18 October 2011 - Terry Smith Lookout, Matilda Highway, Queensland

If one were to circumnavigate Australia on Highway One, a trip of some 14,000 kilometres, some of which we have travelled up the east coast, one would now set off from Normanton across 635 kilometres of  unsealed road to Borroloola in the Northern Territory and on toward Katherine. However we, as so many, have chosen to avoid dirt roads where possible, and would take the roundabout detour down to Mt Isa, across to Threeways, and up toward Katherine via Daly Waters. And more to the point, it is not our intention to start a straight forward round trip at this stage of the game. In fact, we are still undecided as to which direction we will travel on through the summer, and have decided only to go as far as Mt Isa, via Cloncurry, before tossing a coin or spinning the bottle.

The route from Karumba to Cloncurry is just short of 450 kilometres, a distance that can be travelled quite safely in one day, but for us, deserves to be taken more slowly.

Brolgas and a pelican beside a lagoon

We travelled the road back to Normanton, back around the wetlands, past the many flocks of brolgas standing in the dry lagoons waiting for the Wet, dodging the road-killed feral pigs, and remarking on the kapok trees, now identified, their pods hanging like Christmas decorations, and waving to all those we passed as local custom decrees.

On reaching Normanton, we bought a loaf of bread at the inflated price of $4.50, checked to see if more up to date papers had arrived since Saturday and topped up with diesel once more. We also discovered a fact we had missed when we stayed here just a few days ago; that Normanton was used by Neville Shute in his novel “A Town Like Alice” as a model for his town like Alice. When he visited this place back in the early 20^th century, it was short on services and short on women, as it still is today by modern standards. I did reread the book just a few months ago, and am now regretting that I swapped it in one of the many excellent book exchanges we have made use of. Chris belatedly expressed an interest in reading it.

The morning had got away on us as they do some days, and we covered only forty or so kilometres more before stopping to have lunch.

For about one hundred kilometres the road climbed away from the Gulf so gradually, one had the sensation of travelling through expanses of flat pastoral land, much of it cleared and surprisingly monotonous. We pulled over at Bang Bank Jump Up and Chris catnapped while I read my book, and then armed with a fresh bottle of cold water, we set off again for the Burke and Wills Roadhouse at almost the halfway point between Normanton and Cloncurry. Once past Bang Bang Jump Up, the road did become more interesting. We saw our first red kangaroos, as opposed to the eastern grey that have become so common (to us), saw many flocks of green budgerigars rise from the side of the road in front of us (I learned that the true budgie is only green and that all the coloured ones are mutations inbred for human pleasure) and saw the many hundreds of harriers and carrion creatures carrying out their road clearing chores.

For those who do not know, Burke and Wills were very famous early explorers here in Australia who travelled the route from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria, essentially for the purpose of installing lines of communication between the southern Australian cities and the rest of the world via South East Asia. Their journey was ill-fated from the beginning; they set off with a huge party in 1860, were poorly qualified to undertake such a journey, set off too late in the season, lost many of their party to either mutiny or death, and themselves perished after they turned toward home. One of their number made it out to tell the story. Many books have been written on the subject, one I read soon after arriving here earlier this year. Note the above is a very simple and not very accurate précis of this great Australian story, which I am hardly qualified to recount.

However the point of my mentioning the above, is to give reference to the fact that there are several points on the map around this area which honour that journey. We assumed incorrectly that the Burke and Wills Roadhouse would be such a one and were rather disappointed to find nothing to explain the significance of that actual spot or any reference to them at all except for a mural across the entrance, of the two explorers and a train of camels.

Our camp beside the Matilda Highway

The Roadhouse is situated on the crossroads of the Burke Development Road (aka Matilda Highway) and the Wills Development Road. Perhaps the significance of the Roadhouse name is no more the fact that it intersects the roads with those names? We had understood it to be the site of one of their camps.

As we alighted at the roadhouse, we remarked that the grass and growth all about seemed so much greener than before, and then noticed that water lay in many of the roadside depressions. It had evidently rained not long ago; even though we had personally had had none apart from a few futile drops on the windscreen. Australia’s vegetation has resilience to drought and the ability to reincarnate annually or whenever rain should fall; it had taken little to rejuvenate the growth here across this landscape.

We arrived here at our camp on the side of the highway about eighty kilometres north of Cloncurry close to five o’clock, the second time we have travelled on the roads so late in the afternoon. Again we were pleased to have the air-conditioning and perhaps this habit of delayed travel during the day will become the norm as the temperatures continue to increase.

Yet another humid evening with the temperatures still in the high thirties, and tonight, lightening, both sheet and fork, rather unusual, is flashing in the east. We are sharing this excellent expanse with just one other party, a keen birdwatcher travelling on his own.

Tonight the bugs are plaguing us again. We have just set the zapper up, powered through the inverter. I am not sure how they are getting in around the fly screens; however it is almost as if they are laughing at our pathetic efforts to fence them out. Both of us have even more bites to scratch and we are thoroughly fed up with the hitchhikers that joined us at Normanton; the tiny ants that have found their way in to every nook and cranny and have developed a dislike for the ant killer laid in jar lids for their pleasure. They have also found their way inside this computer and I only hope they have no appetite for electric wires and components. When we reach Mt Isa I shall go see an IT expert about them. I am sure it is not an uncommon problem here.