Badger Galore
Staying ‘Up Over’ for a while.
Min Min Adventure - Day 6 - Birdsville to Boulia.
So…we had a good night’s sleep in our room at the Birdsville Hotel. Will said there was a mossie in the room but it didn’t bother me for a change. There was no cacophony of bushland birds to welcome this day but there were two fellas loudly discussing business issues and complaining about bosses right outside our door.
We saw Trigger and Helen flying off to Broken Hill and we were off again just after 9.00. We stopped to look at the Artesian bore water being pumped out of the ground into cooling ponds on the edge of the town. The creek that flowed away was still steaming.
Our next stop was a grove of Waddi trees about 12 kilometres down the road. These trees are very rare and supposedly were between 500 and 1000 years old. The wood is very hard, difficult to burn and has been known to break axes.
Our next stop was the Carcoory Ruins, an old farmstead on land once owned by Sir Sidney Kidman. 5000 cattle had to die ia a terrible drought before they decided that the land was not suitable.
The land was once again very flat, but seemed to be even more sparsely populated by trees. We saw a couple of emus but apart from that only a few cattle dotted about here and there
Bedourie was the first town we came to after 180 kms. We stopped at the Road House to get petrol but nothing came out of the pump. There was a bit of fencing around the front of the building but a sign on the door said it was open and to use the side door. I went round and opened the door. The floor was covered with piles of tools and various materials but there was not a soul to be seen. It most definitely was not open. I was just backing out when I spotted a figure standing to to my left. It made me jump but on closer inspection I saw that it was, Elvis Presley, well, a full size model of him, singing with his guitar.
There was no other petrol in Bedourie and even the Information Centre was closed. We looked at an old Mud Hut and a Dust Storm sculpture and then quickly left. We had brought a can of petrol with us just in case so if we started to get low we could always rely on that to top up the tank.
It was another 190 kms to Boulia, our destination for the day.
Our next stop was the Vaughn Johnson Lookout. The view was spectacular and so flat way out to the horizon. There was a family from Western Australia in their swish camper truck up there too. They were headed to Adelaide via Coober Pedy. It sounded like they were having a great trip.
We came to a place where there were a few more Waddi Trees before we got to Boulia.
Boulia is the Land of the Min Min Lights.
The Min Min Lights are strange lights that people have reported seeing around these parts for years. They are only seen at night and appear to hover and even follow people.
We went straight to the Min Min Experience at the Boulia Visitor centre. The show was on every hour and I could see that the 4.00 pm one was booked out.
“Are we too late to see the show today?” I asked the lady at the counter.
“It’s very quiet,” she said, “I can fit you in now.”.
Will and I had the 3.00 pm Min Min Experience all to ourselves for $25 each. The woman introduced it as a unique state of the art laser and animatronic show. We were handed a torch for Health and Safety reasons because it was dark inside and the show began. Firstly some robotic chap, sat in a rocking chair outside the ‘Min Min’ pub, welcomed us and said if we wanted to know more about the Min Min lights we should go inside. These animatronic models had rubber faces moulded from real faces and looked quite alarming and creepy as their eyes moved, and mouths opened and closed. I thought they looked like the talking dead.
Inside we walked through various different, but beautifully created, dioramas where we heard of people’s Min Min encounters accompanied by spooky low lighting and ominous music. Finally we were told to get on the bus and we entered a room with rows of seats. We sat down and a screen showed the bus driver turning around to speak to us and welcome us onboard. Then we set off through the desert, (but not really). I suddenly noticed the seats next to me appeared to be moving and then realised all the seats were moving slowly around. We were on a revolving floor. Moody music played and lightning flashed and there was distant thunder as the scenery slid past in front of us before strange floating lights appeared (projections) dancing around us.
In the end the Bus driver said “ If you go looking for the Min Min you won’t see them. The Min Min chose when and where and to whom they will appear. They come looking for you.”
The whole thing lasted about 45 minutes and it was certainly different and great that we had it to ourselves.
Boulia also had the best town shop we had seen in days, though I did nearly tread on a huge, ginger cat lying across one of the aisles.
We went and pitched our tent at the Boulia Caravan Park by the bone dry Burke River. The site we chose seemed perfect and then after we had actually set everything up we noticed that the nearby tree made a sound like a circus clown car horn as two branches rubbed together in the wind. There was also a pony wandering about as well as a goat, a calf and a baby kangaroo.
We went back into town to explore on foot. We saw the Red Stump, Australia’s first 3d crossing at the school, a Corroboree tree (which was another Waddi Tree) and three actual live Brolgas! (A large Crane).
We had ‘ Camel Hump’ burgers for dinner at the pub, but I don’t think they were made from camel hump. I think the name was to distinguish them from the other Camel Burger on the menu which didn’t have a Cajun dressing or onion rings. After dinner we headed out of town to view the 360 degree , horizon to horizon, night sky which was amazing! I saw three shooting stars and made three wishes.
As we were driving back, we saw two bright lights away to the right they were moving closer to each other and then apart and then one of them disappeared and we could only see one of them for quite some time.
Were they the actual Min Min lights?
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.
