Dags'n'Dogs Outback Adventure - week 4 ... From QLD to SA and back again

Week 4

Night 22 - Eulo

Leaving Charleville, we headed south stopping at Angellala Creek, a memorial on the site of the largest explosion in Australian road transport history when a truck carrying 52 tonnes of fertilizer rolled over, caught fire and exploded. Eight people were injured and both the highway and adjacent railway bridge were blown apart. The blast was felt in Charleville almost 30km away so it was one hell of a big bang.

The highway has been repaired and the rail line has been relocated but what is left of the old concrete rail bridge pylons stand as a reminder to what happened here.

From Angellala Creek we continued south to Cunnamulla, home of the Cunnamulla fella. We stopped in town and took the dogs for a walk but couldn't walk past the bakery without stopping to sample a local pie, steak and pepper.... not bad at all. We stopped for the obligatory photo at the statue of the big fella and visited the visitors centre to catch up on the latest road conditions heading west.

Due to the recent rains, many of the roads around Birdsville and Innamincka were still closed and with thousands of people already making their way to the Birdsville bash, many of them where now looking for alternative routes. Luckily for us, the road to Innamincka had reopened so we were good to continue.

We stopped to look at the heritage listed robbers tree, nothing really exciting, just a tree but history has it that some bloke named Joseph Wells robbed the local bank, wounded the storekeeper in the process, his getaway horse got away and he decided to climb this tree to hide. With the aid of a dog the authorities quickly found him, he was tried and he became the last person in Queensland to hang at the gallows (not on this tree). So really, it's just a tree.

Not wanting to spend another night in a caravan park, we pushed on towards Eulo and a free camp about 10km short of town. It was a great spot and we along with one other van had the place to ourselves. There was plenty of firewood around which was handy because it was quite cool in the evening and we were far enough off the road that the noise from the passing road trains throughout the night did not bother us at all.

Night 23 - Noccundra

After breakfast, we past through Eulo on our way to Thargomindah.

In Thargomindah we stopped at the visitors centre, picked up a few supplies from the general store and topped up with fuel at the roadhouse. We checked out the historical Leahy house in town, took the dogs for walk along the Bulloo river and stopped on the way out to visit Australia's first Hyro-electric power plant which in 1898 was the third in the world to Paris and London. It produced power for street lighting by using the water pressure from the Artesian Basin right up until 1988 when the town was finally connected to the grid.

Moving on, we continued west to Noccundra, a hotel in the middle of nowhere. We found a nice spot on the edge of the water hole about a kilometre away from the hotel and followed the now standard routine of levelling the van, dropping the legs, gas on, fridge going and relax. The late afternoon was spent relaxing by (or in) the van with a cold beer, a spot of fishing and keeping an eye on the dogs as they in turn tried to wander off. On dusk, we walked across to the hotel, sat out on the front porch, had a decent pub meal and couple of drinks. The walk back to the van in the dark was lit by starlight and was amazing with clear skys and a big moon.

Night 24 - Innamincka

Up early and the sunrise over the waterhole was amazing, not a breath of wind or a cloud in the sky making it easy to take a couple of really nice early morning shots, well at least i think so.

We had a bit of distance to cover today so we headed off around 10am and passed the Jackson Oil plant,the Naccowlah oil plant and the Ballera gas plant on our way towards the SA border. Just after the gas plant, there was a small section (about 15km) of dirt road but apart from that it was pretty smooth sailing as most of the road to the border was sealed.

About 25km short of the border was the turn off the the Bourke and Wills dig tree. Luckily it was one of the few tracks open, a short detour of about 14km one way on gravel which had been pretty badly chewed up in recent days. Making it to the dig tree reserve, we were able to spend some time reading up on the history of the events and the unfortunate circumstances that contributed to making this expedition part of Australian history.

We had a look at the trees themselves and some of the markings are still clearly visible while others have not faired so well with time. The dogs had quick run and although we considered spending the night camped there, we decided to head in to Innamincka hoping for mobile phone reception and maybe an internet connection.

The bitumen road stopped just before we crossed the border into SA and like the dig tree road, the main road in had been badly chewed up in places as well. All the camp ground tracks were still closed so we continued in to Innamincka and the town common, the only camp ground open. We stopped briefly at the pub and fuelled up at the road house and were surprised to find that there was no mobile phone coverage in town. Setting up at the town common was like setting up in a caravan park. There were people camped everywhere due to the road closures but we managed to find a spot and having brought wood with us again, we had a nice little fire and wood fire BBQ for dinner. Due to the crowds, road closures and lack of internet connection, we decided that instead of spending a couple of days in Innamincka as originally planned, we would head for Camerons Corner in the morning.

Night 25 - Cameron corner

We slowly packed up in the morning and knowing we would be spending the next 400+km on dirt roads, i covered the rear windscreen with cardboard to make sure we didn't have a repeat of the Birdsville track. We set off and headed towards Moomba where much to Denises delight, we came across Telstra mobile phone reception at the Moomba viewing area. We caught up on a couple of days of email, SMS, social media and even made a couple of quick calls back home.

Continuing on, we headed towards Merty Merty and turned off the Strzelecki track towards Camerons Corner.

The track was not in great shape with long sections of heavy corrugations and big chewed up potholes, some of which were marked with red flags and others by surprise so it was slow going in places.

We arrived into Cameron Corner and again did the tourist thing with the photos at the post before heading back into Queensland and the Corner store. We booked into a powered site in the camping area and quickly set up the van before taking the dogs for walk as the camping area slowly filled up with people mainly heading for Birdsville.

Dinner was all you can eat wood fired Pizza for $20 at the Corner Store and with a few beers to help wash it down, it was a pretty good feed.

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Night 26 & 27- Broken Hill

Our plan for day 26 was to get to Tibooburra and maybe find a camp somewhere either in town or on the way to Broken hill. As we set off, we crossed from Queensland into South Australia before crossing through the dog fence and into NSW, starting our journey through the Sturt National Park. The further we went, the better the track became and as we completed the 140+km drive to Tibooburra we hit bitumen.

Arriving in Tibooburra we stopped at the roadhouse for some lunch, had a drive through town before starting south on the Silver City Highway towards Broken hill.

Along the way we passed the tool tree

and by the time we arrived at Packsaddle, the weather had changed and the wind was up so we decided to just continue on to Broken Hill making it a big day in the car, about 500km travelled. We pulled into Broken hill and stopped at the Big 4 caravan park only to find they were full so we motored across town and checked into the Lake View Caravan park where they still had a site or two available. Not sure where the lake was but i certainly couldn't see it?

The next day we unhooked the van and headed off to do a little site seeing, making our way to Silverton which was really quite

disappointing this time with wind farms now on the surrounding hill tops, it seemed to have lost it's old remote ghost town appeal and was more just a tourist attraction. Maybe visiting during school holidays had something to do with it?

We headed back to Broken Hill and visited the Cafe on the Line of Load and the miners memorial only to find the fun police had even fenced off the big park bench. Back at the van we prepared dinner and later that evening went into to town find a club and have a drink or two or more before calling it a night. With week 4 coming to a close, we were looking forward to week 5 and some free camping again as we hit the dirt roads to follow the Darling river run from Menindee to Bourke.