Day 16 was a long driving day - a little over 700km. It should have been less than 600km but our GPS suggested a route that involved 170km of dirt - which we only discovered after driving the first 50km on tar.
Anyway, the drive from Charleville to Lightning Ridge took us past/over the Angellala Creek Bridge which was the scene of Australia’s largest transport explosion when, in 2014, a truck carrying 50 tonnes of ammonium nitrate caught fire, crashed and exploded. Both the railway and road bridges were destroyed. No lives were lost.
Day 15 involved a drive from Blackall to Charleville. Much of the road is flat and straight with varying forms of sparse landscape. A cup of coffee in Tambo and a couple of stops along the way saw us arrive in Charleville before lunch. After lunch we walked the Warrego River Walk which was only a kilometre or two long. Plenty of stops along the way to check out the river and bird life.
Day 14 saw us leave Winton for Blackall. After lunch in Pioneer Park we sought out the Black Stump and walked part of the Blackall bird nature walk in the afternoon. The Black Stump was a major survey point for western Queensland in the 1800s. Anything west of that point was ‘beyond the black stump’.
Statue of Lieutenant Edgar Towner VC. Reenlisted for WWII and was promoted to Major.
Day 13 was spent around Winton. The morning involved driving the ‘Route of the River Gum’ in Bladensburg National Park. The national park was formerly the Bladensburg cattle station. It was an amazing place - apparently desolate on the surface yet plenty of life when you pause and look and listen.
The afternoon saw us visit two waterholes south of Winton: Long Waterhole to the south east and Pelican Waterhole to the south west.
Day 12 began 95 million years ago (or something like that) with our visit to the Age of Dinosaurs outside of Winton. Our visit comprised three components: A guided tour of the fossil preparation laboratory; a tour of the collection room and a couple of videos about the history of the discovery of dinosaur fossils; and a tour of the March of the Titanosaurs trackway exhibition and walk through Dinosaur Canyon.
Day 10 was still in Longreach - with a visit to the Stockman’s Hall of Fame in the morning and a wander through Longreach’s town centre in the afternoon.
Stockman’s Hall of Fame
In the town
In the tropics. Apparently the Tropic is currently many metres north of this because the Tropic moves each year.
Interesting tree carving near the Council building.
Day 8 was the drive from Emerald to Longreach: A cup of coffee in Alpha and a break in Barcaldine to view the Tree of Knowledge. I don’t know when the tree was so named, and if the biblical half-reference was intended or not. This was our second tree visitation of the trip. One more to come!
Day 7 saw us heading west towards our primary destinations of Longreach and Winton. Our overnight stop about half way was Emerald, but a little before Emerald is the small town of Comet which houses the Dig Tree carved by Ludwig Leichhardt in 1847. The tree was originally at the intersection of the Comet and Nogoa Rivers some seven kilometres north of its current location.
