Across the Top part 2 (trip rebooted) - flies and dinosaurs

It’s been almost two weeks since we left Camooweal.  The trip was in serious jeopardy.  Dave, the only mechanic in town, was busy jimmy rigging an axle on to a busted caravan as I wrestled Nissy P over to him on Monday afternoon.  He took a quick look, confirmed that the powered steering pipe had a hole and despite his obvious skill couldn’t fix it.  I was fine to drive the car he said, but it would take some effort at slow speeds,  The blackfellas out here do it all the time Dave reckoned, optional extra apparently.  I returned confidently to the caravan park and called a few mechanics in Mount Isa, the nearest town a mere 187 kms away to try and find someone who could do a fix there.  They were all booked up for a month.

The caravan park was already starting to fill up with the new batch of one nighters.  Word had got around we had car trouble, which attracted a lot of unwanted but well meaning attention from some very well credentialed blokes.  As is the way of things a wide spectrum of views emerged on what we should or could do next.  Dave had been so clear that I could drive the car without doing further damage that I was confident we could drive on until we found someone who could help, all the way to Adelaide if necessary,  The caravan park peanut gallery mainly thought otherwise with the middling consensus being I’d wreck the powered steering motor driving it without any lubrication and I would invalidate the insurance should I end up in an accident.  Adding lubrication every few kilometres held the majority view for a while before someone pointed out the speed at which the oil was leaking would likely lead to a fire.  Sometimes having no clue about something can be an advantage, but it was all a bit overwhelming. 

We resolved to drive on the next morning regardless to kick the ball down the road a bit and see what would happen.  We’d already spent three nights in Camooweal, squandering the extra nights we’d “saved” by not staying at Butterfly Falls.  If the only mechanic in town couldn’t do anything there was little point staying.    After all, outback roads are mostly straight and the towns are a long way apart so what could go wrong?  We’d just drive until we found a mechanic who could help.  

We’d run our course with Camooweal but we did learn some new tricks during the downtime.

Sadly we decided to forfeit our three nights in Lawn Hill / Boodjamulla, which we’d actually engineered into six in our heads with unused nights from Butterfly Falls.  We’d even booked the extra nights at Adel’s Grove.  The 4WD road in would have been too difficult without proper steering.  On a trip this long there is of course never just one destination, but missing out on Lawn Hill really sucked and Ness was in a black mood about it.  Lawn Hill is a long way from anywhere and at just 250kms away, we were effectively right on the doorstep, It’s over 3,000kms from Adelaide on the shortest route here (we’d already taken more than 8,000kms on our roundabout route).  But cool heads prevailed.  As tempting as it was, it just didn’t make sense to be driving even further away from help.  Having the kids with us made a difference.  If it was just the two of us we’d have probably have had a crack, and would even have walked the rest of the way if we’d broken down.  Ah well, it’s there for next time.

Neither Ness nor I slept very well on the Monday night and it was a quiet pack up.  We headed out early on the Tuesday morning before a critical audience could assemble.  Once we were back on the Barkly Highway and out of town the car actually handled pretty well.  Keeping a steady 80km/hr was a sweet spot but every approaching road train, and there are plenty in cattle country, was a worry.  As we got closer to Mount Isa the road started to twist and turn as we hit the rugged Selwyn Range.  We pulled over at a rest area about 50kms out of town to change drivers.  The rest area was off to the right and Ness had a battle to get the car back out of the rest area and back onto the highway.  We changed drivers again just outside of Mount Isa and I drove into town, battling a few severe slow speed turns and into a servo to fill up with fuel.  It wasn’t impossible but it wasn’t fun, and didn’t feel that safe. There wasn’t a mechanic in Mount Isa who could look at the car for a month, which was after we were due to get home.  So we pushed on to the next town, Cloncurry, a further 140kms to the east.  The road continued to be windy but we rolled in to town around lunchtime.  

While Ness took the kids to the park to run off some steam and get some lunch I went into the local mechanic to see if he could help.  Again they were booked for the next month.  Normally they said its a two week wait but there are a lot of people on the move this year.  They told me I should try John at Field Engineering Services just out of town who often handled their overflow work.  Not one to miss a chance I called John straight away.  He’s a man of few words, who grunted a few times as I explained our problem, Get here quick and we’ll see what we can do he said.  So I headed out of town, leaving Ness with the kids.  I found John’s workshop,  

While John might be the brains of the operation, his brother Alan did the actual work,  Alan was a ginger Alan from The Hangover, with every inch of exposed skin covered in thick black oil that looked like it never came off.  He was absolutely amazing with the perfect have a go attitude we needed to get back on the road.  There was little chance a Nissan franchise would have sanctioned anything other than a replacement of the metal pipe.  

As a backstop we’d booked a service in Port Macquarie while we were in Camooweal.  That was still over 2,000kms away.  They told me they would probably need to order in the pipe from overseas.  Alan had other ideas.  He had to take off the bull bar, front headlights, auxiliary battery and air filter to get to the broken pipe.  I got the sense he didn’t like working on Nissans.  Alan had a rollie in his mouth the whole time, constantly singeing his moustache.  Amazing that he didn’t set himself on fire.  He also cut himself numerous times as he pulled our car apart.  After about two hours he finally wrestled the pipe out of the vehicle and called a couple of mates to come and weld a fix.  Putting things back together posed more of a challenge for Alan so it looked like we’d be coming back the next day,  Alan was due to knock off at 4pm and when Ness came out to meet me just before then in a taxi things were far from finished.  Miraculously at 4.15 John called to say “she’s done, come and get her”, hanging up before I could say it might take me a while to get out there.  Anyway half an hour later I picked up the car, the steering was as light as a feather, and we were back in business.  The pump was making a bit of a funny sound which Alan  said would resolve itself for the better or worse pretty quickly.

We’d had a lucky escape and enjoyed a great night out in Cloncurry to celebrate the big weight lifted.  The town has been Queensland’s friendliest town twice in the last 10 years, and well deserved from our point of view.  

We had dinner at the Wagon Wheel Motel, next to the Cloncurry bowlo.  A mostly indigenous staff served up great food with amazing friendly service.  We also had our first night not in the tent since Tennant Creek.  The kids love exploring any motel room or cabin and this was no exception.

 

We woke with renewed optimism on the Wednesday.  It had been a long few days of heavy worry.  The vegetation in Cloncurry, and most of Queensland it seems, smelt a lot like spilled steering fluid.  I had a quick look under the car before we headed off but all seemed fine.  It did, and still does, feel too good to be true but Nissy P was back to her old self.  

Our next destination was Richmond, close to 300kms further east so we had plenty of time to test out the steering.  We stopped around half way at Julia Creek for bathroom stops, playground timeand coffees.  Oily liquid was dripping from under the front of the car when we stopped which did not look or smell good.  Thankfully it was coming from a different spot and was seemingly just condensation from the air conditioning.  There was a lot of oil to wash away from the previous leak and the air was a lot more humid than we’d experienced for weeks.  Julia Creek was lovely and offered the best coffee we’d had probably since Adelaide.

We rolled into Richmond in the early afternoon and kicked off the first leg of the Dinosaur trail at Kronosaurus Korner.  It’s the biggest exhibition of marine dinosaur fossils in Australia, featuring over 1,100 specimens, most of them found on nearby cattle and sheep stations just sitting on top of the black soil.  Rob Ievers from Marathon Station got things going here when his brother found the first fossils while mustering,  He recognised the significance of the find, remarkable in itself, and has been the driving force behind the museum’s development and ongoing research which continues to make big discoveries.  It really was something to behold.  The displays are the actual fossils, not moulds.  Very cool and beautifully presented with great self-guided audio. 

The kids had not been oblivious to the tension about the car so were delighted to let off some steam at the free water park, a short walk around the lake from the Richmond Caravan Park.

With growing confidence in Nissy P we rejigged the schedule to have 4 nights at Porcupine Gorge NP near Hughenden and 4 nights in Bladensburg NP near Winton.  These offered a quiet respite after the Camooweal and Richmond caravan parks which were both very close to the highway.  The night in Richmond was noisier than the one in Tennant Creek, but the locals causing the problems this time were the hundreds of galahs woken every time a road train rumbled through town (which they did all night).  The nearby lake also meant this was the buggiest place we’d stayed at probably the whole trip.

On Thursday we stopped in briefly at the dinosaur and sheep farming exhibit at Hughenden but it fell short of our unrealistically inflated expectations after our experience at Richmond. The centre is being redeveloped so for our visit there was really only one room for each exhibit.  Hopefully better times ahead.

We arrived at Porcupine Gorge, 60kms north of Hughenden, in the middle of some unseasonably warm weather, 35 degrees in the middle of winter.  The space for the tent was about half the size of our tent so we had to get creative - and for once we seemed to have the best shade in the whole campground.

We spent three wonderful days enjoying the gorge (a tough walk down about 200m over 1.2kms and tougher for me at least coming back up).  Shade was at a premium down in the gorge but the swimming holes were plentiful and we got creative with some boat building and racing, damming etc.  We took the car for a spin on day three which was fortunate as the auxiliary battery had just run flat from the demands of the fridge.

We spent hours building and racing our boats down the creek

The Pyramid

The wildlife was something else, with rufous Bettong visits to our camp each evening and on our last night an echidna.  The bettong is about the side of a fat rabbit and they were totally oblivious to us.

We were very sad to move on from Porcupine Gorge, but dinosaurs and more awaited us in Winton.  We also had a birthday to celebrate.

Cloncurry had set a high bar for friendly towns, but Winton really was up there.  As they say in Winton, a million flies can’t be wrong.  Bladensburg National Park provided the perfect base to explore the area and we had three full packed days.  Our first full day was James’s 12th birthday, and what an experience we had in store for him - a trip to the incredible Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History.  This was a largely guided tour over four hours through the collection room, fossil preparation room, march of the Titanosaur exhibition and Dinosaur Canyon.  The whole experience blew us away, despite the significant number of flies.  The whole facility is set on a jump up just south east of town and is incredible.  Again the genesis was local farmers finding out of place rocks.

March of the Titanosaur captures footprints from 100mya.  The whole display was lifted from a nearby station.

As if James’s birthday couldn’t get any better we saw out the day with a Banjo Paterson performance by champion bush poet Gregory North at the North Gregory Hotel in the afternoon.  Banjo wrote Waltzing Matilda on a nearby station.  Gregory North was excellent (and you can hear it all for yourself on Spotify).

On day 2 we headed 110kms south west of Winton to Lark Quarry Dinosaur Trackways National Monument to see the only fossilised remains of a dinosaur stampede to be found (yet) anywhere in the world.  The best explanation for the site is a carnivorous big dinosaur disturbing around 150 angry chicken size dinosaurs and by some fluke it all getting covered up by sand and fossilised.  Hard to get the excitement across even with photos, but it was well worth the trip.  The site had been discovered by an opal hunter having a smoko back in the 1960s.  It took 10 years before the right ears heard about the site and the rest is history.

After the tour we carried on away from Winton on smaller and smaller roads on a loop out to Opalton.  Lots of wildlife on the way.  Opalton didn’t have much to offer, not even an ice-cream for the kids.  We did later pick up some boulder opal from a free fossicking box outside of a shop in Winton.  Me and the kids are delighted with our haul.

Day 3 in Winton was a Winton day, starting with a tour of the sights of Bladensburg National Park including shearing shed and homestead.  Winton itself had a surprising number of attractions including the Musical Fence, birthplace of Qantas monument, free hot showers at the Puma service station (which we used twice - hot artesian water round here) and most impressively the Waltzing Matilda museum, rebuilt following its complete destruction from fire in 2015.  Fire seems to be quite a risk in Winton, with just about every building in town having burnt down multiple times.  On arrival I’d gone to the beautiful Winton Hotel to use the drive through bottle shop only to find it closed from a fire just a week ago, likely linked to the newly installed solar panels. 

On Friday we packed up tent for the last time for a couple of weeks and rolled out town down the Matilda Highway to Barcaldine via Longreach (site of the first Qantas flight and their first crash).  We stopped at the Stockman’s Hall of Fame which again was excellent. The kids would probably have enjoyed the Qantas museum more but we’re not a democracy.

Barcaldine offered a chance to catch up with washing.  Sadly the drier didn’t quite cut it so we turned the motel room into a Chinese laundry.  Barcaldine is the historic site of the Tree of Knowledge where shearers gathered to strike in 1891.  It’s also the birthplace of the Australian Labor Party.  There is a lovely monument to the now dead tree which was poisoned with 30 litres of Roundup, presumably by a Tory, in 2006.

The town was abuzz with excitement for the next day’s league grand final where the sand goannas would take on the rival magpies at Blackall 100kms to the south.  Every shop had a sign up, even the ones that appeared to have been closed for years.  We had the best meal of our trip so far at the Union Hotel, beef sniddy for me, barramundi (bravely) for Ness.  Sensational.  

 

On Saturday we continued our trip south east with another big drive to Mitchell.  The road south the next day had also been decorated by the locals.   A great cabin according to the kids, best yet.  We finally got to enjoy an artesian bath - water at 40 degrees thank you very much.

Today we woke to the news that the sand goannas had beaten Blackall 14-10.  We carried on to Goondiwindi, from where you can almost smell New South Wales across the McIntyre River.  Plenty of water in it for sure.  We are about to head for a drink at the famous Victoria Hotel (once the washing is done) and then on for a Chinese at the New Dynasty.  

Such luxury ahead of four rustic nights at Four Bull Hut in Washpool National Park.  There is a locked gate 5kms from the hut and we will have 100kms of walking trails in beautiful rugged country almost to ourselves.  I am very excited about this next stage before we head on to Port Macquarie to catch up with the family.   We’ll have driven close to 1,500kms in four days by the time we get to Four Bull tomorrow, mostly in a south easterly direction, so the cold weather is back.  Other than a light shower when packing up on day 2 of our trip we’ve not seen any rain.  That was seven weeks ago so we count ourselves lucky.  There was ice on the car this morning for the first time since Alice Springs and the forecast is for ice each morning at Four Bull.  Luckily the place has a wood burning heater and outside fire pit with all wood provided!

 

 

Across the Top part 1 - See You NT

We have left the Northern Territory and are now in Queensland.  

First stop was Camooweal, a dusty old droving town just inside the border.  We had coverage again, and also sadly a bit of extra time on our hands while Nissy P was awaiting a diagnosis from the local bush mechanic. We’d packed up on Sunday after one night here to head in to Lawn Hill.  

As I was manoeuvring the car to the recycling point, the steering started to get much harder and some worrying noises were coming from under the car.  Powered steering was kaput and fluid was leaking heavily.  She’s a big heavy car and almost impossible to manoeuvre without assistance at low speed. There’s one mechanic in town and we get to see him at 2pm this afternoon (Monday). 

There are worse places to be marooned so for now we wait and will have to see what Dave the mechanic has to say.  The weather is great, there are only a handful of flies and mosquitos and there is a pub.  That said, Camooweal is very much a one night destination.  Most people have long evacuated by mid-morning each day. According to TripAdvisor there are only two things to do in town and one of those is to look at a statue of a drover.  The other is the Drovers Camp Memorabilia shed which we did on Saturday when we arrived.  

So anyway we have had some time to catch up on reading and washing and internet things. And plenty of time for catastrophising about what happens if we can’t get the car fixed, or we can’t drive it, or we do and something bad happens.  I don’t fancy driving a car without proper steering the 4,000kms it is til we get home.  On outback roads it might be OK, but towns will be difficult and crossing the great dividing range (twice) will be almost impossible as the steering is harder at low speeds.  And what if we do more damage and lose the whole steering mechanism?  Mechanics in Mount Isa are booked 4 weeks out./ These are the sorts of things that start to contaminate your mind.  It took a pretty big jolt back to reality to get things back into perspective.  We were with the kids at the pool when a fellow temporary Camoowealean had a medical incident and fell and cracked her head open on concrete near the bathroom. We were first responders prior to the ambulance and helicopter evacuation.  She was unconscious for a long time and unresponsive. We will never know for sure whether she will have made it.  Life can just change in an instant.  Just awful. 

I’m adding the video of the drive into Maguk which we didn’t have time to compress while in Kakadu.  We had a few things shake loose on that short trip, and more again during our recent trip through Limmen National Park which I’ll get to, including a sheared mounting bar for the cargo barrier. 

We were also alerted to an ABC news story on Kakadu’s Cahill’s Crossing where we’d seen a lot of people doing the wrong thing and taking pretty big risks with the crocodiles.  Only a matter of time before someone gets munched.  We’ve sadly seen plenty of people doing the wrong thing, including an atypically rebellious Singaporean couple who drove the whole Reynolds Track despite it being closed (and gated) beyond Sandy Creek where we’d stayed.  “Nothing wrong with the road” they told us, “just lots of fire” (which was obviously why the road had been closed).  Sure they wouldn’t have tried that at home.

Anyway, back to how we got to here...   

After leaving Kakadu we headed to Mataranka, stopping en route in Katherine for a restock and some fuel.  We didn’t bump in to Wally and Margaret Bower this time, but we did see some friendly and dirty faces from Kakadu while we were doing our shopping.  Shapes were on special at $1.75 each, compared to $6.50 at Jabiru and the bottle shop was offering an all you can carry allowance so we took full advantage.

Couple of ferals outside the supermarket in Katherine

We camped at Elsey National Park, outside of Mataranka for two nights.  It’s an expansive campsite on the banks of the Roper River, downstream and a 15 minute drive from Mataranka’s hot springs. There are commercial caravan parks close to each of the springs but I’d recommend the national park as the quieter option, especially if our kids aren’t there.

Our Elsey National Park camp spot.  The stars were amazing.  Plenty of hee-hawing from donkeys each night.

We had a couple of lazy days enjoying the hot springs at Mataranka and nearby Bitter Springs.  The water was completely clear and a steady 32 degrees, warm enough for even me to get in.

On Wednesday we headed east through Roper Bar and into the remote Limmen National Park.  Limmen is now fully graduated from ‘proposed’ into a real national park.  When we were last here proclamation of the park was subject to finalisation of outstanding land claims.  It was initially planned to become the second largest national park in Australia, but some iron ore mining leases cut out around 1,000 square kms from the final boundary making it number three or four.  

The road from Mataranka starts as a single track bitumen road.  This is fine until a 59m long road train comes screaming towards you over crest at 130km and you have to get off onto the gravel on the side in a hurry.  Mostly, but not always, we had a bit of warning with UHF 40 crackling if a road train was headed our way.  There was also some exciting controlled burning underway which attracted lots of kites hunting the fleeing wildlife. 

After about 130kms the road turned into a bit of a corrugated mess and we were very happy to finally pull in to the Roper Bar Store for lunch and an ice-cream.  It’s an incredibly well stocked shop given its location - fridge freezer for $699 anyone?  Over lunch we talked to some people who had just come north out of Limmen National Park who shared some useful road condition reports.  We’d been toying whether to go through Hells Gate after Limmen but some seasoned travellers were saying the road was the worst they’d ever been on (lost their fridge and two antenna).  That firmed our decision to head south when we left Limmen We were told the road through Limmen was bad in parts but generally OK.  WikiCamps reviews were pretty dire but one said they’d seen a grader somewhere.

Roper Bar store, come and grab a fridge

After lunch we turned into Limmen National Park and headed the remaining 40kms to Munbililla / Tomato Island spot.  The road was better than we expected.  On arrival at the campsite we were amazed to see green grass, but drove straight past the Tent Camping area sign assuming it was day use and instead camped 500m further along the river at the end of the campsite.  This made for a 1km round trip to the dunnies and J-Loo as she is now known is a reluctant coopy downer.  All good for the step count.  The 4G coverage and excellent facilities were most unexpected.  We found a lovely shady spot and I got some firewood for a damper.  The kids made friends with a French /Chinese /Australian family who had the best colour coordinated Ute and trailer we’d seen and were travelling for a year.   Their youngest Wei Wei joined us for marshmallows after dinner. 

With hindsight we should have stayed longer, but the next morning we headed on a further 160 or so kms to Butterfly Falls.  The Parks NT website promised beautiful falls, swimming hole and butterflies so we’d booked in for three nights.  The road started pretty good but after 30kms turned very very ordinary.  We passed some cattle musterers driving bull catchers like you see on the TV, old converted 4WDs with side arms supported by a spotting helicopter.  We let some air out of the tyres which helped a bit but we had around 40kms of shaky road, holes and bull dust.  We were just commenting that the one road sign we’d not seen much of on this trip was “Road Plant Ahead” when one magically appeared, shortly followed by a grader. The road improved markedly along with our mood but we were still held up for close to an hour by a 4WD caravan which had come unhitched during a creek crossing.  

After a quick stop at the deserted ranger station we arrived at Butterfly Falls to find a deserted campground.  The spot we’d booked turned out to be the only one without any shade.  This exposed one of the problems with the online national parks booking system for very remote areas.  You need coverage to make any amendments. Travel plans in remote areas change for many unexpected reasons.  We’d left coverage back at Munbililla. So we had the choice of setting up in a dust bowl in 35 degree heat, or choose a site that probably wouldn’t be taken but risk someone showing up after dark.  Anyway the drier than normal wet season meant that the falls weren’t falling and the swimming hole was just a stagnant pool,  This was attracting cattle whose poo was supporting a healthy number of flies.  So we didn’t hang around to see what the mosquitoes were like and headed on to the Southern Lost City.

The Southern Lost City has five allocated camp spots but fortunately plenty of day use and drive through areas.  This supported the 20 or so groups actually camped there for the night, most there a day or two either side of when they were planning.  We’d paid for three nights at Butterfly Falls so didn’t feel too bad.  We put the tent up alongside some other squatters in a drive through space.  The online system is still new here and apparently the rangers aren’t policing it. 

We packed up early before the heat arrived and stopped for morning tea just outside of Limmen at the Heartbreak Hotel Roadhouse at Cape Crawford.  It was mid renovations and we decided to push on the 400kms across the tablelands to the Barkly highway.

The road was mostly dead straight and like the road out Limmen was mostly single track so there was occasional slowing down sufficiently for oncoming vehicles that you could safely put two wheels on the gravel.

It was a massive day in the car, but well rewarded with a surprise free gig from Kasey Chambers and her dad at Barkly Homestead.  Tired camping facilities but the bar and restaurant were excellent. We met some lovely people, including Michelle from Lismore who was off to see her son in Alice for the first time in two years.  She was still living with her brother months after the February floods which had seen 5 feet of water in her single storey house.  After my own trip back to the UK in May it made me very emotional to think how important this trip is for Michelle, but another reminder of how delicate our stability is and how quickly our worlds can be completely turned upside down.