Alice Springs

October 22

In the morning, it was a comparatively short drive of 180 km to Alice Springs. Just north of the town we crossed back over the Tropic of Capricorn.





Quite a contrast with the spiffy display on the Queensland coast that we passed going north. There was a colourful map, though, showing where we were.



A little later we passed a cairn marking the highest point of the road between Adelaide and Darwin - according to government surveyors, that is.



Just as well they erected the cairn, as you'd never otherwise guess.

Alice Springs is the commercial oasis in the middle of this desert country. We were ready for a taste of city life for a change. Though The Alice is hardly that, it does have restaurants, sidewalk cafes, lots of shops marketing aboriginal art, and the usual supermarket and clothing chains.

We spent the afternoon checking out their Namatjira Gallery which had a couple of small paintings by Albert Namatjira himself and a lot by his less talented family members, mostly his sons and nephews. Namatjira was the first aboriginal to be granted Australian citizenship. (Some kind of irony there!). His watercolours in classic landscape style accurately conveyed the intensity of colour in the outback mountain ranges, rocks and trees, and became enormously popular.The white trunks of ghost gums against red and purple hills were his trademark images, and were reproduced on table mats, coasters, tea towels. In my childhood, just about every house, it seemed, had a Namatjira print on the walls.

Next door was the Strehlow Museum of assorted chunks of meteorites, outback Australia being fertile ground for these, if not for anything else. Curiously, it also had some glass cases of stuffed animals and birds of the region, which helped us identify some of the birds we'd seen. (We've encountered many birds, but so far few animals.)

In the same complex of buildings was the aviation museum, which we saved for a later time, but we did go into a tiny hut to see a diorama built around a Kookaburra airplane which crash-landed in the desert while searching for another plane. The two men on board survived the crash, but had left Alice Springs with no radio on board and a mere 3 litres of water. They died of thirst. The plane was not found for a couple of decades, and the men's bodies were never found. Their story is known because one of them wrote a diary on the wing of the plane as he waited for the help that never came.

Barkly to Ti-Tree

October 21

More monotonous landscape to drive through all morning.

We stopped for lunch at Camooweal, the last town on the Queensland side of the border. Very little there except a gas station charging outrageous prices, a corrugated tin "historic store" (which was closed) and a parched plot with a couple of picnic tables under tin roofs. We ate at one of these, watched by a couple of mynah birds in a nearby shrub. Without warning ,a kestrel that had been hovering above us swooped under the tin roof and ripped a granola bar out of Michael's hand. To add insult to injury, it then dropped it on the ground. Obviously not a vegetarian.

About 100 km west of Barkly Homestead we crossed into Northern Territory at Three Ways, turning south towards Tennant Creek.



Threeways had the usual roadhouse and nothing else. A couple of road trains were parked outside. These trucks are allowed to haul loads up to 54 metres long.




Almost immediately the landscape changed and became more vivid.



Tennant Creek was disappointing, a shabby strip of town with tired looking shops and people. It had a great old telegraph station, though, just before the town. There was no-one there when we stopped to inspect it, and it must have been just as desolate for those who manned it in the days when it was a vital link in the line that stretched across the continent.






The local stone used for the walls glowed in the heat.



Shortly after we left Tennant Creek, a storm blew up with dark clouds, lightning, heavy rain and a fierce wind that almost blew us off the road. When it passed, every small indent along the roadside was running with water, and you could easily imagine the danger of flash floods in more prolonged bouts of rain.

Luckily the storm had passed before we reached the Devil's Marbles. These rock formations are the result of long ago lava flows, or, if you prefer, the eggs of the rainbow serpent. There were tons of them spread over a wide area, and it was hard to decide just which ones to photograph.













A little further down the road was Wycliffe Wells, self-styled UFO capital of Australia. Hmmm.




There was a nice caravan park there, but we didn't want to risk being carried off by aliens so we continued south, admiring more interesting landforms, and running through another fierce little storm.
We fetched up for the night at Ti-Tree, another roadhouse cum caravan park cum pub. The only remarkable thing about it was its resident peacock, which kept me awake at night with its shrieking, but rewarded me with an early morning display: first his back,



and, finally, a full frontal.

Mt Isa to Barkly Homestead

October 20

Perhaps the most challenging day so far. It was very hot. On either side of the road was bleached yellow grassland stretching to the horizon. There was nowhere to pull off, should we want to: the roadbed was raised and the shoulders were narrow.
There was nothing to do but drive, hoping for occasional diversions, such as an unusual landform,



or even a bend in the road!



Occasionally there was a rest stop, indicated by a sign with a picnic table and a tree. This is false advertising: there's never a tree. There is usually, however, a windmill and a water tank





The water was good for splashing the face, but not drinkable, At least, not for humans. Almost always under the tap on the side of each tank were a couple of plastic containers with a few rocks in them. On one tank neat felt-pen lettering asked passers-by to top up the water for the birds. At our approach flocks of zebra finches and a few crested pigeons flew off to a safe distance, returning once we had replenished their water source and moved away. They were so swift and wary that it was hard to capture them on film.




There was only one place to stop for the night on the Queensland side of the border. This was Barkly Homestead, a roadhouse/pub providing fuel for vehicle and occupant, as well as poker machines if you wanted a little diversion. Round the back was their caravan park where we parked under a beautiful flame tree.



We cooled off in their small swimming pool, but were soon hot again. There was no breeze at all and the heat remained in the air all night. Our open door and the light inside attracted assorted flying insects, most of which we despatched. This moth was an exception. I wish it had co-operated by staying still for more than a second.

Richmond to Mt Isa

October 19

As we journeyed west, the country got hotter, dryer and redder. Only in the little towns was there any change of scenery.



At Cloncurry, we took note of the ominous sign on the side of the road.



Cloncurry is where the famous Flying Doctor Service was born, and we visited their museum to read about its beginnings. The brainchild of a Presbyterian minister, John Flynn, who enlisted Qantas founder Hudson Fysh to provide a plane, it has gone through many changes, but is still a vital link in the outback.

Also acknowledged was the start of the School of the Air, which allowed children on far-flung sheep and cattle stations to tune in with pedal radios to lessons broadcast over the airwaves.

Towards Mt Isa the scenery changed for the better with dramatic rocky outcrops, and low hills pockmarked with shrubs.

Finally, the tall chimney of the Mt. Isa mine came into view.



Mt Isa

Well, what to say about one of Australia's oldest, largest and most profitable mining towns?

Last year the mayor of Mt Isa made headlines for saying that young single women who were looking for a husband should move to Mt. Isa as the town had a surplus of single males. Asked to comment, one woman remarked,"The odds are good, but the goods are odd."

There are none of the grand edifices that other, smaller towns built in their heyday. Instead of restaurants and cafes, there's a generous selection of clubs and hotels with gambling and bars and an afterthought of a bistro, if that isn't too grand a name.
We ate at a hotel across the street from the caravan park and I can honestly say that it provided the worst pizza I've ever had, and I've eaten bad pizza all over the world.
It should have been a warning when the waitress who took my order said that it was pretty large, or rather that "nobody ever finishes it". I now know why.
When I objected to the lipstick mark on the rim of my wine glass, the barmaid poured me a fresh one, but short-changed me on the amount. It didn't matter - the chardonnay was room temperature in a room that was an open terrace still feeling the effects of a 32º day. As we ate, a large cockroach scuttled across the floor and flung itself onto a french fry that an earlier diner had dropped.
Back at the caravan park, a very basic establishment, a foursome of loud young Aussies shared their mobile phone conversations, and later their drunken chitchat, with the rest of us.

Charters Towers to Richmond

October 18

Straight west from Charters Towers to Mt Isa three lifelines stretch across the bleached yellow grasslands: the road, the railway and the power lines.



A few tiny townships cling to the highway along the route.
We reached Richmond before sundown and secured a spot in their nearly empty caravan park.



A white bougainvillea along the boundary caught my eye.



The caretaker told me that he and his wife had only been there a couple of weeks. He had been in financial management on the Gold Coast, he said, and had thrown it all in to manage this stark little plot in the middle of nowhere. I wondered if he had been a victim of the global meltdown, and also whether he was hiding from creditors. It seemed a pretty good place for that.

Richmond's pride and joy is their artificial lake which adjoined the caravan park.



Around 1991 the locals excavated a large chunk of dirt, reinforced the sides of the hole, and waited for the next flood along the nearby Flinders River. When it came, they siphoned floodwaters into their dry basin and, voila, a lake. The landscaping so far is minimal, but there's a path around the perimeter, a section cordoned off for swimming, and the rest is open to fishing, boating...and jet-skis!

On the shore of the lake is a wooden catholic church, its architecture paying homage to grander structures in grander cities.

Charters Towers

October 17

We made the short (22 km) drive into Charters Towers with the intention of having a look around and continuing on. We found the town delightful - full of lovely, quite grand civic buildings.










Modern conveniences like their Woolworths supermarket and Target store had been successfully integrated into the main street, the Target actually using an old department store building. Compared with Townsville where the downtown is dying because everyone has gone off to shop in the outlying ugly malls, Charters Towers is a model of how to do it right.
Many of the shops, although well- maintained, had not had their original character marred by modernization or by overzealous restoration. This shop, though now selling furniture had kept both the original floor tiles and the window decoration:





The residential areas were lovely too, with high-roofed, wide-verandahed houses. A few were obviously abandoned,



but the majority were occupied and well cared for with jacarandas in the garden



and bougainvillea romping over the fences.



Our decision to stay for the night was clinched when we found that we had arrived on the day of their annual races, held in conjunction with the more famous Caulfield Cup in Melbourne.



The locals had all dressed for the occasion, the men in moleskin pants, pressed cotton shirts and Akubra hats; the women in short skirts, high heels and fascinators. There was more satin than at a high society wedding.



We were among the most shabby, of course, but I consoled myself with the thought that I was perhaps the only one with a Parisian outfit: I'd bought my shirt in Paris when we were there a year ago.

Cairns to Port Douglas and Atherton

October 15

Port Douglas is just a bit further up the coast from Cairns. The road here runs right beside the water, allowing spectacular views as you travel.



The Port, as people call it, is an upscale little town, full of cafes and shops selling swimsuits, trinkets, summer wear.





The beach isn't much compared to some we've seen,



and signs like the one below are a definite discouragement for some of us,



but the views from the local park are too good to be true.



Private gardens were as beautiful as any we've seen, with lots of exotic tropicals like bougainvillea,



and palms



and a bamboo with vivid red stems.




You could hardly see some of the houses for the rainforest greenery.



We enjoyed a morning there but decided not to stay over. This was our most northerly destination, so we turned south-west into the Atherton tablelands, just behind the coastal fringe.
Not long after leaving the coast we found ourselves driving through a recently burnt over landscape of red earth, black tree trunks and huge ochre anthills.



We stopped at a peanut farm where we bought a big bag of freshly roasted, salted nuts, passing up the ones flavoured with wasabi, or honey, or chili, or lime.



At Atherton for the night, we had a campsite overhung by an avocado tree full of fruit. A couple fell during the night and we scooped one up to take with us (some nocturnal marsupial got to the other one first).



I liked the local map with its colourful illustrations.



October 16

Atherton had a modest gold rush in the 1880's, and a large Chinatown. When the diggers moved on to bigger goldfields in Australia and North America, they left no trace behind, except for a Chinese temple constructed out of corrugated iron, which has been carefully maintained by the National Trust.





Descending from the hills we passed through the town of Malandra, which had a great vine-draped pub,



and came upon a tea plantation. Sadly, their little stall was empty except for a sign saying that too many people had been taking their packets of tea without leaving any money in the honour box. (They were only asking $4 a packet - hardly unaffordable.)





It was by far our hottest day of the trip so far, high thirties, and we were glad to reach Mission Beach again and stroll along the sand in the off-shore breeze. The campground caretaker warned us to be wary where we walked as crocodiles were emerging from the estuaries to mate earlier than usual because of the unusually warm weather.