Aramac

It’s reasonably common for a town to be named after a person, but this town was named after Sir Robert Ramsey Mackenzie, who carved RR Mac into a tree when he was exploring the area. Consequently another explorer named the watercourse Aramac Creek, and the town eventually became Aramac. It was originally Marathon, which is a town in the Queensland Railway song. However, it must be a different Marathon. This partly explains why I decided to visit Aramac today. When they were planning railways in Queensland, they decided to put the railway line through Barcaldine rather than Aramac. However, the good people of Aramac (which is one of the oldest towns in the area) decided to build their own branch line joining Aramac to Balcaldine, and thus the Aramac Tramway was born. It ran until 1975. I don’t think there are any other railway lines in Australia that were run by town councils.

A more important reason I visited Aramac today is that this was where Captain Starlight had his adventures. He was a cattle duffer - he stole cattle, walked them to another market (in this case South Australia) and sold them there. This wasn’t a venture for the faint hearted, as it’s a very long distance, through desert. However, that year there had been exceptional rains in the area, and it worked. Or it would have, except that one of the 1000 cattle stolen was a prize white bull specially bought from England for 500 pounds. White bulls were quite unusual (one might say unique), and it was traced. When Captain Starlight was tried (in Roma), he refused to have anyone who was well dressed on the jury, and the jury decided he was innocent. The judge said “Thank god, gentlemen, that verdict is yours and not mine”. The court in Roma was adjourned for two years after this. In his subsequent career as a cattle duffer, he was later acquitted of two other charges, but was finally convicted on a third occasion. He is quite famous as his exploits were recorded in “Robbery under Arms” a fairly popular Australian book. It’s thought that one reason he was acquitted was that he’d developed a new droving route.

While I was in Aramac I visited the library museum and the tramway museum to find out more about these.

However, the other reason I visited Aramac was to see the 200km sculpture loop. This was fantastic! Milynda Rogers has created 40 sculptures and placed them along three roads, forming a triangle. Most of the sculptures are impeccably located and beautifully executed. They enhance a scenic drive. Only one of the roads is paved, and the recent rains have made short sections of the dirt roads somewhat challenging to drive, as the churned up mud has solidified. But it was still very worthwhile.

Emerald to Barcaldine

Before I left Emerald this morning, I visited the Big Easel. It’s an easel twenty metres high, with the largest reproduction of a Van Gogh painting in the world. You have to ask why? Evidently Emerald used to be the centre for sunflower production in Australia, and the painting is one of his famous sunflower paintings. I also visited the Emerald Railway Station which was built in 1900 and is quite pretty. I got a pie from the shop that advertises itself as making the best pies in Central Queensland. It was a great pie.

My journey today from Emerald to Barcaldine was quite different from the past few days. It was along the Tropic of Capricorn, a road suitably named the Capricorn highway. So one side of the road was in the subtropics, while the other was in the tropics. I couldn’t tell the difference. 

This road was much more populated. Emerald is the largest city in the central highlands and there’s a large dam nearby which allows the area to be irrigated, and to grow orchards and other crops including cotton. Not far from Emerald are the central gem fields, one of the largest producers of sapphires in the world. There are plenty of places where anyone can go fossicking, and there is a lot of tourist infrastructure including campgrounds to support this. But there are a number of other small towns further along the way - one called Alpha where I got a really nice smoothie, and one called Bogantungan which is somewhat infamous. Bogantungan features prominently in the Queensland railway line song. However, there was also a train crash where the bridge over the river had disappeared because of a flood just before the train tried to cross over. This happened only a year after the song was written. The train still goes through these towns but they’re too small for it to stop at either of them.

I was also going west, toward desert, rather than through country that had similar weather conditions. The Great Dividing Range was gradually disappearing behind me. For a long time, I was going through fairly flat country with a range in the distance. About 130kms from Barcaldine, there was thirty kilometres of windy road to negotiate. Just about at the end, there was a notice Great Dividing Range 444 metres - similar to others I’ve seen which indicate that you’re at the top of the range. A few metres further on, a sign told me that I was now in the Lake Eyre catchment. I’d just crossed the continental divide - only 100kms from Barcaldine! That’s a lot further from the coast than I would have thought.

From there on the land was absolutely flat. It still had trees and grass - it’s mainly grassland, and it’s pretty, but it’s definitely flat.

The Queensland roads people think that drivers travelling along this highway are prone to fatigue, so they have a trivial quiz along the road, and suggest that you play trivia questions as you travel it. 

At last I reached Barcaldine, found my caravan park and settled in.

Nogoa River to Emerald

I packed up early today, and was really glad I had when it started raining before I’d reached the gate to the park, which is only a few kilometres away. The road to the park is about 14kms, then it joins the Cungelella Road which is 65kms long and has about six stations on it. There’s only one more station after the park road leaves it. So I was somewhat surprised to watch a road train pass in front of me as I neared the intersection. As it had three trailers, and you tend to stay in the centre of any dirt road, there was no way I was going to be passing it for the next sixty kilometres, so I stayed well behind and enjoyed the view. There wasn’t much dust because of the rain. When we reached the development road, there was another road train which had stopped just before the intersection, and my road train stopped behind it. Obviously the Mount Vexation Station was destocking. Both road trains were full. They must have started work really early to get all the stock on. I’d left the campground by 8:00am (so it wasn’t much later), and sunrise was at 6:52am. They’d be stopping often to keep the cattle in good condition.

I realised that the developmental road was in much poorer condition than Cungelella Road. Not that the developmental road was at all bad, but the Cungelella Road has been really smooth, with no corrugations or rocks.

My journey back to Springsure was uneventful, although it was nice to be driving through such pleasant surroundings another time. When I reached Springsure, I went back to Staircase Range to find the turnoff to the place where a Chinese road gang had hand cut a road cutting in the 1800s. Then I stopped at the Virgin Rock viewing area on my way to Emerald. Evidently the Virgin Rock looked just like a picture of the Virgin Mary holding her child to the first Europeans here, but it’s eroded a lot since then, so it’s difficult to see anything. The Eclipse lookout I visited a few days ago is just above it and it was interesting to see where I’d been from a different perspective.

Emerald is quite a big town, so I spent the afternoon resupplying stuff, washing clothes and generally getting ready for the next part of the trip. It’s only 10kms from the Tropic of Capricorn, so I’m now in the tropics. For the next few days I’ll be travelling along the Tropic of Capricorn and the Capricorn Highway.

I decided to plan this trip so I was driving no more than four hours a day, and I like the flexibility this gives me. I can decide to stay in a place and see more the next morning, or stop for some time on the way, or get somewhere early and spend more time there.

Nogoa River Campground

The Great Artesian Basin is fed partly by the Carnarvon Gorge and the escarpments because they’re a porous sandstone. There are also springs along the escarpment and two of them - the Belinda Spring and the Mitchell Spring - feed the Louisa Creek which meets the Nogoa River at the campground. The river goes on to become part of the Fitzroy River which ends up flowing into the ocean near Rockhampton. These springs provide 4 million litres of water per day to the river, and the Belinda Spring is the greatest spring in Queensland. The Louisa Creek flows over a four metre thick deposit of peat, forming the only peat bog in Queensland, so this area is pretty special.

The locals in the Ute yesterday said that the Mitchell spring has stopped running these days.

After the river crossing, the road goes on to the springs and a couple of climbs to the top of the escarpment, so you can see the whole area. However, I didn’t do this. Areas that are added to national parks, like this one, are usually old properties that the government has bought when they came up for sale. Often they’re a bit decrepit - places that retain natural habitat tend not to have been changed much and are often on marginal farmland which is difficult to earn a living from. The campground is near a house that was probably the homestead. I walked there, and it was very small and run down. I took the path to the river from the house. There was a pumping station on the way.

I then walked up to the top of the rocks around the campground and on the way encountered another monument to major mitchell (there is one at the entrance to the campground). This one said that during his tropical expedition he passed through this valley twice. He discovered the Mitchell spring, and they were desperate for water at the time, so I guess he decided to come back this way because of it. Although we’re not in the tropics here, the Tropic of Capricorn is about a hundred kilometres away, so we’re very close to the tropics.

Not long after I’d finished my exploration of the surroundings of the campground, the first new campers arrived. They had a trailer tent. Then came two more cars with caravans, a camping truck (which has TWO folding tents on top), and a car with a trailer van. So tonight we have 10 vehicles! 

Springsure to Nogoa River

Today I’m really in outback Australia. Three hours driving with no settlements at all between Springsure and my campsite at Nogoa River. I started out along Dawson Development Road (a development road is a sure sign of outback - Queensland has a number of development roads in remote areas), which was paved for the first 60km, but was then dirt for the rest of the way. I saw several road trains going the other way as well as a couple of cars, one with an enormous caravan, but that was it. I also passed two primary schools (one was Tresswell, which says it’s open but has no enrolments, and appears to have last been operational in 2020 with 4 pupils, and I can’t find the other), but absolutely nothing else except the occasional cattle station. 

Once I  turned off the development road, I only saw the occasional station and cattle on the road. 

The country was sweeping plains going towards the escarpment that is the continuation of the Carnarvon Gorge. At times I couldn’t see a single manmade landmark.

Nogoa River is part of the Carnarvon National Park and it’s about two hundred kilometres from where I stayed at the gorge, but I had travelled the shortest road distance to get there!

Once I arrived, I had the entire campground to myself for about five minutes. Then a ute with three young people arrived from the other direction. They were locals, and they were very surprised to see me here. They asked me how I found out about such a remote spot. They had been down to the end of the park road, looking at the views. They walked to the river and then headed home.

Just after the campground there’s a river crossing, so I got on my bathers and walked across it to see how easy it was. I haven’t done any creek crossings, and this one was up to my knees. I know my car can easily tackle such things, but I haven’t done one before, so I don’t intend to do it this time.

Later on a convoy of two caravans, one car with a trailer and a car with a rooftop tent arrived. They have kids, so there’s a fair number of people here tonight!

Springsure

I woke up to rain this morning. It’s not much fun camping in rain, especially packing up from camping in rain. However, since I didn’t bring a tent, and am camping in my car, I didn’t have a soggy tent to pack!

I had intended to do the Mickey Creek walk this morning, but I decided to just pack up and go. Everything was a bit muddy, especially my doormat and my shoes. I scraped off most of the mud from my doormat, rolled it up and used one of my sheets to bundle it into. I have two sets of sheets.

I visited Rolleston on the way, but it didn’t look very promising, especially as it was still raining. The only food vendor appeared to be a coffee cart, where I got a hot chocolate and continued on. 

I arrived early in Springsure so I decided to visit Minerva Hills National Park. This can only be visited in a high clearance 4WD. Near the entrance I spied a hill of xanthorrhoea! The park has several lookouts - Springsure Lookout, Eclipse Gap Lookout, Skyline Lookout as well as the Fred Gorge Lookout. The Eclipse Gap Lookout was the most interesting lookout from my perspective, as from here you can see the Springsure Volcano in its entirety, the plug and the hills that were the edge of the volcano. This was a very active volcano, spreading basalt up to fifty layers deep for long distances. Towards the end, trachyte oozed out, forming the black rocks on the Mountain Zamia plateau, where the lookouts are. There was a fair walk to the last lookout through a variety of vegetation. The vegetation in the basalt valleys is on very rich soil while the lighter volcanic rocks form fairly infertile soil where there was a lot of spinefex grass. I was glad I had my car because it was exactly the type of vehicle needed in this park. 

On my way back into town I saw a sign “historic marker - 12km to Wills Grave”. I immediately thought of the wrong Wills, and went down the road. After 12km, there was a sign on a side road “historic marker - 21km to Wills Grave”, so I went there. As you’d expect, at this point there was another side road, with another sign “historic marker - 1.5 km to Wills Grave car park”. Then “historic marker - 800m walk to Wills Graves”. The graves recorded that a party of 19 people had been killed by aborigines in 1861 - 10 men, 2 women and 7 children. 

I looked it up. As I expected, the reprisals were rather indiscriminate. It was the largest killing of European people in the frontier wars in Queensland. I don’t know whether it was the largest massacre of aboriginal people in those wars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cullin-la-ringo_massacre

Carnarvon Gorge Day 2

I had a fairly lazy day today. I was going to walk to the top of Boolimba Bluff, the top of the cliffs nearest the visitors centre, but after walking from the end of the car park and crossing the creek I decided that it was all too much! So I walked along the nature trail that runs along the creek and crosses it several times.

Then I went to the rock pool. You’re supposed to be able to swim in it but although the setting was gorgeous, the rock pool itself was uninviting. The edges were straight down more than a metre, so you’d be covered in dirt getting in or out. Platypuses live here. As they’re nocturnal, you need to be there at dusk to see them.

There are four places to stay at Carnarvon Gorge itself. There’s a campground in the national park. Its ablution block is currently out of order, so no one can stay there. Just outside the park there’s three other places - the Carnarvon Gorge Wilderness Lodge which is very expensive, the Big 4 Carnarvon Gorge Holiday Park, and Sandstone Park. Otherwise you’d need to stay more than 100kms away (Injune is 180kms but Rolleston is closer). Both the wilderness lodge and the holiday park have cabins, but they were all full when I tried to book, so I had to camp in my car at either the holiday park or Sandstone Park. The holiday park and the wilderness lodge are both down in the hollow whereas Sandstone Park is on what might be a mesa, and every site has spectacular views. The holiday park has much better facilities, including a cafe/restaurant where I got lunch today. The caravans are all crammed in together. My site here is about the size of a small house block.