saw no pelicans. We decided to change our plans and leave Thargomindah and head for Quilpie just over another 2 hours away.
We encountered our first bit of dirt road on the road to Quilpie and had to stop for some cattle. We also spotted our first emus of the trip.
We got to Quilpie about 4.00 pm and nipped into the Information Centre to find out about the local attractions. We chose a caravan park in the town with Artesian spa baths, but the weather was so hot that we didn’t feel like sitting in bubbling hot water.
We went out to Baldy Top Lookout just outside town to watch the sunset. We explored it’cave and rock formations for a bit before watching the sunset out West. Wehad the whole place to ourselves for ages but a young couple joined us just before the sunset.
We had dinner at the only pub in town serving food and both had the T bone specials.
‘The chips here are great’ said the friendly barmaid, but they came with the steaks plonked on top smothered in mushroom sauce so they ended up very soggy.
Back at the campsite we showered in the very nice amenities block but the water smelled of bad eggs as once again it is pumped from the art. I don’t think I could live with that every day.
Sleep was difficult due to a Barking Frog that monotonously called in to the early hours.
Min Min Adventure - Day 1: Home To St George.
So...today we set off on our adventure out West. We wanted to get going by 9.00 am and actually set off at 8.55!
The first part of the journey was quite depressing as we passed piles of bulldozed trees cleared away to protect nearby fences. Such awful destruction.
First we headed to Inglewood where we stopped and had a quick wander, bought some ice and then continued West. Next we stopped at Yelarbon to see the silo art and a peek at the lagoon then headed to Goondiwindi. Here we missed a turn and scraped past the NSW border road block by going round a roundabout to stay in Queensland. (The border doesn't open until Tuesday).
We didn't stop in Goondiwindi and headed straight on for St George. This area is known as the Wheat Belt and we passed vast fields of wheat and occasional mounds of harvested grain. The road trains started to get bigger with trucks towing three trailers.
We stopped near North Talwood to take a quick look at an Aboriginal site, where wells had been carved out of the rock to provide water for travelling mobs on their journey to the Bunya Mountains.
The roads were pretty straight and the land became flat and scrubby and I was surprised not to see more roadkill than we did, but that was a good thing.
We had lunch at the Nindigully Pub by the Moonie River, purportedly the oldest pub in Queensland and also famous because Hugh Jackman made his first film there 'Paperback Hero'.
Will had a steak cooked just as he likes it and I had crispy pork belly. Delicious!
It was not that much further on from there that we arrived at our destination for the day, St George. We set up our tent at the Pelican Rest Caravan Park and then had a sunset stroll by the Balonne River. The tranquility was shattered by speed boats and jetskis whizzing past. We saw some water skiers and both thought they were paraplegic until we realised they were kneeling on their skiis.
It was a lovely river walk apart from the water yobs and we ended up at the bridge, which we will go over tomorrow on our continuing journey West. We discovered it was actually a weir, holding back the river for the town, and on the other side the river bed was practically dry.
It has all been quite demoralising today to see how Man is just raping the land, whether it be to protect their animal fencing, produce mountains of grain or just hold back rivers to water crops and provide river hoons with a few hours entertainment. Practically every house we passed this evening had sprinklers going watering their lawns and then you see the mighty Balonne River, just below the bridge, reduced to a trickle. It can't be right!
