KKK No. 2 Adavale to Boulia

“K K K”

 (‘Kimberley Karavan Kapers’ - Bruce and Audrey)

No: 2    Adavale to Boulia

April 15, day 10, finds us departing Adavale on the 224km unsealed road to Blackall. The first half is hard red Mulga country, although the road surface was mostly fair, and we saw a live 2 metre deadly “Western Brown" Snake on the roadside; then we came out of the red country, across a rocky escarpment, ‘The Jump-up’, and down into the fertile Listowel Valley seeing a few Kangaroos and several Emus on the last 100km of soft well grassed Black Soil country into Blackall, where we arrived at the Barcoo River Campground behind the town at lunchtime.

Blackall (pop 1588) occupies black-soil flats along the Barcoo River , with the main street comprising three blocks, and like most western towns has a water supply from the Great Artesian Basin but, it’s different in that the town supply here  is pure drinkable water straight from the tap with no bore taste or smell.

  
Blackall’s other claims to fame include “The Black Stump”, which was used as a base in 1887 to rest a huge theodolite while the government was surveying the far west, and anything West of it was referred to as “being beyond the Black Stump”. The Big Ram Museum, honouring legendary Shearer Jack Howe who shore a record 321 Sheep in 7 hours here; the Blackall Woolscour is the only fully intact steam powered plant left in Australia, and in 1885 Blackall became the first town in Queensland to sink an artesian bore. 

 

We spent 4 nights in Blackall, and spent our time walking around the town looking at the attractions, with a few millimetres of rain making the campground black soil very sticky under foot. Met some nice people here and enjoyed Sundowners under a rising Full Moon.

Best advice was to head west to Isisford which we did on Good Friday and spent Easter camped on the shady riverbank beside the weir on the (Outer) Barcoo River right at the edge of this nice little outback town. Nearby “Isis Downs” boasted a 100 Stand Shearing Shed at the turn of the 20^th century. That’s BIG!!

There’s not much to Isisford town and what’s there was closed for Easter, so we had a quite time socializing with more new friends and eating Red Claw Yabbies caught fresh out of the Barcoo a few metres away. Yum! Just like lobster.

Isisford's well known "Clancys Overflow Hotel"

After 4 days of quiet pleasure at Isisford Weir we were off to the Big Smoke ….. Longreach, armed with shopping lists a mile long, since by now we were aware of things that we’d overlooked from Brisbane or subsequently discovered a need for.

  
We settled in at the Apex campground beside the ‘long reach’ of the Thomson River 4km out of Longreach (origin of  the name) on 22 April; The countryside for 100’s of sq miles around Longreach is all rolling Mitchell & Flinders grass open downs, drained by the Thompson River, and in Season, superb grazing lands.

Further south, between Jundah and Windorah, the Thomson River joins the Barcoo River to form Cooper Creek, the only place in Australia where 2 rivers join to become a creek. (Thus endeth today’s geography lesson!)

By now Audrey had decided to fly back to Brisbane the next day to attend niece Krystyna and Pete’s Sat 26 wedding, leaving poor “Cinderella” to look after our travelling home, and do the catch-up shopping.

Longreach (pop < 5000) is a regional centre which has pretty much everything,  and where tourism is a major economic player including; the Stockman’s Hall of Fame, the Qantas Museum, Paddleboats on the Thomson River, authentic Stage Coach Rides, and Joy Flights, Campfire Tucker & Bush poetry, etc ad- infinitem.

 

 

News arrived that our good sailing friends Dave and Pattie Bowden (ex NSW) were visiting Dave’s brother Stuart’s “Penlan Downs Station” at Muttaburra, 150km north, so an invitation to visit was accepted after departing Longreach, a deviation enroute to Winton.

Another pleasant interlude was catching up with Bruce’s old work colleague, retired Primac Longreach Manager, George Vinson and wife Jan, who invited me home for a BBQ, to regale tales of our mutual lifelong involvement in the rural agency field, pre-dating our friendship from 1968 during our Clermont days.

Staying with the Vinson’s was George’s brother-in-law Don Rayment the manager of “Adria Downs Station” 130km NW of Birdsville, where they run up to 18,500 quality Hereford cattle on 3.2 million acres on several conjoining holdings along Eyre Creek in the western Channels. (The adjoining run contains 6.6 million acres)!! We’ve been invited to visit “Adria Stn” during next year’s outback travels.

Audrey returned following 5 days in Brisbane, so we toured the ‘Stockman’s Hall of Fame’ together, then drove 150 km to Stuart Bowden’s “Penlan Downs” Sheep Station, 85km being dirt road, west of Muttaburra.

‘Penlan’ comprises about 56 Sq miles of Open Downs country, has good waters and improvements, beautifully sweet bore water, and is principally a sheep run, as well as being home to scores of western red kangaroos. The pasture is parched dry, with little rain this season, so stock are being off-loaded.

We worked from sun-up til after dark helping draft off ‘sale’ wethers the first two days, followed by a social day at nearby “Llorac Stn” where there was a Sheep Shearing competition amongst a few locals. Audrey skirted the big wethers’ fleeces while I swept up the loose wool around the shearers’ stands. No such thing as a free lunch out here, and the BBQ lunch was superb.

Then Audrey and I did a round trip back in to Longreach to collect Stuart’s buggy from repairs, so another day gone. The next two days were spent making concrete water troughs, plus we killed and butchered a sheep for home supplies, and fed calf pellets to young weaners who’d squeeze you away to get to the feed trough.

 

Stuart’s sheep dog ‘Buddy’ is a white kelpie whom the sheep often ignored because he was white like them, so ‘Buddy’ under-went a colour change, being dyed with brown patches to make him more visible, and the Sheep now do as ‘Buddy’ wills them. His markings resemble those of an African Hyena!

A week later we’re back on the road again heading 170km west, including 100km of dirt road with rough cattle grids, through very dry black soil downs to Winton,  the town that gave us Qantas and Waltzing Matilda, and a lovely friendly town it proved to be.

We camped at the ‘Long Waterhole’ 4km south of town with several other fellow caravaners, and returned from town to find a freak “willy willy” whirlwind had blown our Awning across the top of the Van and broken part of it, so we’ve arranged to have a replacement part posted to Alice Springs, where we hope to arrive in a few days’ time.

 

Most small western country towns look similar, having a wide divided main street, with trees or grass up the centre and the usual array of shops and pubs along either side. Each has their speciality tourist attraction and in Winton it is the “Waltzing Matilda” centre. Comprising an Art Gallery with some very nice works, the story of Australia’s most recognized song is presented in life-size working dioramas of light and sound as well as static displays, and it’s all very good.

In 1999, a Winton grazier noticed a huge fossilized bone protruding from beneath the black soil in a sheep paddock, which bought about the beginning of Australia’s pre-eminent dinosaur science centre, the ‘Australian Age Of Dinosaurs’, sited 24km from Winton, where 100+ million y/o skeletal remains are being retrieved from under 1 to 3 metres of black soil. They tell us Winton is the only place in the world where original dinosaur bones can be seen in open displays, rather than in closed museum displays. 

  
After an exciting, touristy 2 days in Winton, we headed off west again on the 377km bitumen road to Boulia, passing through some of the most scenic areas we’ve so far seen. The further west we travelled the better the country looked, clearly having more rainfall than the central west.

But then, after Middleton – a lone solitary outback pub beside the highway, the mile after mile of flat open grassy downs country gave way to rugged red soil and fascinating ‘jump-ups’, solitary sentinels, the result of million of years of erosion, when vast inland seas covered much of western Queensland. Cawnpore Lookout offers outstanding views of these features.

It’s now 33 days and 2766km since we left Brisbane; today finds us camped on the banks of the Burke River behind the Racecourse Reserve 5km out of Boulia town. We’ve delayed here an extra day to get this KKK #2 report off into cyber space and plan to depart tomorrow on the 800+ km dirt road through ‘Tobermorey Station’ just over the Northern Territory border, and on into Alice Springs. The changing countryside is really starting to look and feel like The Outback now.

Cheers til the Alice,

Bruce and Audrey

Boulia – Friday 9^th May 2014