Birdsville Safari Pt 2

 

George felt quite at home at Calcory Ruins


From Birdsville we headed east and spent the first night at Calcory Ruins, an abandoned pastoral homestead. It sits overlooking a creek which during our visit had waterholes with plenty of birdlife but the property had too many drought years in the early days and the owners walked off it. It is now part of a much larger enterprise.

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Bedourie Races

From there we travelled through the channel country, also known as The Diamantina named after the river system which naturally irrigates the channel country when there are good rains to the north. The water flows and spreads through the flat areas between the ancient scrub covered sand dunes which run generally north-south. This is one of the best cattle raising areas in the country and after good rain and plant growth stock can gain 2 kilos per day.  We stayed several days in Bedourie where $15 got us into the local rodeo, The Bedourie Races, and a Saturday night meal with a band for entertainment. The races also included a Ute Muster and a travellers’ muster, and as there were so many motorhomes they had a special section for us. This really is the outback - Bedourie still does not have mobile phone coverage!



Stock on the road in the channel country



After Bedourie we continued east stopping at Windorah and Quilpie and by then we were back on narrow sealed roads. As we moved towards Charleville in the last days we got back into an area with more trees, mostly Mulga but still moving through unfenced cattle country so as well as watching for native and feral animals such as emus, kangaroos, goats and pigs, there was always the chance a large steer could appear out of the trees and decide to cross the road in front of the vehicle.

These outback towns are almost always beside a substantial river around which their stories of survival and triumph over hardship and disaster through flood and drought have shaped the character of the local people. The people you meet in this country are friendly, courteous and always ready to chat about their town. They are not politically correct and the language is sometimes colourful but they are the heart and soul of the bush. Perhaps not Crocodile Dundee but some of the characters would fit right in as support roles.

Our safari finished at Charleville with a camp oven dinner at the racecourse where we all said farewell to the friends we’d made on the trip with hopes to meet again somewhere in our travels.