Richmond - Hughenden - Charters Towers

We've been moving due east, through dinosaur country. We only stopped one night at Richmond, doing the town heritage walk in the evening after we arrived, and visiting Kronosaurus Korner, a fossil information and display centre, the next morning before we moved on. Richmond is sited on what was the floor of an ancient sea, and the flat land around is noted for many fossil finds. Most of the fossils are sea animals, including the Richmond Pliosaur, Australian ichthyosaur and Kronosaurus Queenslandicus. There is also a remarkably well preserved fossil of the Minmi, which must have been washed into the sea after it had died. The fossil even included the skin of the little creature, so they can tell exactly what it looked like. The picture at left shows a recreation of the minmi. Kronosaurus Korner was a very well set up museum, with interesting displays and heaps of information. It certainly justified stopping off in this town in the middle of Queensland.

From Richmond we headed to Hughenden for a couple of nights. The Hughenden area was on the shores of the same ancient sea, and is also rich in fossils. They have claimed the Muttaburrasaurus, first found a couple of hundred kilometres further south at Muttaburra, as their own, and have replicas of both the fossil skeleton and the recreated dinosaur on show in town. The Fossil Corner exhibition wasn't nearly as sophisticated as Kronosaurus Korner in Richmond, but at $5 each we felt we got our money's worth.

Hughenden has put quite a lot of effort into attracting visitors to town and there is quite a bit to see. Apart from 'Mutt' shown above, there are quite a few other sculptures in town, most made from old windmill or tractor parts. Quite a few, but not all, of these have a dinosaur theme. Just south of town there is a small hill (Mt Walker) with lookouts giving a panoramic 360 degree view of the flat plains around the town. We also did a couple of 4-wd 'scenic drives', neither of which was particularly scenic or really needed a 4-wd to complete. However, they gave us another view of this dry pastoral landscape.

Apart from exploring all things dinosaur related, we also spent half a day going to Porcupine Gorge, a deep chasm gouged into the flat plains about 60 km north of Hughenden. The drawback of walking down into a gorge is that the hard bit comes at the end when you have to climb back up again, and with the rather straggly native vegetation not providing much shade it was rather a hot effort, but plenty of water and taking our time allowed us to make it. The creek at the bottom of the gorge is still flowing surprisingly well, given it is still the dry season here, and made a nice place to sit beside and eat the fruit we had brought. The rock formation shown in the photo is known as pyramid rock, for obvious reasons.

Another 250km drive further east brought us to Charters Towers, which started life as a gold rush town in 1872. It is still a prosperous looking service centre for the surrounding pastoral properties, with many lovely old buildings remaining from the gold rush days. We did the history walk around town, the highlight of which would have to be the restored Stock Exchange Arcade. The trading was done from the balcony pictured, with the masses below eagerly bidding up the price of shares in the various 'sure thing' mines on offer. As in other frontier towns, fortunes were made and lost quickly, and there were some interesting stories told on the information panels and displays in the arcade. We also went up the local lookout - more flat plains - and had a game of golf.

Back to Mt Isa

After leaving Kakadu we spent a couple of long days driving through the Northern Territory back to Queensland, 658 km the first day and 582 the second. We stopped at Katherine on the first day to stock up on supplies as there was no shopping at Mary River Roadhouse, and once we got into Queensland we lost half an hour on the clock. Most of the second day's drive was due east across the Barkly Tablelands, fighting a headwind the entire way. With the caravan providing drag we could just about see the fuel gauge dropping! After all that we still had another couple of hundred km to go on the third day to get back to Mt Isa.

Needless to say once we got to Mt Isa we stopped for a rest for a couple of days. Last time we were here we did most of the attractions on offer, but we still found enough to occupy ourselves. We picked up a brochure from the visitor centre for a tourist drive around some old mine towns, and had a lovely day exploring. The trail started about 60km from Mt Isa, and on the way we visited the remains of Mary Kathleen, the town attached to the uranium mine. This was active from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s, at which time the mine was closed down and all buildings in the town sold off. All that remains now are concrete slabs on well laid out streets, many still with kerbing intact.

Just past Mary Kathleen we turned off the highway onto a dirt road, to the ghost towns of Bulonga, Ballara and Hightville. Actually, the term 'ghost town' implies a lot more than is really there, which is barely even as much as at the Mary Kathleen site. Ballara, which during the First World War was the rail head for shipping all the local copper production to the east coast and boasted a population of over 1,000, can now only be identified by the remains of the rail siding, with no other ruins remaining at all. Bulonga still had a few concrete foundations in the bush, the weir damming the local river to supply water to the mine and township was the only relic surviving in reasonable condition.

The track to the ruins of Hightville, and the remains of the railway tunnel nearby, was very narrow and rough, even in 4wd we never got out of second gear, and on at least one of the (dry) creek crossings we needed to engage low transmission just to get up the other side. It certainly

gave the Patrol a work-out! The trail also visited Fountain Springs, which must have been a very welcome permanent water supply in the arid landscape. The whole area was abandoned after the First World War when copper prices dropped, although some hardy prospectors are still poking around hoping to strike it rich.

On our other day in Mt Isa we (naturally) had a game of golf. We also stocked up on supplies ready to continue our journey across the outback towards the coast.

Kakadu South

When we were in the Northern Territory 2 years ago we spent a week at the World Heritage Listed Kakadu National Park. We based ourselves at Jabiru, the only township inside the park and explored all the central and northern parts. However with the southern entrance 150km from Jabiru we didn't get to see the southernmost attractions.

We decided to remedy that situation on our way back southwards, and have spent the last few days staying at the Mary River Roadhouse, just outside the southern entrance to Kakadu. Last time we were at Kakadu we were surprised that there was no entrance fee, with such a huge area to manage we expected there would have been some element of 'user pays'. Well the government has well and truly rectified that oversight - it now costs $25 per person for a 2 week park entrance pass. Being good citizens we duly bought a pass each at the roadhouse before setting off into the park, but there was no roadblock at the entrance and in the 2 days we spent in the park no-one looked at all interested in checking whether we had paid, so we suspect that a lot of the young tourist/backpacker crowd would probably not pay.

Our first stop was Gunlom, a big pool at the base of a waterfall. In the wet season it would undoubtedly be spectacular, this deep in the dry it is still flowing but with much diminished force. A strenuous half hour climb took us to the top of the waterfall, where the water flows through a series of beautiful rock pools before tumbling over the edge of the cliff. The last pool outlined against the horizon is a truly spectacular sight. We didn't do any swimming, but most visitors were taking the plunge (although not literally over the waterfall), it certainly looked inviting after the hard walk up.

We then did several walks at Yurmikmik. With no swimming on offer very few people visit this area, so we had it virtually to ourselves.

On the second day we did a lovely creekside walk at Maguk. Once again this walk ended in a plunge pool at the base of a waterfall, and many people were taking a dip, despite the signs warning that there may be crocodiles in the area. Admittedly, the local information did say that the rangers cleared out the crocodiles at the beginning of each dry season, so it should be safe, but it also said that crocodiles could possibly move in undetected at any time. Presumably it is a matter of all care but, hey, we warned you, so no responsibility.

We also did shortish walks at Gungurul and Bukbukluk, each ending in a lookout over the seemingly endless scrub that makes up the vast majority of the Kakadu area. All in all, we're satisfied that we've ticked off all the attractions that this famous park offers, although it would be interesting to come back in the wet season to see the rivers and waterfalls in full flood.

Enjoying Darwin's Cultural Life

We've taken advantage of life in a big city (well, a small town really, but it is the Territory capital) to enjoy some live shows. We've been twice to the Darwin Entertainment Centre, particularly enjoying a musical duo called Loop the Loop. This hugely entertaining show featured an amazing variety of instruments, not just an assortment of drums, guitars, a baby grand and saxophone, but things such as squeaky toys, carved carrots, celery crunching and a tiny toy piano. The sound was layered using a loop machine, with snippets of music recorded and played back over and over again, building up to a surprisingly tuneful crescendo.

The other show at DEC was a more standard piece of theatre, a play about aboriginal life in Victoria in the 1950s. We were booked to see a third show as well, but got a phone call a few days beforehand to say it had been cancelled, they didn't say why but it sounded like we were almost the only people booked.

The Darwin Festival started last week, and we have managed to fit in a couple of shows before we head off again. We saw Casey Donovan (of Australian Idol fame) and a circus cabaret troupe called Cantina. Both shows were at an open air theatre constructed in one of the city's parks, with the starry tropical sky above. It must be a lot easier organising events when you know for certain that there is no chance of rain or cold to interfere!

We've really enjoyed our 3 months in Darwin, and the warm, dry weather has certainly been better than what we would have experienced almost anywhere else in Australia this year. But we're starting to look forward to getting back on the road again and continuing our adventures.

Fish Feeding and Other Wildlife Encounters

Since our last blog update we've been to a couple of other ranger talks at local national parks. The first of these was at Holmes Jungle, only a few minutes from our caravan park. We had done the walk here when we visited Darwin a couple of years ago, but were interested to hear more about it. The park is now rather neglected, apparently almost no funds are spent on it, and the walking track was quite overgrown and obviously rarely used. The plus side of this is that the local wildlife don't get too many visitors, and we saw heaps of spiders, a cute tree frog and a big pile of snakes, which slithered away when the ranger poked at them with a stick.

Another park we have visited was Howard Springs, where we did an evening spotlighting walk. Although there were only ourselves and another couple on the tour, apparently it was too much for the local fauna, as apart from a cane toad and one possum, the only wildlife we saw were fish and millions of mosquitoes. A real test of our tropical strength insect repellent, one which it didn't quite pass.

This morning we went to Doctor's Gully, where they have fish feeding sessions at high tide. The fish have been coming in for many years, and it is now quite a big tourist attraction. Some of the fish will actually take the bread out of your hand, and if you are game you can give them a pat or a tickle at the same time. There were probably nearly a dozen different species there, ranging from mullet to batfish and even some barramundi, lurking on the fringes.

With the amount of golf we are playing here we are really getting into the swing. We've played in tournaments at all of the local courses, and have done pretty well between us. We've managed to win enough vouchers to get a pair of golf shoes each plus a rescue wood for John, as well as several dozen assorted golf balls. We've also won $200 worth of vouchers between us for the local RSL, which so far has translated into a lunch and a dinner, with another dinner planned next week to finish off the last $50. We've found room in the van for an electric food steamer and an MP4 player, and we're hoping to accumulate enough winnings credit to substantially pay for a new golf bag John has his eye on before we leave. The trouble is, of course, that as you win things the handicapper catches up with you!