2 September 2012 - Virgin Rock Rest Area, Gregory Highway, Queensland

A strange name for this rest area about one and a half kilometres north of Springsure. To our west high cliffs rise above us and the creek between, and one of those rock faces stands like a shrine with a figure within an indented niche. Apparently we will see an even greater likeness to a shrine to the Virgin Mary when the rock face is lit up this evening. We will venture out to examine this phenomena for ourselves.

In the meantime, the area beside the road serves us and several others well as a break in our respective journeys. The rail line running this far south is no longer used and the highway, especially with it being Sunday, will soon quieten down.

We were the last to leave the Aniekie caravan park this morning even though it was still before 9 am. I had sat up late last night to keep Chris company and watched an incredibly violent and pointless film called No Country for Old Men. I persevered waiting for a moral to the film but only gleaned that the US of A was no country for me either. Needless to say I would have been better to retire at my normal early time and have done more justice to today’s travel.

Anyway, we did get away and travelled back along the Capricorn Highway, eastwards to Emerald across rolling cattle country and closer to the township, large expanses of cropped land. We stopped again at the Information Centre and were treated to a lengthy and very interesting spiel concerning our questions about the planned road ahead. Again we came out with an armful of brochures and warnings about booking ahead.

After a short but successful telephone call to my father to wish him “Happy Father’s Day”, on my Vodafone cellphone no less, we filled with diesel and headed to the supermarket to stock up on bread and potatoes, not too sure when we will next be able to shop for groceries at regular prices, then headed south on the Gregory Highway, turning off seventeen kilometres south of Emerald and driving into Lake Maraboon. There at the Fairburn Dam we came across the entire population of Emerald who were not serving in the service stations or supermarkets, celebrating this family day with picnics and fizz boats. One thing about Australians (and I am sure I have said this a number of times before) they sure know how to do family picnic days! We walked about the shady recreational area provided by Sunwater, after having peeked into the commercial camping ground above the lake, decided it was indeed a wonderful facility, but not such that it warranted us staying over. We sat out of the wind in the caravan and ate our lunch listening to the happy sounds of children punctuated with the less happy whinging of tired tots.

The reservoir, supposedly three times the size of the Sydney Harbour, with a shoreline of 274 kilometres and completed in 1972, provides the Emerald Shire with reliable water supply and created a multitude of new industries including cotton, coal mining, vineyards and citrus orchards and so many more since.

The Virgin in the rocks, with some imagination

Over lunch we set out our plans for the next few days and rang the caravan park on the edge of the Carnarvon Gorge National Park to book for a couple of days. The settlements both north and south of the park are so far away, it seems silly not to bite the bullet and face the tourist treats and tourist prices.

We drove on south, passing the Minerva coalmine and soon approaching the Minerva Hills, a series of odd shaped peaks and plateaus, the remnants of extensive lava flows from between 26 and 29 million years ago, of which Mount Boorambool and Mount Zamia above Springsure are two.

The nights have become cooler again but the days still hot and summerlike. Chris is concerned that we may have turned south too soon, however it is now done and so we will just have to make the best of it.