Outback: Tibooburra to Quilpie

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We were up very early, and at TJ's Roadhouse getting a flask filled with coffee soon after they opened at 7. I mentioned quietly to the lady that we were leaving town. I felt I ought to tell someone, just in case...

It's about 55 km from Tibooburra to the Warri Gate on the Queensland border. There had been no more rain and my friend was quietly confident the track was firm enough. But to say we proceeded with caution is an understatement. The road was still closed and we were taking a risk. The New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service makes it very clear in their Sturt National Park brochure:

'Please note: driving on a closed road can lead to heavy penalties. Approximately $1100 fine per axle from road authorities plus additional fines from NSW National Parks and Wildlife if driving on a closed road within a National Park or Reserve.'

And, if we were to write off the car, our insurance would be invalidated.

It took us an hour and a half to cover those 55 km, but not just because of the state of the road and our extreme wariness (slower than 25 km/h on the worst stretches), but because there was entertainment along the way.

This wasn't a serious fight but a rough and tumble between young males. Boxing is important practice for when they're dominant males in the mob and have to defend their domain. Had we been driving faster, we would have disturbed them sooner and not seen as much action. There were hundreds of roos about, all of them alive thankfully.

The landscape was... a bit grim. But always interesting. And I was just so relieved to have escaped. We were almost at the border. In the meantime, a couple of signs of note. Silver City refers to Broken Hill, a silver mining town towards the southern end of this road that cuts through Outback New South Wales from border (QLD) to border (Vic). The second sign was particularly exciting.

 

The Lake Eyre Basin drains a huge arid area in parts of four states. It has no outlet into an ocean: water that flows in intermittent rivers feeding Lake Eyre – the lowest point of the Basin at 16 metres below sea level – disappears by seepage or evaporation. Lake Eyre is an ephemeral lake, fed by creeks on slightly higher ground or sand ridges that drain any rainfall into the depression. Waterbirds gather on this type of lake to feed on invertebrates in the shallow water. As the water recedes, grasses spring up on the lake bed, providing more food for the birds. Eventually everything dries out completely, the birds leave and the flat becomes a dusty clay pan.

Soon after the signs we spotted our first rabbit in the Outback. Considering so many kilometres of fence have been constructed over the years to keep them out, or in, depending on your location, where have they all been up till now?

It was a relief to see the inevitable plethora of signs up ahead – the border. I have never been so pleased to get back into Queensland. I think the emus wanted to come with us through the gate. The Wild Dog Destruction Board needs rebranding. Whenever I see the word 'shall', I think of Cinderella: 'You shall go to the ball.' And I never understand why fine-threatening signs say 'not exceeding' whatever the amount is, which makes it sound like it won't be so bad. If I wanted to scare people into action, I'd put up a sign saying, 'Anyone leaving this gate open will be very heavily fined' – and leave them guessing. And was there a secret camera somewhere; otherwise how could anyone possible know who'd left the gate open when people pass by here once a fortnight?

Now we were fairly close to the Channel Country which I was very excited about. I wanted to see for myself the dry channels that fill only after sporadic rains. At such times we wouldn't be able to drive anywhere near here, of course. The landscape was changing, as ever. And then we started to cross the channels. They were shallow, almost imperceptible in places. You could have missed them as easy as blink, if you didn't know what you were looking for. I find them fascinating because they're a remnant of water flow and drainage patterns in ancient times on this continent. Rivers weren't deeply incised: they flowed slowly over a low gradient and fanned out into a wide, braided channel. In Queensland's arid west it is only in exceptionally wet years that rivers have sufficient flow in their upper reaches to enable them to even reach Lake Eyre. After big summer rainfall in 2010, Cooper Creek reached the Lake for the first time for 20 years.

There were still 'stony rolling plains', and to our right the ridges of the extensive Grey Range, which had been there almost from the border and stretches to halfway between Thargomindah and Eromanga.

 

We left unsealed roads behind at midday, a few kilometres short of Noccundra, where there is just a hotel. We stopped for yet another far too milky Outback coffee, talked to some fellow travellers, and admired the Galahs, whose pink never fails to impress. In these parts, you just have to have your own light aircraft parked in the yard. I notice quite a few of them have crashed lately, so don't plan too much for a ripe old age, eh?

 

By now, Quilpie didn't seem so far away, and we could drive faster on the Cooper Developmental Road, where we saw our first dingo. I think it might have been a cross – its legs weren't long enough for a purebred. And the oil wells were back – we say nodding donkeys; you say pumpjacks. We stopped at Ginniapapa Creek for lunch. Apart from five million flies – it's hard to eat a sandwich while wearing a fly net – the only sign of wildlife was a Willie Wagtail.

Eromanga makes a strong claim, and has the signpost to 'prove' it, complete with Nankeen Kestrel.

The town might lend weight to the argument if it referred to its being at the 'pole of inaccessibility' – defined in Wiki as 'a location that is the most challenging to reach owing to its remoteness from geographical features that could provide access. Often it refers to the most distant point from the coastline.' Compared to places we'd been already, Eromanga didn't seem particularly remote. And Wiki claims that Papunya in the Northern Territory is the closest town to either of two furthest points from coast in Australia. Towns on tourist trails love to claim that they're the beef or navy bean or opal capital, or that they're the gateway to the Outback or the Channel Country, or the largest this or the highest that.

There were a lot more cows...

And one of these right by the roadside.

By the time we were nearing Quilpie the sun was going down behind us. By the time we'd checked into the Heritage Inn on Brolga Street it was almost time for dinner.

Trapped in Tibooburra

I heard the rain on the tin roof of the cabin during the night, and no one was surprised next morning to see large puddles and this...

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In the rather cold light – the maximum temperature was to be 10 degrees cooler than the previous day – we could see just how much of the road we'd brought into town with us.

We had planned to move on to Cameron Corner today. Originally our Outback trip was shorter: Charleville, Quilpie, Longreach and Carnarvon Gorge. That was before my friend looked at the map and decided he must go to the point where three states meet in the middle of nowhere. I went back to the drawing board and, several revisions later, came up with a longer itinerary. 

Cameron Corner was named after John Cameron who surveyed the Queensland border country in the 1880s. The only thing there apart from the Wild Dog Fence is the Cameron Corner Store which has all you'll need – accommodation, meals, fuel and a bar. They were very understanding when I called to say we couldn't make it. And so Cameron Corner goes back on the to-do list.

Tibooburra is the self-styled capital of the Corner Country of Outback New South Wales. Explorer Charles Sturt was the first European to pass nearby. He'd set out from Adelaide in August 1844, and in the heat of the summer made camp at Depot Glen south of Tibooburra which had the only permanent water for 100 kilometres. He stayed there nearly six for months, not daring to go on, not wanting to go back. Burke and Wills also came up this way nearly 20 years later. But the town wasn't built until the early 1880s when gold was found. The name may come from an Aboriginal word meaning place of heaps of rocks, after the remarkable granite outcrops. Pastoralism (sheep) replaced gold and now tourism and 4WDriving has brought the likes of us to this remote desert place.

This is Toole's Family Hotel where we stayed. They have a splendid long-haired cat who saw us home from the restaurant last night and settled on my bed for a while. The hotel also has a less than splendid – in my humble opinion – mural by Clifton Pugh. Rumour has it he painted it one day when he was holed up in Tibooburra during the wet. OK if you're happy to share the bar with visions of not particularly attractive naked figures while you sup your beer. The hotel was built in 1882, in the single-storey style we were becoming familiar with. The Albert Hall was not as we know it!

So, what to do in Tibooburra for the day now we weren't going anywhere? We thought about it over a coffee at TJ's Roadhouse where we bought fly nets and a new Outback map with 'heritage' – a popular word on the tourist trail – and other travel information. Outside, there's a Little Rosella in a cage by the door: his name is Barney. He says, 'Give us a scratch', but in all available space on the cage are the words 'I bite'. Allegedly, wary souls have been known to offer a credit card through the bars rather than a finger, unaware of Barney's other party trick – to snatch it. They then have to sheepishly ask in the shop if staff can retrieve the card from the bird.

We were told road closures were managed by the National Parks and Wildlife Service office, so that's where we headed to find out the prognosis. The next road conditions report was at midday: nothing changed: and the next was at 4. There was enough information in the Parks office to keep me busy for hours. There were lots of specimens in jars, including Red-headed Mouse Spiders and a Mulga, or King Brown, Snake.

I learned all about ephemeral lakes, Wedge-tailed Eagles' eating habits and the speed at which kangaroos can move. And the fact that Western and Eastern Greys are not true desert animals. Their numbers have probably increased out here because of the availability of water in tanks for sheep. Western Greys have dark grey to brown fur with silver ear tufts and emit a strong odour. In true Aussie tradition, they are known as stinkers. There was geology and landforms, fauna and flora, history and Aboriginal culture.

Charles Sturt set out with 16 officers and men, 11 horses, 30 bullocks, 1 boat and boat carriage, 1 horse dray, 1 spring cart, 3 bullock drays, 200 sheep, 2 sheep dogs and 4 kangaroo dogs. The objective of the expedition was to find new grazing lands. He included a boat because he believed he would find a great inland sea. He had observed flocks of birds heading northwest from the Darling River at Bourke and due north from Adelaide. He plotted where the birds' flight paths crossed and travelled to that point. All he found was the Simpson Desert. As he was forced to give up in September 1845 through lack of water, he wrote:

'It is impossible to find words to describe the terrible nature of this dreadful desert. In a country so dry all efforts are abortive...'

We discovered from one of the rangers that the nearest access to Sturt National Park was not closed. She recommended walking a circuit from Dead Horse Gully camp ground, a couple of kilometres north of town.

The National Park has four distinct landscapes. Jump Ups are flat-topped hills that are also known as mesas (Spanish for tables). The Granites refers to 400 million-year-old boulders (above) littering the surrounds of Tibooburra that have been exposed from an igneous intrusion lying beneath sedimentary overlayers. Then there are the Gibber Plains, or 'stony rolling downs', covered with pebbles eroded from the Jump Ups and then worn smooth by wind and sand. And, finally, red sand plains and parallel dunes further west in the Park towards the Strzelecki Desert where I had planned to walk originally.

As always, there were interesting things along the way. The skeleton seemed almost pleasant after the roadkill. We surprised a Western Grey, and almost didn't spot the resting roos towards the end of our circuit. The bark belongs to the Western Bloodwood – so named because of the dark red sap this gum tree produces. Adapted to arid conditions, the trees predominate in the Granites and line the creek. Dead Horse Gully got its name when miners found two dead horses here and suspected they'd been poisoned. Horses were not well equipped to survive in such a harsh environment, however, and it's more likely they ate a poisonous plant when desperate for food.

 

We climbed a granite tor for the view, which was desolate and rather dispiriting I imagine if you were an early explorer suffering from scurvy and dehydration and Tibooburra wasn't in the middle distance. A Sturt moment. 

Sunlight caught wet slate following a brief shower.

As we went back into town after a picnic lunch beneath a Bloodwood, we noticed a caravan coming into Tibooburra from the north. The last road condition report of the day, however, opened no routes north or south. I wanted to follow the caravan to find out what state the road was in but was distracted by the Courthouse Museum next to the Parks office. It's worth a visit, having lots of information and artefacts from early settlement days. I was particularly struck by the description of life for women trying to do household chores in 45 degrees of summer heat and dust storms, with little water. The isolation of the stations meant an Aboriginal woman was most likely to help deliver their babies. As the children got older, the women would add teaching to their daily tasks. Although why on earth they bothered with starching and ironing is beyond me.

Come evening, the prisoners of Tibooburra congregated this time in the pub (the Tibooburra Hotel, also 1882) for supper. Grim lighting in the dining room, guys. There was much speculation and rumour. Our friend from the oil and gas fields had headed south first thing, but was back. Had he been made to turn around at some point on the Silver City Highway? He was revealing only that he'd been out of town for the day! A couple of young blokes had arrived from the north late morning. They reassured me we'd be fine as long as we took the first 20 kilometres carefully.

We both knew we had to leave the next morning. And, since we had to make Quilpie in a day (more than 500 km) to keep on schedule, we wouldn't be waiting for the road conditions report at 9 am. As we packed and got ready for bed, we had a different visitor, in the shower this time.