Barkly Highway

This morning I packed up and visited the petrol station to refuel. There was a queue of about eight cars and caravans waiting to even enter. I decided to visit the Drovers Museum instead and come back later.

At first, the overlanders brought stock overland from southern Queensland and from Adelaide to the Kimberley and to stock the properties in northern Australia. Then the drovers moved cattle from the stations to other places to sell them. There are some very well known droving routes, for instance the Canning Stock Route, but there are others like the Murranji Track which were more significant and less well known. The pastoralists had problems because the Asian market didn’t eventuate, and because there were ticks in northern Australia, southern states didn’t accept their cattle. When the explorers had mapped the land, there had been some very good seasons, but in the 1890s seasons became poor and many pastoralists were driven out. 

The Murranji track had no rivers or streams. Aboriginal people of the area showed the pioneer drovers the soaks and waterholes on this traditional aboriginal route.

In the 1960s droving was rapidly replaced with trucks in only a few years. Today some of the stock routes are popular tourist routes.

After I finished at the Drovers Museum, the petrol station was having a lull, so I filled up and commenced my journey. The Northern Territory border was only a few kilometres from Camooweal, and the land was grassland and very flat. For most of the trip I could see several kilometres ahead on the road. I was in the Barkly tablelands, and after a while I got to Barkly Homestead. There were no towns on the way. The only station on the road had signs that it had no fuel, no food…