Friday, 20 January 2012
Northbound. We left Alice Springs for good at about 10:30AM (admittedly a tad late – but we
had to make a couple of phone calls and stock up on food and fuel for the next few
days) to hit the North Stuart Highway.
But instead of following in John McDouall Stuart’s tracks we veered off the Stuart
Hwy after just 68km.
We weren’t done yet
exploring, we were eventually going to join the Binns Track again!
Towing the trailer and the fact that we were running a bit late meant we had to
improvise slightly.
That's why we didn’t stay on the Plenty Highway to join the Binns Track near Harts Range, we opted for the shortcut and turned onto
the Sandover Highway
instead. The Sandover Hwy
is a major unsealed road in pretty impressive condition, better than most
sealed highways we’d encountered in Queensland!
Almost 250km we pushed on in a northeasterly direction, past Utopia and through
Aboriginal land to ‘Ammaroo’, a cattle station in the middle of nowhere.
After
throwing in a quick (and improvised) picnic lunch we left the Sandover Hwy and finally joined the Binns Track again, heading north on a minor unsealed road now. This road, connecting several Aboriginal
communities and cattle stations with the Sandover Hwy, had it all:
corrugations from the regular to and fro between outstations, bull dust,
washouts, the remnants of blown tyres, ditched wrecks in various states of decay,
local families camping next to their broken down cars…
100km further on, near ‘Murray Downs’, we
turned right yet again.
The Davenport Range National Part was our "piece de resistance" and we were in for some fun four-wheel driving! One minute the narrow track would run along atop a rocky ridge, some tufts of Spinifex only sprinkled on its flanks, next minute we’d be at the foot of the range and crossing the Frew River, its water tannin-stained and stagnant but picturesque just the same.
The Davenport Range National Part was our "piece de resistance" and we were in for some fun four-wheel driving! One minute the narrow track would run along atop a rocky ridge, some tufts of Spinifex only sprinkled on its flanks, next minute we’d be at the foot of the range and crossing the Frew River, its water tannin-stained and stagnant but picturesque just the same.
There was quite a bit of birdlife around, we saw a Sacred Kingfisher (Todiramphus sanctus), White-faced Herons (Egretta novaehollandiae) and lots of Spinifex Pigeons (Geophaps plumifera) among others.
Around another corner and the ruins of the
old ‘Hatches Creek’ tungsten mine appeared on the horizon. Tungsten (also known
as wolfram) from this mine played an important during wartimes.
We had to keep moving though, no time to
fall into any of the deep shafts, it was still another 40km to go to the Old
Police Station Waterhole – and it would take us at least another 1 ½ hours to
get there. The weary explorers started wondering if they’d get to camp before
dark.
The donkeys and cattle couldn’t have cared
less…
We made it to the waterhole with a few
minutes of daylight to spare. We even had enough time to examine all the camp
sites along the waterhole to pick the best one of the spacious sites – for once
again we were the only travellers around and the only complaints about our
arrival were coming from a young bull, a few Australasian Darters (Anhinga novaehollandiae), Little Black Cormorants (Phalacrocorax sulcirostris)and a
flock of Australian Wood Ducks (Chenonetta jubata) that took off rather noisily.
We set up camp somewhere halfway along the
waterhole under the gum trees, built a neat little campfire and placed the camp
oven on the coals a little while later.
Beautiful!
Saturday, 21 January 2012
The temperatures hadn’t dropped much over
night and it warmed up again quickly in the morning. As much of an oasis the
Old Police Station Waterhole was, we were still surrounded by harsh desert
country in the height of summer.
Steve and Flip decided to jump into the
waterhole right opposite the ruins of the old police station, a quick swim in
lieu of a shower. Not much left of the old building and what little is left of
the old stone walls these days can easily be overlooked (hint: there's a little spec of red in the centre of the image below).
Standing on the edge of this tranquil
waterhole in the remoteness of Davenport Range National Park, a million miles
from civilisation (or so it seemed), it was hard to imagine how back in the old
days this place could have possibly been in need of a police constable to restore
order among a bunch of unruly miners and put a stop to quarrels between early
pastoralists and local Aboriginal people.
We left the national park mid-morning,
bypassing Wutunugurra and Epenarra, to enter it again in its northwestern
corner at Whistleduck Creek.
Irrmweng (pronounced: Ear-moong-a) Waterhole proved very popular with Little Black Cormorants, the Toms family outnumbered yet again!
Irrmweng (pronounced: Ear-moong-a) Waterhole proved very popular with Little Black Cormorants, the Toms family outnumbered yet again!
We learnt that local Aboriginal people
frequent places along Whistleduck Creek for rain making ceremonies to this day.
In the 1930s, an old man named ‘Lame Tommy’ was well known for his rainmaking
skills and Aboriginal people as well as pastoralists would ask for his help to
break periods of drought. Lame Tommy could make the rain stop too.
We had considered camping here for the
night, but the water was the colour of black tea and didn’t look too inviting.
It was still pretty early in the afternoon, so we backtracked to the main road.
At this point we were only about 70km away from the Stuart Highway. After passing Kurundi
Homestead the trip turned into something like a rollercoaster ride for a while,
the road rather narrow at times, sharp corners, unpredictable turns on top of steep crests,
dips with shallow water ove rthe road – holy moly!
We reached the campground at Devils Marbles less
than 2 hours after leaving Whistleduck Creek – coming full circle.
Steve and Flip had soon gathered enough
firewood from the side of the Stuart
Highway. Tonight’s dinner would be the last one
cooked on an open fire: beef rump steaks, jacket potatoes topped with cream cheese and vegetables.
Boh boh!
Anja