Day 20, Tuesday 10/07/2012, Noccundra to Bourke

The swags were in a perfect place. They were nice and high on green lawn, with no water pooling around them which kept the kids dry inside. The lovely hospitality at Noccundra continues with the publican and his wife putting on breakfast in the beer garden. It was for $10 a head mind you, but we were happy to pay this considering they lent us their lawn, and it means no dishes to worry about this morning. There were a few other Innamincka refugees at breakfast and we all had a lovely time swapping tales of drama. The publican certainly doesn’t ‘get’ Bruce. You should have seen the stunned look on his face when Bruce was being Bruce. Hilarious!

The “Closed” signs just went up for all dirt roads from Noccundra. Innamincka and Cameron’s Corner are closed. For the second trip running we have been washed out of the ‘Corner’, but at least we made it to Innamincka this time and there will just have to be another trip out here. Our revised plan is to head partway to Bourke today, checking out the Bulloo River at Thargomindah along the way. Then head to Bourke with a shorter drive tomorrow. Jump on the Darling River cruise at 3pm, camp the night, head to Lightning Ridge for the night and then on to Tamworth.

I’m not sure how pleasant the rest of the trip will be with rain forecast all the way to the coast for the next few days. I’m a bit teary this morning. I think it’s a combination of others in the group struggling/upset (which makes me feel I planned a bad trip) and the weather, but I think more than anything it’s the washed out Strzelecki and Cameron’s Corner (only tar from here). Our trip is drawing to a much more sudden end. The adventure is almost over. Back to work! If only we’d stayed trapped at Innamincka!

It certainly is hard juggling other’s different needs and expectations. I guess roughing it in the Australian Outback and covering the distances we need to in such a limited time can be a bit of a culture shock. But it is so worth it for the inspiring scenery, adventure and amazing memories we’ll have to share forever. You certainly feel a close bond with this awesome country after such a trip. Getting through some of the hardships is a part of the character building experience of being out here, and can make for some interesting stories and memories. I’m so glad I could share it with some people I love and hope they’ll be back for some more!

So we headed east to Thargomindah on a single lane strip of tar with water pooling at the sides of the road. There was an abundance of emus and the cattle were huge.

Pulling off the road for oncoming traffic was tricky in the wet conditions. It is raining quite heavily now. Stopping at the Bulloo River was out. We topped up on fuel, had a toilet stop and grabbed some snacks from the car and continued on. We drove across the Bulloo River at a crawl pace so that we could have a good look. There are several bridges covering several branches of the river which has plenty of water and bird life. On the other side Col almost hit 2 emus that ran onto the road.

We’ve just pulled over so that Peter could phone Innamincka Hotel. He’s lost his bankcard! Yes they have it and will post it to him. That was lucky Peter!

Just east of Thargomindah is Lake Bindegolly which is a beautiful wetland area with a rest stop at it’s edge, but we had to drive on by as it was pouring.

The Paroo River was also full and beautiful as was Eulo, a small town on its banks.  It is a quaint little town with a population of about 70. Very clean and neat. We ran into a guy leading a bus tour that asked us where we’d come from as he had read this morning that all roads west of Noccundra were closed. Most of us had a delicious stew and damper for lunch at the pub. There is a lovely grassy area with trees out the back of the pub to camp, but everyone voted on making it all the way to Bourke today so we could have a 2 night stay and a leisurely paddle steamer ride tomorrow. I’ll have to stay here on a future trip though as it is lovely and there is plenty to do and see.The kids had fun playing with the little Jack Russel cross terrier pup and Fiona, Bruce and Lisa enjoyed browsing in the local shop.

Heading to Bourke there was prolific road kill, wild boar, kangaroo and emu. We almost hit an emu, a cow and some sheep. 

We were treated by a gorgeous rainbow and sunset, then found Kidman’s Camp in the dark, 6km north of Bourke, on the Darling River. There wasn’t anyone in the office at 1850hrs with a sign on the door saying set up where ever you want. Thankfully the rain had stopped.

It was quite full but we found 4 together up the back. They were half grass and half mud. We put the car over the mud so the swags would be on the grass. Poor Anthea was too frustrated with the rain, mud, dark, trailer reversing and crying baby and decided to find a motel. I wish I could have stopped them before they took off as town isn’t a place you want to go to after dark. It’s pretty rough. There are barred widows and shutters everywhere and basically gets closed down after dark. Luckily they realised this pretty quickly and came back to us.

After tea Col, Lisa, Stuart and I enjoyed a few drinks around the communal camp fire. Peter joined us for a little while as well. We had lots of fun chatting with some boys from Sydney (here to drill deep and test soil) and a bunch of cops here for training. What a fun, jolly, social evening!

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.

Day 18, Sunday 8/07/2012, Birdsville to Cordillo Downs

Breakfast was at 7am in the front dining room (The Lizard Lounge) of the Birdsville Hotel. Of course we had to have the ‘Big Red’. We were lucky to get to the bakery so early as they were almost out of bread already! We had to fuel up at The Birdsville Roadhouse, and this is also the grocery store. They only get a delivery once a fortnight and are already running low on most things. Maybe this peak season was busier than usual. After finishing our purchases we headed to the info centre (which is also centrelink and the library) to check road conditions and closures. Innamincka and the Cordillo Downs Rd are open, yay!! The lady here said “ooh, I wouldn’t go on that road, it’s terrible!” It’s open, so we’ll be there! There was no store at all where you could buy books other than the old 2^nd hand books at the library (poor Peter).

Other than the places mentioned above, there is a small police station, an old closed courthouse, a small school, airport, clinic, hotel and racetrack. Birdsville has the only Geothermal Power Station in Australia. The Diamantina River flows through the town, with a caravan park and a Burke and Wills monument on its banks.  Other than a few houses, that is it for Birdsville.

There were the obligatory Birdsville Hotel posing shots with Jordan getting a lovely one of Fiona and me, and then we headed south. The Diamantina was flowing and there was plenty of birdlife to be seen but we didn’t stop since it was raining. We did cross the river though at the old causeway which was fun.

While photographing the racetrack I asked Lisa if she wanted a race. Col took off though without letting me out but Lisa still jumped out and went for a run on the track. Go Lisa!

Our next stop was to pull over on the Birdsville Development Road for Bruce to clean his air filter. Boy it needed it! You should have seen the red dirt blasted out using his air compressor. Now he wishes he did this before Big Red as he would have had more power.

Shortly after this we turned right on the Cordillo Downs Road passing a beautiful lake and salt pan surrounded by the red gibber plains of the Sturt Stony Desert, with a few emus running by. Given the recent flooding, there is the contrast of pale green grasses across the plains against the deep burgundy of the rocks.

 There are plenty of trees along each creek, with most creeks full. Our lunch stop was at Caldega Outstation Ruins which was used when mustering in the past. It is a gorgeous old house on the Caldega waterhole which was full, with birds galore. Haley decided it was too messy here to try to clean up but Jordan, Jack and Jess were planning their home renovations and picking their rooms.

There was much fun to be had with creek crossings. There were plenty of muddy cars, smiling faces and cameras clicking! We passed only a couple of other groups along this track today.

Time for a history lesson at the old Cordillo Downs stone shearing shed. This was a property with 24000 sheep in the late 1800s. A severe drought drastically took these numbers to a mere 300 sheep, but at the turn of the century they were back to 83000 sheep. It took 30 to 40 donkeys to tow 4 tonnes of wool. Horses couldn’t handle the Strzelecki sand dunes. There was a plaque commemorating the Afghan cameleers which took over from the donkeys.

South of the property the scenery is awesome! There are the burgundy gibber plains of the Sturt Stony Desert, white grasses, and a back drop orange sand dunes of the Strzelecki Desert which were particularly awesome when glowing in the sunset. The storm cloud we were heading towards seems to be dissipating thank goodness (although secretly I would love to get stuck out here).

We found a gorgeous spot to camp, on the NW bank of Montkeleary Creek. It is half full with beautiful gums along the banks. Amazingly it is not cold. There is plenty of firewood available though, washed down from the floods.

After an hour of daylight for exploring, wood collecting, photography and relaxing, we had dinner around an amazing fire.

Peter’s trying to bribe Jordan, Jack and Jessica into lending him their kindle as he was unable to get the 2^nd Hunger Games book at Birdsville. The clouds have gone, the stars are bright and the temperature mild. Dingos were howling throughout the night.