KKK No 3 Boulia to Alice Springs

“K K K”

 (‘Kimberley Karavan Kapers’ - Bruce & Audrey)

No: 3     Boulia to Alice Springs

 Boulia is a tiny town, only a few blocks in size, with a population of maybe 100 plus and offers only limited interest to tourism. It owes its origins to being an important resting point through the Channel Country Stock Route, with Burke and Wills the first Europeans to pass through, and the Burke River beside which it’s sited was named for its explorer, Robert O’Hara Burke.

We availed ourselves, as did others, of the riverside campground 6km out of town, and it was enroute here we sighted our first Camels.

One of its earliest settlers was a storekeeper from Armadale, NSW, who had a stone residence made, the construction of which took 3 years, and incorporated a 3 metre deep room size underground cellar, famously the coolest place in Boulia and a popular refuge for mothers with young babies during severe heatwaves.

Today the town’s fame largely rests with the Min Min Light, a strange spectral light that can appear, hover, disappear and reappear with an eerie will of its own, and which remains scientifically unexplained. There is quite a good high tech sound & light show about the Min Min Light, which runs for 40 minutes, which we saw. So that’s Boulia.

Scenes from the Min Min Light Tourist attracton

True to our previous word, Sat 10th May 2014, day 35, we departed Boulia heading for the Northern Territory border some 257 km westward on the Donohue Highway, with 67km of bitumen before the dirt road began.

 

 

 

The first 60km of open Mitchell grass downs looked good following a welcome season and we passed by the remnants of the long abandoned old Dingo Barrier netted fence 56k out, government-erected early last century to keep western Dingoes out of the State’s central grazing lands. Despite 1080 poison baiting, graziers everywhere will tell you there are more “dogs” today than ever before.

Old Dingo Fence

New Steel Cattle Yards

Dry, sandy river channels with occasional shallow waterholes became more prevalent as we approached the major Georgina River system 134km out, driving through the large (Napco owned) “Glenormiston” run with its herd of good quality cattle. Then on past another quality property, “Roxborough Downs” with its superior black soil channels, which Bruce visited during his Primac days and put to Auction some 25 years ago.

Glenormiston Turn-off

 Driving this dirt highway was scenic and pleasurable, passing treeless open plains country and the occasional Artesian Bore and steel-built cattle trucking yards. With road graders working all along it, the road-table surface was excellent, the pasture was excellent, the cattle were excellent with shiny fat cows suckling adorable, blooming calves- such a contrast to the sad, drought stricken Central West. Days are mostly sunny and quite hot.

Welcome to the ‘Nature Territory’ read the sign at the grid on the Queensland/Northern Territory border, and the good dirt road turned poorly right from that border grid mostly for the next almost 500km! Welcome to NT’s ‘Plenty Highway’, nominated as a ‘4WD- only’ road, and named for the river of the same calling located about 220km further along.

To be fair, the Plenty Highway does have many fair/good stretches, but also plenty of bulldust, plenty of rough corrugations and plenty stony patches. Nevertheless, it saves 100’s of kilometres from the sealed alternative via Mt Isa and adds a degree of rugged adventure and varying outback scenery to the trip!

Just 4 km across the NT border is “Tobermorey’ homestead, a fuel stop with a green, inviting, watered grassy campground; ‘Tobermorey’ is a 1.5 million acre family owned cattle station that welcomes paying visitors, but our arrival there being only early afternoon, we decided to top up with Petrol at $2.27/ltr and get back on the road again.

Tobermorey Campground

We’ve now entered Central Time Zone and wound the clock back 30 minutes. The first 100km or so into the NT was well grassed dark soil grazing lands but then the sandy, red semi-desert country started, with its stunted shrubby growth and clumpy Spinifex grass, and the sunken road with its high table-drains deteriorated to corrugations, bulldust holes, and long tracks of gripping bulldust furrows.

Corrugations with red bull dust

The next settlement was ‘Jervois Station’ a further 219km mix of poor to good dirt road where we arrived beside the dry Marshall River in the late afternoon. We stopped here overnight in company with 3 others (having seen barely a few cars all day) in the dusty, un-grassed red soil campground, our first stop at a “dedicated retail” Caravan Park (this one absolutely only bare basics) since leaving Brisbane 35 days ago, and a welcome stop after the day’s 465km bumpy, taxing drive. Fuel was available here but we chose not to top up, hoping for cheaper pricing further down the track.

Jervois Camp Site

The days have been quite warm but early mornings are becoming quite fresh, but certainly not down to winter temperatures yet, but the one constant is flies; the small ‘bush flies’ are a constant menace, no matter where one stops, flies in your eyes, ears, up your nose, and sometimes down your throat when you’re eating, from sun up to sun set; thankfully we have hat fly veils, and mercifully the flies disappear at sundown.

After our Sunday ‘religion’ of an Eggs & Bacon breakfast, the intrepid KK travellers depart “Jervois Station” on the next 202km leg, ever westward. About 5km out we cross the very expansive Plenty River, with its wide, attractive, dry sandy bed, artistically peppered with big river gums, but showing evidence of its flowing torrent in flood, and the biggest river by far draining this entire region.

At Harts Range 120km further along we came to the Atitjere Aboriginal Community, a small settlement of perhaps 40 basic modern houses and a few shops 185km east of Alice Springs, clearly government provided, and typical of other such settlements we’ve seen. It was Sunday, so there wasn’t much activity, but the general untidiness, old discarded cars, malnourished dogs and unkempt litter-strewn house grounds sadly reflect the lack of any community pride, something which seems regularly synomonous with aboriginal welfare.

The next stop was Gemtree Campground, gateway to the gemfields, a Fuel stop where we bought Petrol for $2.30/ltr, with a shop and accommodation, and the centre of a fossicking area for semi precious gemstones. The previous 150km travelled this day was over the roughest and least interesting desert terrain along the Plenty, with its bad corrugations, bulldust holes and areas of hard clay road table, sending clouds of dust billowing high into the sky, where the dust cloud from oncoming vehicles can be seen from a few kilometres away.

All this semi arid desert country is red soil having occasional outcrops of big Anthills and we passed many such areas, with the biggest one right beside the road, which is shown here. A feature which struck us was the virtually non existence of native wildlife with not a single sighting of a Kangaroo or Emu, and little birdlife since leaving Queensland, where kangaroos especially were in plague proportions, as evidenced by the large numbers of road-kill along the highways.

4 metre Anthill

By now it was late afternoon, we were back on the black tarmac so all eyes were scouting for a overnight camp spot, preferably up any track off the road, and 2km before the junction of the Plenty & Stuart Highways we followed a road side-track to an abandoned road works quarry which proved to be a wonderful overnight camp spot.

Here we discovered that our 12v ‘Engel’ drinks fridge in the Land Cruiser was not running today after its Plenty Hwy shake-up, so that’s repair job #1 in Alice Springs.

Next morning, with the Plenty’s dust behind us and sweet bitumen under the tyres, we cruised the 70km into Australia’s iconic centre, our first ever visit to Alice Springs. Ever since I read Neville Shute’s novel “A Town Like Alice” and saw the movie of the same name, ‘Alice’ has held a special attraction for me and we were not disappointed.

A bright, clean, modern city of 25,000+ people including many aboriginals, Alice Springs nestles prettily amongst the red rocky hills of the MacDonnell Ranges with its wide divided streets lined with mature Gumtrees; it’s an oasis in the desert on the banks on the dry Todd River, and is so unexpectedly green and lush following good recent rains.

(By way of interest, the Northern Territory has had such a good “wet” this year that Kakadu National Park remains presently closed to tourists, being considered too wet).

The annual gathering of the national Ulysses Motorcycle Club is currently being held here in Alice Springs, with 2600 motorcycles converging on the town. There are bikes everywhere, a never-ending procession of bikes and 3 wheeler trikes, many towing mini camper trailers, here around Alice and on the highways since back at Roma. Their Showground’s venue is literally a ‘sea of tents’ and a blaze of multi coloured motorbikes.

We found the ‘Engel’ fridge dealer and a Auto Electrician next door, and had our fridge problem solved before we even reached downtown Alice, where we booked in at the central Stuart Caravan Park whilst exploring ‘Alice’ for the next 3 days. A visit to the Post Office found our ‘Fiamma’ awning spare part awaiting collection, to repair the swivel joint broken by the “willy willy” whirlwind back in Winton. So we’re now 100% again.

We’re enjoying the luxury of Van Park living, especially having 240v power to run and charge all our systems, and the opportunity to meet and share touring information and experiences with like minded travellers. We spent a day checking out the downtown Alice Mall, the view from central Anzac Hill, visiting a great Camping Gear Shop, and general sightseeing around Alice.

But the desire to see The Red Centre’s jewel in the crown was growing stronger by the day as Uluru and The Olgas willed our coming, so we departed Alice after three full days and headed for the Rock, which we’ll share with you in KKK #4, coming your way soon.

Bruce and Audrey
Curtin Springs
18/5/14