We liked Alice Springs. It gave us time to relax and we enjoyed the company of Wally and Carolyn. We took time to see the local sights, including the Royal Flying Doctor Service museum, where I got some idea of what it must be like to be a patient.
The School of the Air, where we watched a lesson in progress and wondered at the logistics of the organisation. 140 students from pre-school to Year 8, catchment area ten times the size of the England. It was the first school of its type, opening in 1951 using the wireless transceivers provided by the Flying Doctor service. Now lessons take place in real time using the internet. It was fascinating to watch the children using the electronic equivalent of ‘putting their hand up’ to ask a question and the way that this prompted supplementary questions from others in the class.
Our last visit was to the Women’s Hall of Fame. The exhibits told many stories of bravery and surmounting extraordinary difficulties in the harsh conditions of the Australian Outback. Thought provoking stuff.
We finished with drinks and dinners at the casino, a fitting end to a super stopover.
The clock was ticking and we realised two things; firstly our driving licences were about to expire and we needed to get to Queensland for them to be renewed (Australia doesn’t have a national driving licence but issues them by State, which is a cumbersome process) and also we needed to start thinking about getting back to Brisbane.
We headed north along the Stuart Highway; mile after mile of straight roads, unchanging scenery and monotonous driving under a cloudy sky with outbreaks of rain. As daylight faded it began to rain harder and so we pulled into Barrow Creek, population one male (Les) two dogs and a cat. We set up camp at the back of the pub on the red dirt. Despite the drizzle, the ground was so hard it was impossible to drive in tent pegs so we found some rocks and weighted down the tent with these. Adjourning to the pub (well it was a miserable night) we were entertained by the comings and goings of a succession of customers. A road train driver explained that his rig of four trailers of melons weighed almost 140 tons, was 160 feet long, took about a kilometre to stop and he had to work his way up through eighteen gears to reach cruising speed. After a coffee, he left in a cloud of noise and spray. Then a young lady came in. She was towing the smallest caravan we had ever seen, wanted a place to park it overnight and could she leave it there until she returned in a few days. The answer, in the affirmative, led to her asking for a pasty. This Les presented as though it was a bottle of the finest champagne, complete with a napkin over his arm. His routine was comical, as were most of his yarns with which he kept us engaged.
Somehow we got around to discussing his fuel bowsers and why they wouldn’t work. The evening ended with me demonstrating binary arithmetic, relating it to his bowser control boxes. In return, our drinks came gratis. We agreed that it was a completely absorbing and entertaining evening.
Northwards again the next day. We stopped briefly at Tennants Creek for coffee and at the Devils Marbles, a curious rock formation created from the weathering of granite over millions of years, then continued on the dreary road.
We turned right at Three Ways and headed east on the Overlanders Way, crossing the border into Queensland reaching Mount Isa just after lunchtime where we were able to sort out our licences and breathe a sigh of relief. A little over 1,100 kilometres in two days is quite hard going in a Defender. However, we’re rufty tufty British and after a Guinness in the largest Irish club outside Ireland and a good night’s sleep we were up at the crack of dawn. We visited the Mount Isa Bureau of Meteorology site where we learned about how rain, wind speed and temperature are measured and saw the automatic release of a weather balloon.
Later the same morning we checked out the underground hospital. It was dug in 1942 when it was thought that the Japanese would increase their bombing. They’d already hit Darwin and a great many Australian and American servicemen were engaged in building a new road to carry essential war supplies. Plus of course, the Mount Isa mines were producing the raw materials. Happily the hospital was never used in anger but it remains a testament to the ingenuity of the people who created it.
Continuing east we came to the town of Cloncurry where we camped overnight. The site was very pretty with bougainvilleas everywhere, but being just twenty feet from the road trains rumbling through all night it was not the most peaceful.
A new day and after a look at Cloncurry Airport, where the first QANTAS flight landed....
. . . we took a detour south to visit the Walkabout Creek Hotel at McKinlay, where the film Crocodile Dundee was filmed. It was a bit of a disappointment as the place was empty and the publican a surly fellow who poured our drinks and left. Still you’ve got to do these things.
The road from McKinlay back to the Overlanders Way at Julia Creek was 100 kilometres of dirt. Having been recently dampened by the rain, but insufficient to turn it into a quagmire, the surface was smooth and relatively free from the usual clouds of dust. It was a real pleasure to roll along about 70kpm enjoying the sight of eagles soaring in thermals and periodically passing cattle searching for something to eat.
We weren’t too impressed with Julia Creek and so continued to a dot on the map called Nelia, but more of that in the next blog.
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