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. 

Carnarvon Gorge Main Walk

The Carnarvon gorge is part of the Great Dividing Range that starts in New Guinea, crosses the Torres Strait (it’s submerged there and the Torres Strait islands are really peaks of the range. Then it goes along the east coast of Australia until it reaches Victoria, where it turns right and continues until about the South Australian border. In some places it is right on the coastline, and at others it goes a fair way inland. It’s a very old range so it’s never very high, but there are many places where sandstone parts of it are very jagged forming escarpments and gorges. As I was driving from Roma yesterday, I was pretty surprised to see a sign saying I was crossing the Great Dividing Range because I didn’t know that it came so far inland here.

Carnarvon Gorge is a sandstone gorge, with high white cliffs on both sides. The gorge itself is over 30km long, but there are escarpments that continue for a great distance. The drive from Roma was very interesting because it was hilly and bits of escarpment kept on coming into view. Because it’s part of the Great Dividing Range, the park gets a reasonable amount of rain and has some unique microclimates. As a result, some things are endemic to the park, and there are some plants in the park that only otherwise occur in small patches on the coast.

To the south of the park, all the rivers form the most northerly part of the Murray-Darling system, while those to the north and east drain to the coast. The park has a number of sections which is why the great walk can be so long and still be in the park.

The gorge has a number of walks, most of which are branches from the Main Walking Track. There’s also a Great Walk that takes six or seven days.

Today I packed up my car and drove it to the visitors car park to begin walking up the main walking track. I decided to go as far as the Art Gallery, and turn back there to walk all the branches to that point except the walk to Boolimba Bluff.

The main walking track was really beautiful, with the Carnarvon Creek running through it, and the vegetation changing between eucalypts, calistamins, palms and tree ferns. The path uses steppingstones to cross the creek at least five times during my walk. I kept on seeing the sheer white sandstone cliffs on both sides.

The side branches are the highlights. The art gallery contains over 2000 engravings, ochre stencils and freehand paintings including some of the best examples of stencil art in Australia. Unfortunately, Wards Canyon was closed due to rock falls, and I suspect it won’t reopen. It includes the world’s largest fern. The Ampitheatre is more difficult to get into, with a series of metal steps up to it that you need to go down backwards, but once you enter through a slot canyon you are surrounded by sheer walls letting in a circle of light from the top.

The last branch I visited was Moss Garden, a tree fern gully with the bottom of the sheer walls dripping with mosses. There were also three waterfalls.

I was very happy I visited.

Roma to Carnarvon Gorge

Today I left Roma and stopped for lunch at Injune. Its population is just over 400, so you would think that there wouldn’t be much there. It has two streets, double the number of some of the towns I’ve been through on this trip. It has an aged care home, a cafe, a roadhouse (so there’s two places to go for lunch). They’re furnishing a museum. In short, Injune is going places. 

I’ve been going along the Carnarvon Highway, which is also part of the Great Inland Way. I’d never heard of this name, but it goes from Sydney to Cooktown and has a link to Brisbane. I’ve evidently been following it ever since I left Dubbo. There’s a fair bit of traffic on it - a lot of grey nomads, and a lot of road trains. At least two thirds of the road trains are carrying cattle. I guess everyone is destocking in preparation for the coming drought we’ll get next year with the El Niño. The BOM has predicted that the entire east of Australia won’t have much rain for at least the next six months. I watched the road trains going through Injune at lunchtime today. Most of them had three trailers, and the occasional one had four. 

The grey nomads are having problems. Each year there’s the Birdsville Bash which has about 20000 people attending. They’ve cancelled it for this year - the Simpson desert is impassable because of all the rain, and Birdsville is still going to be too wet to hold it in August. Evidently many grey nomads think that maybe they can still go, and so they’re wandering around the parts of western Queensland that aren’t too wet. At least that’s what people are telling me. 

So Injune was full of people. In fact the whole area is full. I had a hard time booking anything in or near Carnarvon Gorge in the way of accommodation, so I’ve fallen back on camping in my car while I’m here - and even the campgrounds are all full. This one only has the most basic facilities - no showers, portaloos, no potable water… But every site has astounding views of the escarpments (and I have one of the best). It’s just stunning.

The trip along the road was really nice, with occasional views of white forested escarpments and lightly treed paddocks with cattle grazing. It got better the nearer I cane to the park. I got my site at my campground, which is outside the park, and then went to the park visitor’s centre. I eventually found a ranger, who gave me incorrect information that where I’m staying for the last two nights was closed. But it’s another part that’s closed (thank goodness, I don’t know where I’d be able to go if it was).

I came back to the campground, set up, made dinner, and am now about to go to bed. Good night!