East across Queensland to Winton

A 1920's Whippet  traveling across the Barkly Tablelands

After Katherine we moved back down the Stuart Highway to Three Ways where we turned east across the Barkly Tablelands and I think that this is where “are we there yet?” was invented. The land is FLAT, the scrubby bushes give way to open grassland but there are no rivers to cross or anything to break up the open country. We stopped the night at Barkly Homestead, an oasis in the middle of nowhere. This landscape continues almost to the Queensland border where the country becomes interesting again with river channels to cross and some variation in the terrain.

Mokes at Lake Moondara  at Mt Isa

 Our next stop of interest was the mining town of Mt Isa. Now we were driving through rocky hills and as we approached the city from the west the town was dominated by the huge chimney at the lead mine (the tallest in the southern hemisphere) plus the red and white chimney in the copper area and the smaller chimney at the sulphur works. Lead, silver, copper and zinc is mined here with sulphur as a by- product. We spent a very enjoyable day with Moke friends who gave us a guided tour of the local sights.

The drive from Mt Isa to Cloncurry was very enjoyable winding through rocky hills with ever changing views and strange formations.

Never Never Safaris truck

A lunchtime stop at McKinlay was a must as it is the location of the Walkabout Creek Hotel made famous in Crocodile Dundee. Two of the Never Never Tours vehicles from the movie are parked out the front.

On east across to Winton in Australia’s famous dinosaur area. We were unable to visit the dinosaur stampede area where many footprints are frozen in time in the rock as recent rains had closed the road, however we did visit the Age of Dinosaurs Museum where teams of volunteers work to clean the delicate fossil material. Some huge and unique dinosaurs have been found in the area and in fact there is so much fossil material already found it will take years to clean and more is being found all the time. The museum is on top of a “jump up” a mesa type raised flat top giving magnificent views out across the black soil country that has preserved these fossils for many millions of years.

Brolgas flew in for a free feed at Kynuna

Katherine Gorge

After spending 5 days at Kakadu we thought that this was the highlight of our trip this year but as we turned south we stopped at Katherine for a few days and did a cruise on the Katherine River visiting the amazing Katherine Gorge in the Nitmiluk National Park.

The yellow spec is a canoer

There are several options for viewing this magnificent natural formation including helicopter flights, 5 day walking trails, boat cruises or paddle your own canoe – we took the boat option.

 

 The river had carved its way through the plateau over millions of years taking advantage of and expanding natural faults and fractures in the extremely hard sandstone which is so old it doesn’t contain any fossils. There are 13 gorges in all, 3 are available by boat cruise.

 

At this time of year (the dry season) the river is low and it is not possible to navigate the whole gorge as rock barriers break it up into sections of deeper water so it is necessary to walk short distances and change to other boats on the next section of the river. Other sections are deeper with one extremely deep spot caused by a violent whirlpool which forms when the river is in flood. The hole is ground deeper each year by huge rocks grinding in the bottom of the whirlpool.

The walls of the gorge display a range of colours – red iron oxide, black stains from water flows, patches of green lichen in the shady spots and hanging gardens of delicate ferns which somehow survive the raging wet season flows. These colours all overlay the lighter sandstone walls which tower on each side.

There are freshwater crocodiles which lay their eggs on the small sandy beaches. They are not dangerous to humans as they are smaller, their jaws are not as strong as the “salties” and their teeth are quite fragile. Their normal diet is insects, small freshwater fish and crustaceans etc. Occasionally salt water crocs enter the river during the wet season but they are captured and removed.

 Awesome is a highly over-used word these days but it is hard to find a more appropriate word for the magnificent scenery in Nitmiluk National Park.