Day 19, Monday 9/07/2012, Cordillo Downs to Innamincka (then Noccundra)

It’s still warm this morning, a balmy 17°C. I took another dunny shot for Col. I hope he does do his planned calendar. Stuart had grabbed some old second hand bushes from the mechanic at Birdsville. The ‘bush fix’ of his failing suspension in the Simpson Desert was a great one, but they don’t last too long. This morning’s fix was to cut down the second hand bushes (tougher, denser rubber) to a size that fits the pajero.

It looked as if we were camped next to explosives last night with boxes and cord running everywhere, but it turned out to be a seismic survey zone. We’re heading south down the Cordillo Downs road (which has only just opened) to Innamincka, which should be fun.

Hmmm. It’s a perfect graded dirt road so far, travelling at 70km/hr, occasionally weaving between dunes. The scenery reminds us of the Gunbarrel with the dark red dirt road, white grasses and small bushy trees. Beautiful!

All is good; we’ve found some mud to have a play in. Fun!!

Up ahead there are amazingly black clouds, decorated by a rainbow which is in stark contrast to the blue sky and sun we can see towards Innamincka. Had a few spots of rain.

Anthea got a lovely photo up a creek bed with maroon rocks and pale sand. She’s so lucky her husband stops the car for photos!

We just had to pull over as we’ve left Peter behind. Apparently he has run out of fuel again. He has to remember to manually turn the pump on to top up the fuel tank from the secondary tank. It doesn’t help that his fuel gauge doesn’t work. He also put in an extra jerry can full. He’s been getting about 23L/100km ULP.

We can hear thunder!

Another exciting bit of driving was crossing the Cooper Creek near Innamincka. It wasn’t too deep, just to the running boards, but fun! It certainly should be called ‘river’ not ‘creek’!  It is pretty wide and has so much water. How exciting to see some of 'our' pelicans here!

Talk about great timing. We arrived at Innamincka at 12:30pm. Perfect for lunch at the pub. First we had a good look through the general store. It is larger and better stocked than the one at Birdsville. The little kids were all excited to get a new hat.  Lunch is served in the dining area called ‘Outamincka’.  We had another great burger, with Jordan trying the fish n chips. The girls had a lovely glass of chardonnay and the boys a beer each.

Clouds closed in from all directions during lunch and there’ve been a few showers so I checked with reception to see if they had any rooms available incase we ended up needing them later. They only had 2 double rooms left so we decided to push on and check out our site at the Cooper Creek, Cullyamurra Waterhole.

The Old Strzelecki Track has just been closed, with more rain heading for ‘the corner’, so it looks as if we’ll have to leave heading east tomorrow, therefore we’ll visit “The Dig Tree” then rather than today. Before going to the waterhole we visited Burke’s Grave which is close to Cullyamurra. The sign up the tree is the flood water mark from 2010. No wonder we couln't get here back then!

This was an absolute highlight!! It is an awesome waterhole section of the creek with river gums along the bank, white sand and birds everywhere. This included at least 50 pelicans. There were a couple of sandbanks covered with ‘teenage’ pelicans, flocks flying overhead and others swimming. It was an amazing sight! There are plenty of corellas living in pairs in hollows in the trees, plus some blue and green parrots that look like rosellas. We were also fortunate to have blue skies and no rain.

 

 

After doing the 300m walk along the river bank to Burke’s Grave and getting a history lesson, we went to Cullyamurra Waterhole to set up camp. We were unable to even get out of the cars it was raining so heavily. The heavens opened turning the camp site to clay, then to a pond and the road a creek. Apparently we were at only the first spot, and there is a better one across the Cooper, but with the amount of water already in the creek, and the rain falling, I don’t think crossing the creek would have been a smart option.

It was certainly a fun drive back to Burke’s grave site (along what was now a creek), to where it had seemed higher, sandier ground. It was still sunny back there.

I had a bit more of a photo shoot here then Jordan and Jack had a play with my camera along with Jess, getting the little ones to be models again.

We grabbed our camp chairs and had a coffee on the river bank while watching the pelicans, then another storm approach.

We suggested to the Freemans and Pockrans to head back and see if they could grab the 2 rooms that were left at the pub. Again the heavens opened and it didn’t take long for new creeks to appear everywhere. It didn’t take long before Parkes and Williams followed as there was no way we could camp at the now flooded creek bank and the track out would soon be impassable. We didn’t want our group split up. It was an exciting, wet drive back out to town.

We pictured our whole families squished into our rooftop tents in the pub car park while the others were in the rooms, but they had already been taken. There were no rooms left anywhere in town, including the surrounding properties, and swags on the ground weren’t possible. The car park was flooding and sand bags were propped against the pub door in anticipation of what was yet to come!

One lady offered for us to stay in the pub all night, but then another said, ”absolutely not, out of the question!”.

The latest weather report then came through and the warning went out that all roads out of Innamincka would be closed by 8am the following morning for up to a week given that the ground was still soaking from the previous floods.

So, we decided to hightail it out of there, heading east along the only road that is now still open, Adventure Way. And it was! An adventure! We only just made it. The road was almost impassable. Our cars were occasionally sliding sideways, out of control in the slurry, wet conditions. We needed to use our diff lock to keep some control.

A convoy of cars were heading into Innamincka. Col flashed them to stop so we could give them the weather warnings. The front car slowed, so Col lowered his window. Then the other driver sped up and went straight past with a wave of mud covering Col!! It was so rude, but hilarious. You should have seen Col’s shocked and splattered face!

The car behind that did stop so we updated them. The guy said “Oh, OK” and proceeded to drive, with his wife looking horrified.

We need to get an update for our Hema Navigator as it was a shock to come across tarmac only about 30kms out of Innamincka, crossing the border into Queensland. This didn’t last too long though and there was a lot more mud driving fun to be had on our night trip to the first little town east of Innamincka, Noccundra.

 

We wouldn’t have managed this dark, late drive without the new spotlights. So glad we had them. There was absolutely nowhere to pull over for the night. It was like swamp. Stuart says he loved this night time muddy escape with it being one of the highlights of his trip. Judging by the UHF chatter by Anthea I think she also loved this adrenaline charged escape.

We arrived at Noccundra at 2215hrs. This town consists of a pub with a few rooms out the side, and a small town hall. Across the road from the pub was a rest area/camping spot on a river, but this was also all mud/water.

The pub was the most beautiful sandstone building, built in 1902 to service goldminers. I asked the lady behind the bar if there were any rooms. There was only one double left so we decided to let Lisa and Stuart (the swaggers) and their kids have it as they were planning to sleep in their car rather than put up their swags. The publicans were so hospitable letting us put up the swags on the beautiful high section of lawn at the side of the pub for Jordan, Jack, Jessica and Madison. The beer garden was already full of swags and the town hall also already housed several families for the night. The town was like an Innamincka refugee camp!

How strange that Peter ran into someone he knew from Tamworth in the pub. They had just come from Cameron’s Corner on motor bikes. Apparently they had dropped their bikes about 5 times in the mud and one of them had lost his clutch.

 Freemans opened up the T Van on the tar car park in front of the pub, with Williams and Parkes popping the rooftop tents here as well, all getting to bed at 11:30pm after a very long day. I didn’t sleep much. Another big storm came through. It poured half the night. It sounded like a dog was getting attacked by a dingo at one stage, and there was a drunken party across the road at about 3am.