Further In - The Overland Way

Finally! Starting to head into the interior, into the great outback. We started our trek from a rest area just outside Townsville, which was really amazing. It was fuller than most caravan parks we had stayed in, and it went on for ever off the highway. Got a really good sleep deep at the back, so far from the highway noise.

So we set off early in the morning heading for Charters Towers. This is a very interesting town. Gold was discovered there in the 1870s, and it sprung up very quickly. It is a rich town with wide streets and beautiful old buildings. Most of the people who made their fortune here, ploughed a lot of the money back into the town, making it rich and beautiful, and creating a real feeling of community. At the height of its success, the town was called "The World", as they felt it was the best place in the world.

They are still very proud of their town and their history. They have a museum, tours of the Venus battery where the gold was extracted, and a sound and light show in the evening at a lookout overlooking the whole town. They even have a statue commemorating the men who first found gold in the creek, originally discovered by an aboriginal boy called Jupiter, working for three white men. Jupiter's Casino is named after him. Even the free rest area had a poppet head - a piece of machinery used in the gold mines.

Our next port of call was a town called Hughenden. This forms one point of a triangle, with Richmond about 100 Kms west, and Winton, 100 Kms south, they form the Dinosaur Trail. This whole area was once a part of an inland sea, and so contains many fossils of both land and sea animals. Both Hughenden and Richmond are really making the most of this, having dinosaur museums, life size replicas, and artistic sculptures all over town. And, yes you guessed it, dinosaur rubbish bins as well. (We didn't go to Winton as it was not on the Overland Way.)

Because this area had once been an inland sea, the land was completely flat, with a thin sandy soil, and rolling fields of dry grass, mainly used for grazing.

The next town we came across was Julia Creek, which actually had a small creek with some water in it. As we were driving we had come across many bridges over many "creeks" which were completely dry, and signs about the road being subject to flooding. In the dry season it is difficult to imagine this, but the state of the roads assures us that floods do happen often. And because of the sandy soil, they play havoc with the roads. They were in very bad shape, often being wavy and corrugated in areas - a very bumpy ride. The government was trying to fix this, with road works everywhere, in fact there was more road works than roads.

One victim of these roads was the bike. It was attached to its platform by tie-downs, being held in place by two long pieces of wood. Just before entering Julia Creek we heard a funny noise and noted one of the sticks had broken and fallen off. George had a spare one for just such an occasion, and soon had it fixed. Once in town we checked, and found that the other stick had also fallen. George was getting really worried, why all of a sudden? Then he realized one of the tie-downs holding the back tyre had finally frayed apart and torn, with all the bumps. This was soon fixed, with extra bindings in place just in case.

Julia Creek was a nice small town, famous for a small furry marsupial called a dunnart, but not much else. We spent the night by the creek, relaxing after the recent trauma with the bike.

Next day we moved on to Cloncurry. The roads were better, and as we neared town the terrain changed and became more rocky, with bushes and scrub rather than grass. This rocky terrain explains the fact that mining is so big here, and as we arrived they were having a rock festival called Rockhana. There were displays of all sorts of rocks, and sales of various polished ones as jewelry. George started getting interested, and is seriously considering taking up fossicking and getting a metal detector.

Cloncurry is also famous for two more things. It was the birthplace of both the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and of Qantas. Being an important centre, but so remote, airplanes were an obvious solution to many problems. There is a museum about the Flying Doctors, and, at the airport, the original hangar where Qantas started remains, with the sign "Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services" still in place.

Next stop was Mt Isa. Mt Isa is your quintessential mining town. It has the large mines and all their paraphernalia on one side of the river ("mineside"), and the town on the other ("townside.") Mineside was completely off limits to the general public, so to give tourists a taste of what is involved, the Tourist Info Centre had set up a pretend mine on its premises. Tourists can get all dressed up in mining apparel, complete with hard hats with little lights on them, and be lowered down a shaft and a tunnel full of mining equipment. We considered doing the tour but there were two problems - first it was $50 a person, which seemed a bit steep, and we had done something similar in Bendigo anyway. The second problem is it was booked out for the weekend, and there were no spots until Monday. We weren't planning to stay until Monday. So, problem solved. No need to make a decision.

Mt Isa started to be developed in the 1930s, so was developed in a much more sophisticated manner than older gold towns. Residences were set up for the miners and their families, and full infrastructure of shops, schools, hospitals etc. As there was a big rush early on, a lot of the residences were "tent houses", houses with canvas walls and a corrugated iron roof, as they could be put up quickly.

Mt Isa mines copper, as well as silver and lead. During the war they produced a lot of metals for the war effort, so when Darwin was bombed, they thought they might be bombed as well, to stop production. Hence some forward thinking nurses suggested they build an underground hospital just in case. And for miners, what could be easier? A few miners dug out three wide tunnels on their time off, and they were set up and fully equipped as a hospital. Now, as we know, Mt Isa was never bombed, so it was never used, and the entrances were sealed after the war and promptly forgotten.

Thirty years later one entrance was discovered as it started to cave in. It was checked out and considered unsafe, so was sealed again for another 20 years. Finally in the late 90s they decided to restore the whole structure and open it as a museum. Very interesting to see.

As Mt Isa is the last big town before we hit the Northern Territory and the really remote outback, we decided to stay in a caravan park to replenish all our supplies, as we had been free camping for the past week. As we checked into the caravan park we were informed there would be a country music concert on that night, free, for the caravan park residents. It was a great band, with some very good songs. We bought some CDs after, and got the artists to sign them, and even had photos with them.

Close to the caravan park there was also a very active church, so we visited on Sunday before we embarked on the next stage - replenishing our spiritual reserves as well as our material ones.

GeorgeY's bit

A few places covered in this entry, but first a GeorgeY's invention to deal with boredom on long drives. In Queensland they have signs with trivia questions, followed by answers. The problem is they are not the interactive type but the yellow fixed ones and they all have the same question - "What is the floral emblem of Queensland?" Which was interesting the first few times, but then it is always the Cooktown whatever. So, moving forward, if the car in front of you had the soccer on a big screen, and you have the same for the ones behind you, think about it..?

Loved Charters Towers. It had an arcade that rivaled the Royal Arcade in Melbourne, which was the Stock Exchange they had for the gold rush. Many hotels. There were some chinese who migrated back in the gold rush, and did the usual services and provided meals and market garden produce. Some of that still evident. Good little town.

Between Hughengden and Julia Creek, other than the battering we had with the undulating surface, there was road works with conflicting signs. 80, then 40, then 'Prepare to stop', stopping for a while, then 100 and 40 at the same time, the 'Stop' and 'End road works' at the same time, you get the idea? They had more road works than road, according to the minister of Mt Isa church (funny guy, brilliant church).

Stopped at each town and took infos and photos, but Mt Isa is the pick of the bunch. The place was brilliant, the entertainment and the whole lot was nice. Not often when you are new to a town you pick the right place and the plan seems to be perfect. This one was the exception. Even the rocks in the car park were colorful and had big lumps of Moscovites or Mica or Quartz, or what they call here 'Peacock rocks.' Beautiful colours and structures.