Tuesday 29th July 2014 – Thrushton NP to Charleville – Warm Day Clear Sunny skies.

This morning was warmer than yesterday.  We woke early, it takes forever for the sun to rise out here.  It is a good half hour later than the coast. The cloudless skies are just wonderful, the blue of the sky is beautiful.

 

We found this little gecko when packing up, nearly stood on him.

Go Camo Gecko!

 

 

 

Yep, we turn here

We packed up and were on the road by 8.30am.  We decided to travel by station tracks to get to a road heading north to Charleville.  Leaving Thrushton we were dodging Eastern Grey Kangaroos for quite a while.  We saw some beautiful kangaroos, cream and steel grey – I thought some may be mixed with the reds, but it was the grey’s rolling in the red sand to give them that colour.

 

 

We saw about 4 different emu at various locations. They like to run in front of vehicles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We stopped for a Echidna crossing the road. We also passed a shingle back lizard on the

road.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were numerous gates to unlock and relock.

The last gate was the worst nearly fallen over, almost impossible to open and shut.

 

The road was very good, only a couple of mildly rough spots.  We stopped for morning tea at Patterson Creek which was dry and had lunch 50 klms from of Charleville when we hit the bitumen for the first time.

The road was edged with very tall Mallee trees and so straight, it was like driving down a very very long landscaped avenue.  It was good to see very tall Mallee trees which would have been very old as they are exceptionally slow growing.  I am glad we stayed off the bitumen as we certainly got to see a lot of wildlife.  I haven’t mentioned the goats or pigs, they are everywhere!

 

 

The road was all ours, we only saw three cars all the way to Charleville, the first car after we had been travelling for a few hours.

 

 

 

We had to refuel, top up the fresh food and fill up the water tanks for our trip to Welford/Diamantina tomorrow.  We will be remote again for 6 nights.  We also called into the information centre to try to get a map of Welford layout – no luck, so we will just have to wing it.  We booked Welford and Diamantina National Parks online – 3 nights each.  We might get to put the kayak into Hunters Gorge at Diamantina if the water is high enough. To finish a snap of one of the main streets of Charleville.  I think it will be a long time before they need traffic lights.

We are camped at Rock Pool a roadside free camp 11 klms east of Charleville. A very popular rest spot, there are about 7 caravans here with us. 

Wednesday morning- 7.30am , We are now on our way to Quilpie to go to Welford National Park down to Windorah and on to Diamantina National Park and through to Boulia.

Thursday 31st July – Warm and Sunny – Clear Skies - Week One - completed

Today we are doing the park drives.  The first drive is the Desert Drive. You leave the clay pans and gibber plains and drive through Spinifex and  red sand with ghost gums.  The drive takes you to a large red sand dune where you can view the flat landscape.  The road also leads to artesian bores, windmills and watering troughs from the pastoral time.

 

 

 The length was 19 klms one way, but it was considerably longer coming back the Jundah-Quilpie Road.

 

This was an interesting tree – Beefwood (Grevillea striata)  the timber is reddish. We brought our field guide to common plants of the Cooper basin.  It said that it is a slow growing, long lived tree.  The one blazed by Charles Sturt at Depot Glen in 1845 still stands sentinel over Poole’s grave.

 It had flower buds on it – we are a bit too early to see it bloom. The book says that they are creamy yellow.  You can see from the photo what unusual leaves it has.

 

  

 

 

 

 

                Spinifex               The information board at the bottom of the sand dune

 

 

  

 

 

 

View from the sand dune and a flowering bush which I

think maybe Silver Cassia.

 

Our next drive – Mulga Drive

  This drive is 71 klms and it took us about 2 1/2 hours

  It is a loop drive, there are several water holes

  to visit and and a viewing point from Sawyer’s Look-out

  and a visit to  Sawyer’s Creek.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coming down the track from Sawyer’s Lookout.

Mt Welford is in the back ground of the first picture.

It is located just outside the park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A view of Mt Welford on the return loop

Sawyer’s Creek, a couple of pools of water remaining until the next rain.

 How fast can you hop?

Well I can tell you that they were keeping pace with us at around 60 kph.

The red is our day’s adventures.  We finished with the River Drive

which was a bit of a joke, because you went to the river once and

that was it.  The drive is no where near the river.

The circle is our camp spot.  We are glad that we drove straight to

the camp on the way in and didn’t go via the River Drive.

Monday 28th July – Thrushton NP – Cold overnight – Warm Clear Sky

The southerly change came through last night and the overnight temperature dropped to less than 3c.  We were not cold having a wool blanket and cotton doona on.  We still have a cotton blanket, couple of sleeping bags and thermals to add, plus a heater so we are doing okay.  This morning was crisp with jackets, beanies and gloves needed.  We went for a 3.5 klm walk first up, but all the birds were not about probably thawing out. We did see pair of butcher birds high on a dead limb catching the sun.

Glen beside a Waddi Tree – extremely hard wood used for tool making

After breakfast we drove to the north block which is a separate section of the park.  There were no signs at the exit only a piece of orange plastic. The entrance to the north block is just a turn off (no markings)  You definitely need live tracking GPS to navigate your way around this particular park. The north block is more open and has a seasonal river running through and is lined with river red gums. We saw a couple of western grey kangaroos, a dead goanna and a dead cat.  They have been baiting with 1080 so maybe both the cat and goanna picked up a bait.  We returned to camp and drove back to the homestead and followed the drain a lot further than we walked yesterday.  The landscape is all the same and the road was going nowhere so we turned back.

     

  Sapling River Red Gum Leaf                River Red Gums in river bed

The first wild flower I have seen

Coming back from the north block, we spotted the No 2 tank and a sign to Thrushton National Park beside a property road.  If you turned down there you would never find the camp area.  The orange tape entry point is a long way from the actual NP Sign.   After returning from the tour of the drain, we also realized if we had of turned for the homestead, we would also have never found the Wool Shed Camp.  Luck was on our side when we came in.  We had copied some information prior to the trip and it was a big help. 

Sunday 27th July – Thrushton NP - Clear Skies – Warm

The weather is unbelievable, its lovely and warm.  We haven’t been cold.  We woke this morning to the sound of birds.  It is so quiet here, you can hear the wind coming.  The only sound is either us, the birds or the wind. We have the park entirely to ourselves.

This is a plumed honeyeater which was foraging in a gum tree not far from our camp.  We have heard the Morse Code bird – it literally sounds like someone sending a morse code message.  We saw a Spotted Bowerbird, Rufus Whistler, Currajongs, and several we just couldn’t identify because they were too small and fast.   Plus lots and lots of goats any colour you can imagine.  The spotted bowerbird came into camp this afternoon, it sounded exactly like a cat meowing.  They are great mimic’s so I wonder where it heard that (Obviously feral cats around here as well)  It has a bright lilac purple patch at the back of it’s head which really stands out from it’s drab little brown body.

 Australian Ringneck Parrots

These are Mallee Ring Neck Parrots – there are 4 different varieties of this parrot depending where you are.  These are the ones found here.  To make it harder to identify they also cross breed.  The Mallee does not have the black/blue head of the other varieties.  They all have the distinctive marked ring on the back of the head.

 Bird identification and photography is really challenging.

 

We walked to the homestead which is a couple of kilometres from our camp.  We bypassed the homestead on our way in and camped where I had booked, the Wool Shed. It turns out to be a good choice as the Wool Shed camp has a new large  water tank with clean fresh water and there isn’t any water at the homestead.  We have our own water, but we conserve it whenever we can so that we always have plenty.  We walked about 5 kilometres in all.  There were some water courses shown on our maps, but they are bore drains which no longer hold water. The original homestead was not built here but moved by dray from about 100 klms north east of here. It was surprising that it was high on stumps which are mostly white ant eaten.  The house is fenced off for safety.

The soil is a very fine red sand and it would be hard to drive on when wet, as it would just go very soft.  There is not a blade of grass that has any life in it. We have seen Echnida digging spots and some Wallaby tail drag and paw prints, most of the prints are goat.  I found a very small scorpion which was about 1cm the smallest that I have ever seen.  There are other burrows which don’t seem to be rabbit, perhaps bilbies. 

Saturday 26th July 2014 – Moree to Thrushton NP – Cloudy some rain drops, then clear skies

  We left Moree at 7am for St George arriving at 10.30am to refuel and buy bread.

This is our Ipad set up using Bad Elf GPS attachment for live map tracking.

We passed through Garah which looked very old and neglected.  We were amused by the sign out of town which pointed to “old Garah”.  Obviously they moved the town to be near the railway but “new” Garah would be best described “old Garah”.  We crossed the border at Mungindi, there wasn’t a marker for the border which is obviously the river, but it would have been nice.  The Balonne Shire has done a lot of road works and we had nice new road all the way to St George.

On the way to St George

Thallon was the tidiest of the towns.  Nindigully is off the highway and boasts the oldest hotel in Queensland.  We arrived at St George, this isn’t our first visit and it was good to see the town recovering from the floods.  The river is full and it is the first time we have seen water down stream of the weir.  The drive from St George to Thrushton National Park is 101 klms.  It is listed as a remote park.

 

    The first gate of the trip.     Nearly missed the sign  

 

 

 

 

 

It’s risky being a Dingo

From St George we headed west for 51klms to an ‘un-named road” according to the national parks website-which is inaccurate.  The turn off at 51klms is Cynthia Plains Station, we got to meet the owner, who was very pleasant, and go back (4klms) to the turn off some 47 klms from St George which is named “Middle Road” and also points to Mitchell. We almost missed the very small sign to the park entry.   I would describe this park as well hidden -  They do say it is easier to approach from Bollon, but that entailed a lot more driving and doubling back for us.

 

 

 

 

 

This is our fine weather camp set up no annex, not needed. Quick to set up and pack up.

 We are spending three nights at Thrushton.  We hope to see a few birds that we haven’t seen before. 

We have camped at the Wool Shed.  There are two locations, the old homestead and the Wool Shed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thrushton has been a park since 1990.  So it has 24 years of regrowth.  It is hard to imagine what it was like as a sheep station.  The advantage of the extra foliage is the birds, but then you can’t see anything as the country is really flat.  Your view is the 20 to 40 feet in front of you.

 The Wool Press 

Friday 25th July 2014 – Inverell to Moree – Fine & Sunny

We left the motel and headed to the Brake Repair Centre for 9am to have the trailer looked at.  Harry was very thorough and checked everything.  We have backed off the electric brake controller to allow the left hand shoes to bed in.  We had a brunch at McDonalds, refuelled and headed off for Moree.

The roads became longer and straighter and with the appearance of the cyprus pines we knew that we were on the north west tablelands.  A lot of fields have been ploughed for the spring rains and there are a lot of green fields due to the recent rain.  We went through a couple of little towns on the highway, Delungra and Gravesend.

We are staying at the Girraween Carapark which have their own artesian pools.  We unpacked and headed to the pools for a soak.  My first thought on entering was that it certainly wasn’t the fountain of youth! The pools were crowded with pensioners, yes oldies just like us, well maybe older as there was a lot of white hair.  There were a couple of young teens holidaying with their mum, grandma and great grandma, I told them “Go, save yourselves”, look what this water is doing to them, they looked like you yesterday!. Hopefully I didn’t soak for too long…..

There are 5 pools all different temperatures -  34c   35c  37c  39c and the cold one.

The park is very popular because you can use the pools as often as you like without charge.  The Artesian Spa in town is $10 per entry.

Tomorrow we have a full day’s drive to Thrushton National Park.  We will travel north and cross the border a Mungindi which is the only town in the southern hemisphere where the town straddles a border and the town name is the same on both sides of the border.  It is the first time that we have crossed from NSW/Qld at this crossing.  We will head to St George and then west to Thrushton  We are booked there for 3 nights.  Thrushton is unusual as  you can find both eastern and western species of birds which are at the edge of their range. Time to put my camera to work.  Tuesday will see us on the road again for another full day’s drive to Charleville.

 

Day 1 – 24th July, 2014 – Gulmarrad to Inverell

We have officially started our trip.  After several days of preparing the camper trailer and then packing, we left this morning at 7.25am

We travelled to Grafton to call in on Merryn and give the cats a cuddle and then head west.

It was surprising the number of rural houses that have been built since we last travelled the Gwydir Highway.  More amazing is how quickly the landscape changes as soon as you reach the summit.  Heading up the range you are in sub tropical rain forest and then within a couple of kilometres of the summit, you would think that you were in the highlands of Tasmania. 

We stopped a couple of times to check the right right hand wheel of the trailer as it had been hot on occasions.  Everything seemed okay, but once we got to Inverell, we noticed that it was quite hot, so decided to get it checked out before going any further.

We were referred to a brake centre where the owner Harry is the school bus driver, so only does brake work between 9 and 2.30pm.  It was nearly 2pm, so we made arrangements to get the trailer looked at tomorrow and stay in a motel tonight. No spa tonight at Moree, maybe tomorrow night.

Glen is still getting attention of mistaken identity for the carpet layer even after all of these years.

It must be 15 years since we last stayed in Inverell and the locals still think that Glen and the local carpet layer are doubles. Even Harry thought so.  It will be interesting at the RSL tonight for dinner. 

This afternoon, we went for a walk around main town area of Inverell.  There are many historic buildings, the Court House is particularly eye catching.