West Macs

With having made Alice Springs a day early we have a little more time up our sleeve for the real stuff. We chose not to do the Alice Springs Desert Discovery Centre for the princely sum of $68 and decided instead to opt for the real experience. After introducing ourselves to the watercolour style of the Hermannsburg school galleried in the entry centre there, we headed west into the West MacDonnell Ranges with the added bonus of the sun at our backs.

First stop was Simpsons Gap. The major message here was the difficulty in taking photos to do justice to the landscapes. The vast scale and the high contrast between sun and shade serves to demonstrate just what a good job the eye does in adapting to the range of conditions.

These ranges were formed when the sedimentary layers deposited in a shallow inland sea the size of the Mediterranean were lifted and folded so that in places the layers are now vertical.  Some layers are harder than others and so resist erosion more than the rest, forming the ridges of the ranges. In places the hard layers crack, leaving a gap and many of the features of interest in this area are the creeks in those gaps.

After driving and walking into Simpson’s Gap, Standley Chasm, Serpentine Creek and Big Hole we decided we’d had enough of traipsing through sand, we did a brief journey into the ochre pits. Here, the folding of the layers had created a painters buffet with all of the coloured layers lying vertically next to each other just waiting to be dug up. Alas, not for visitors though. Souveniring is strictly forbidden.

From then, much to Elliot’s disappointment, it was in to Ormiston Gorge for our camp. He was hoping for the resort just a little further on. So we had a camp setup with two grumpy boys but fortunately they took themselves off up the hill to leave the cooks in peace.

Isabel managed to solve the conundrum of the mismatched plain flour and self-raising flour canisters and lids with her super-sensitive taste buds and so our dinner of roast pork and veal, followed by apple and syrup steamed pudding with custard was a great success and demolished in record time. Fortunately, the fading light under clear skies held on long enough but the rapid fall in temperature was ominous.

Alice Springs

The whole history of this town reflects a time when Australia was looking to its inland for prosperity. Australia today is a nation of seaside dwellers taking our inland farmers and miners fairly much for granted, accepted as part of our makeup, but really the edge of the continent is where it is at.

Not so one hundred years ago. The Australian inland was seen as a frontier of unlimited potential, with vast riches awaiting those who could conquer the challenges of its distances and open spaces. And so it was for the South Australia of the 1860s. The invention of the telegraph promised near-instant communication, where until then messages sent by mail would take months to cover the distance to England. A cable had arrived in Indonesia and the race was on between the colonies of Australia to link in to the network, and to tap the wealth that it promised. South Australia, somewhat rashly perhaps, undertook to fund and build a telegraph line across the continent in 18 months, and all this less than a decade after an explorer had finally survived a trans-continental expedition.

And so the concept of the Overland Telegraph Line was born, and with it came the concept of the repeater stations required every 200 or so kilometres along its more than 3000km length. Alice Springs would be born to fill that simple requirement for the colony of South Australia. Its ramifications for the people of Central Australia though could not have been imagined. By the time the repeater station had completed its short working lifetime, nomadic nations of Central Australia had been urbanised, Christened, Missioned, Half-Caste and ultimately stolen as the white people struggled to come to terms with their role as outsiders who would dominate this land.

Our not-so-early start had us climb Anzac Hill at the north end of town to get a feel for the layout of the land. The Macdonnell Ranges provide locally impenetrable, but broken divisions in the landscape which largely define the natural boundaries for development. The dry Todd River bed similarly defines the local recreation for the town.

Next stop was the Telegraph Station where not only did we discover the history of the telegraph, there was also a good coverage of the re-use of the buildings for dealing with the vast and growing population of children born to black mothers from white fathers.

This is the Northern Territory, and so while I stocked up on the necessities for life, the rest of the family pursued more cultural endeavours in the galleries in the Todd Mall. That consumed much of the afternoon, but all of the physical endurance and so it was time to attempt to get to the TV towers which as usual occupy pride of place on a good hill over the town. That mission was ultimately unsuccessful, but lead us to Honeymoon Gap and the John Flynn grave site to complete the day.

Plenty left

Having overreached the plan yesterday, we were able to put in another big one today and covered the entire Plenty Highway in one hit. That has put us in Alice Springs a day ahead of schedule, perhaps a little more tired, and under overcast skies. And also with almost a quarter tank of Boulia diesel left.

Tobermorey this morning dawned fine and clear. In true farming tradition the day started well before dawn with much activity back and forth in Landcruiser utes. Perhaps a little less traditional was the warm-up and departure of the mustering helicopter. Elliot was a little disappointed he didn’t capture it on video. I was heartbroken! The old dog missed the mutton bone last night but came around in hope of scoring a breakfast sausage, but hadn’t reckoned on the defensive skills of hungry campers.

The advantage of crossing a timezone is that you can justify yourself of timings depending on which one gives you the more comfortable answer. Having had a leisurely breakfast, an 8:30 departure under blue skies felt real good.

The general wisdom that the Donohue Highway on the Queensland side is rubbish compared with the Plenty Highway in the NT was not our experience. While neither road is in any sense bad, the prize for the roughest and the longest corrugation sections clearly goes to the NT.

The Plenty passes through many distinct areas, ranging from flat open Mitchell grass plains, to rolling hills, rocky ranges, rock farms, spinifex and open woodland. Specific attractions are few, but we called in at Jervois Station to avoid buying diesel for $2.10 a litre, and at the various free camps and rest areas on the rivers we crossed.  Apart from the parts of rocket trophies scored by Jervois as a side benefit of being down-range from Woomera, none were that exciting, so on the basis of our brief survey, Tobermorey is the way to go.

We did briefly pass into termite mound country.  While not common, they were on the large side. Roadside melons were sporadic, as were wildflowers. Anitjere looked promising but a single drive-through showed us many broken and wrecked cars,  rubbish in the streets and nothing open to appeal to the tourist, so we settled ourselves with a brief private discussion about why the townspeople don’t show a bit more civic pride and moved on.

The weather closed in with heavy overcast skies and a little light rain to accompany the last two hours into Alice Springs, but by then the road was sealed. You wouldn’t call it busy. The last 70km of the Stuart Highway saw one car pass me, and I don’t recall anything oncoming although there may have been one or two, it certainly wasn’t busy.

Donohue

The Mayor of Boulia Shire has been grabbing some airtime of late posturing that he will close the Donohue Highway in July unless the state government takes over the funding of the road maintenance. He says the road is an essential economic link for the state and beyond the means of the 500 residents of the shire and is in a poor state of repair. Well, clearly he is just grandstanding. Perhaps he doesn’t have the money for maintenance, but in no way is the road dangerous or in a parlous state.

We find ourselves in the recently reopened Tobermorey Station. I haven’t found out the details, but having closed in about 2006 to visitors, it has reopened with much fanfare and is available for overnight campers and fuel. The welcoming committee consisted of a donkey and a very old Irish Wolfhound. Our stop down the road to collect firewood was unnecessary as that is all part of the service.

The aim was to get in, get the fire going and see about this mutton roast that has been in the queue for a couple of days. If anything, the combustibility of mutton fat and the dry explosiveness of desert timber had us underway rather more rapidly than I might have planned. It was all good though and the succulent mutton did its thing with the vegies and gave us the perfect birthday dinner for Isabel.

The plan had been for a night on the Georgina River not quite so far down the road. As it turns out, the Georgina was largely dry, with the sandy riverbed being down steep slopes and the flies being thick up top. The hastily convened meeting of the accommodation committee decreed that anywhere else would be better than there, so off we went.

The early Middleton morning gave us a brief shower, amplified by the tin roof of the “community hall”. Not even enough to settle the dust, any discussion about whether it would make a difference to the road later was entirely unwarranted.

The road into Boulia was surprisingly dramatic in places, especially considering the majority of the land out here is vastly flat and open. Being an ancient inland seabed filled slowly over millions of years has led to mostly flat land with the occasional hard crust which resisted erosion, forming the characteristic “jump ups” typical of this area.

Boulia is a neat little town and provided us with some last minute grocery topups and diesel at 175.9 which should hopefully get us to Alice Springs. The turnoff onto the Donohue saw the amount of traffic drop away to the point where we have probably only seen a dozen cars in 250km.  While being rather less than I might have expected, you still really don’t yet get the feeling of being remote or isolated.

The cloud cover continues  to keep the night times warmish, so no more frosts, which is welcome. No expanses of stars however. Still some time to go though.

 

Middleton

There was some discussion on the way through this afternoon as to whether Middleton was so named because it was about half way from Winton to Boulia. As it was it was the first hotel on the Cobb and Co route between the two centres from the 1860s to the 1920s, and it remains the last one on the road.

 

In fact, the town, such as it is, was named in rather more boringly traditional fashion. McKinlay was an explorer remembered mainly for giving his name to the pub used in the original Crocodile Dundee. Middleton was one of his surveyors.

Middleton now has a pub, complete with lounge chairs and a TV alongside the ironing board, with the accounting books spread out on the dining room table.  Outside the dog has pups, the poddy calf and the pig trot around as best mates both begging favours from the punters, and the generator provides a quiet background whine to all conversations.

The major consolation for not getting stars at night is that the weather is warmer and you get magnificent sunsets.

Today was quite the travelling day. A proper pack up and a first time for this trip, so not yet smooth, but we left Blackall before 9am which isn’t so bad. We passed by the properties Evora and Mena Park which have meaning for the in-laws in-laws.

Had a brief stop in Barcaldine to see what had become of the Tree of Knowledge, little knowing what the Labor Party was to do to itself later in the day. Entering Longreach we passed behind the 747 parked in the QANTAS Museum and promised to return soon. Winton gave us a late lunch and again more promises to get back to do the Waltzing Mathilda stuff which we have now avoided twice.

Then it was a left turn onto the Boulia road to head towards Middleton. It hardly seemed possible, but the country flattened out, before becoming stony and spinifex-covered. The distant hills took shape to add some relief to the flat plains. Lots of road kill earlier in the day reminded us that being on the roads late was not a good idea, but even that petered out as the pasture became stony.

Great excitement because the kids get to watch the State of Origin tonight. before being off to the “real” outback tomorrow.