Spent a night at a caravan park outside of Charters Towers instead which was basic but cheap and with very eager to please staff.
Found this huge (4in) bug on my tent in the morning.
Giant Bug Number 1: Welcome to the Tropics
Month: December 2012
Porcupine Gorge
Porcupine Gorge + White Mountains National Park : Porcupine was gorgeous (sorry Ithica) and a nice place to camp. I couldn’t book the campsite in advance but fortunately there were plenty of spaces available. Only 2 other couples camping.
Like Carnarvan Gorge, Porcupine Gorge seemed to have its own micro-climate of lush green tropics even though the surrounding landscape was brown. The camping was on the ridge at the top but there was a 1km trail I hiked down to visit the gorge floor first thing in the morning (while it was cool).
Afterwards I headed for White Mountains National Park to re-evaluate whether I wanted to camp in the hot, dry, isolated (snake infested?) place and decided to just mountain bike the 10km 4wd track in there instead. Racked up 25km round trip (including a little side exploring in the forest) which felt good for a change from driving all the time.
Carnarvon Gorge
Stumbled across one of the best, most spectacular places I have seen in Australia so far: Carnarvon Gorge. And to think I wasn’t even planning to visit the place. They only had official park service camping available after a 10km hike in, so I had anticipated giving it a miss. But seeing how most camp sites I have been to have been far less crowded than expected, I decided to call Takarakka Bush Resort, a private campground within the boundaries of the national park that I had read about to see if they might have room for me and my tent – and they did.
The drive into the park was really quite spectacular, starting with a pretty ordinary dull brown flat drive (it had been pretty average since I left Wilcannia, NSW) to a noticeable greening of the landscape to a full blown rich green forest sitting in a micro-climate with spectacular drops into deep gorges. I did a few short walks on the first day including one into a nice cool rock-pool for a swim that evening before doing another short hike up to see some cool old Aboriginal cave paintings. On the second day I did a bit of hiking up into the beautiful gorge. It was an extremely beautiful place. I would definitely say it would be one of the top things to see in Australia!
Stumbling across the unexpected
When you travel around from town to town, they rarely seem to be what you expect when you get there. They are usually much bigger or smaller than you expected. Often towns with not much information published about them seem to actually be pretty cool places to hang out for a bit of wilderness recuperation. On the other hand, towns that seem to get the most hype in Lonely Planet often seem way overrated and a bit rundown and past their prime (with boarded up shops, etc).
One such town was Charleville, QLD. Charleville had numerous boarded up shops and not a whole lot to see in the area. It was also extremely hot and very difficult to cool off in. There was nowhere to escape the heat – no real shade, boiling hot water coming out of pipes, and even a hot swimming pool.
Charleville did have a good astronomy show on at their local observatory, which was pretty modern compared to the rest of the town. They treated us to a nighttime show in which we were shown telescope views of the bands on Jupiter and some of its moons, distant gaseous galaxies forming, the moon up close, and other stellar stuff. Very cool show and the best I have seen in a while.
One funny thing about Charleville is that it seemed as though no one had ever seen a bike being transported on the roof of a car before. My bike seemed to attract endless fascination by the locals there. Very odd considering every other town I’ve come through didn’t really seem to care.
Back ‘o Bourke
There is an expression in Australia (originating in Sydney, I guess) for any extremely remote location: Back ‘o Bourke. Bourke, NSW is a small town near the northern border with Queensland. I found it to be a bit creepy and somewhat reminiscent of Derby, WA. It seemed to be a bit of a ghost town – and even had tumble weed-like things rolling around and blowing all over town. The town seemed very quiet and unassuming by day but it had hints of much social unrest at night. There were numerous recently burned out homes, very high security around most shops, a bizarre iron-barred jailed-like car lot, and even barbed wire and electronic fencing around the caravan park I stayed in. I did manage to get out and visit their boat ramp for a very nice cooling swim with locals on the Darling River.
Double-G Hell
After my sleepless night in White Cliffs, I really wasn’t in the mood to drive too far the following day. I was keeping an eye out for a free campsite at one of the nicer roadside stops along the highway eastward when I just happened to pop into a roadhouse for a coffee. Anyone advertising “Real Coffee” in the outback must actually know how to make it properly! I popped in and noticed they were offering cheap camping around back with nice shady places, hot showers, real coffee, and a staff of European backpackers. It couldn’t be all that bad!
I got a little restless in afternoon and decided to ask them whether there were any 4wd tracks in the area I could mountain bike for a little while. They looked at me like I was a bit nuts and it turned out I was. I noticed a national park nearby boarding the owners farm property and got permission to ride through to try and get into the park. Unfortunately, after only about 10-15 minutes of bike riding I found myself with both tires flat due to double-G’s Double-G’s are double thorns that will tear through any mountain bike tire. I very rarely get flats, but I had to spend the rest of the afternoon scrutinizing my tires to find all the tiny thorns and pick them out so they would not re-flat my new tubes. the experience made me very wary of riding off trails for a while!
Menagerie of road hazards
After a beautiful drive from Broken Hill eastward through Wilcannia, NSW, I decided to head up a side road to check out possible underground campsite in the town of White Cliffs. It was very hot (around 39C/+100F) and I was looking for a bit of relief. Like Coober Pedy, White Cliff is an opal mining town in which most residents live under ground to escape the intense heat. I camped in a cool underground mine in Cooper Pedy years ago so I was hoping to find the same in White Cliffs. No such luck! They had an underground hotel, but no underground campsites, so I was forced to camp in a near deserted, extremely basic caravan park. Unfortunately, there was rain in the forecast so I had to sleep with my fly on – and this resulted in a very uncomfortable hot sleepless night for me. I have since learned a few tricks about my new tent to open it up a bit wider for more airflow. I’ve also found a fan useful to use at powered sites in caravan parks.
The drive up from the main road to White Cliffs was absolutely beautiful, but it contained a menagerie of road hazards with no fencing for roaming black cows, sheep, feral goats, kangaroos, emus, and more. They all have their own characteristics to watch out for. Kangaroos as the most erratic (they can change directions at any hop), goats seemed to like to cross the road in single file, cows were the slowest to move but hardest to see in darkness, and sheep were the most paranoid.
Quarantine Madness
Another interesting thing to note about the driving around these parts is all the different agricultural regions and their strict quarantine requirements. It can be very tricky to stock up on fruit and veggies because every few hundred kilometers you find you have to throw out what you’ve bought. Now that I’m thoroughly ensconced in New South Wales I should be safe for the next few days before I get to Queensland – where I’m sure I will have to go through the same process again.
Much of the agriculture relies on the Murray River for irrigation. This area is where Australia seems to get most of their produce, although Western Australia seems to try growing most of its own. Prices for produce do seem a lot lower around here, anyway.
Dunt. I know it’s around here somewhere!
The small towns on this side of the country seem a bit more vibrant than they do in the west. As opposed to spending time in big cities, small towns are often great to check out. No parking hassles with no meters. Everything you need is within easy walking distance. Surprisingly the food can be really quite good if you seek out the right places. Broken Hill, New South Wales, appears to be a sister city to Kalgoorlie. Lots of nice old buildings, friendly libraries with free WiFi, and cool little cafes with trendy looking people – perhaps displaced from the larger cities. Had some wonderful french toast for breakfast this morning. Also had some nice pizza from a town in South Australia called Loxton. Some day soon I will break out the Trangia and cook my own dinner.
Loxton was very small and had its share of people you’d expect to find in Dunt, South Australia. Loxton also had nice old buildings and everything you needed within a short walking distance of the town square.
Kinchega National Park
Spent the night near Broken Hill in Kinchega National Park in New South Wales last night sleeping all by myself along the Darling River – with no other campers in the park. It was a beautiful park that was full of a wide variety and abundant supply of wildlife. I saw countless kangaroos including BIG grey ones I’d never seen before that would give extra big jumps when hopping away from you in your car – perhaps trying to intimidate you with their powerful rear legs. I also saw countless emus, smaller than usual looking monitor lizards, strange black chicken-like birds that preferred to run than fly, and heard lots of strange loud noises in the night – especially when sleeping along the river. All the animals seem to rely on the river to drink in the evenings, so it is amazing what you will see and hear there. Lots of big fish lurking underneath as well.
I tried taking a shortcut up from Mildura, Victoria (nothing to write home about) on my way here and found some of the worst dirt roads to negotiate that I have ever found. The roads inside the national park were not much better. But then I remembered that it was just a little less than a year ago that this entire region was hit by massive floods:
http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2012/02/29/3442480.htm
Where I pitched my tent was about 2 miters below the flood lines on the trees in the area. The roads had obviously all been submerged and washed out at the time so it is probably a miracle that they are in as good a state as they are in at the moment.
Unfortunately for me it was one of the very hottest nights I’ve ever had camping. I set up just my tent with no fly and it still took forever to cool off! I tried to do like the animals and go for a swim but the bank was so steep and muddy that I could only wade in about a foot to splash myself. Venturing any further in would sink my legs into very deep endless clay, so i thought it best to stick to the shoreline.
I would have liked to have spent more time there but the heat was a bit much to deal with. Should cool off in the next few days…
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