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