How often have I commented that there is no such thing as a free lunch? The pleasures of the green grazing ground we had been experiencing over the past few days came with Mother Nature's price tag.....rain, rain and more rain.
And of course, once all this moisture had hit Terra firma (which by now was anything but firm) it had to go somewhere, and it surely was. By the time we were due to leave Ilfracombe, flood warnings and watches were extending to include many of the rivers and creeks in the areas we had planned to next visit, the eastern edge of the famous Channel Country.
Hopefully this shot from Google Earth may present some idea of what we had planned to traverse. From Longreach our original track would have taken us south-west through the town of Stonehenge and then on to Windorah which is highlighted in the centre of this photo. Significantly, all the dark lines you can see are creek beds, and they can become very, very busy waterways indeed.
Hopefully this shot from Google Earth may present some idea of what we had planned to traverse. From Longreach our original track would have taken us south-west through the town of Stonehenge and then on to Windorah which is highlighted in the centre of this photo. Significantly, all the dark lines you can see are creek beds, and they can become very, very busy waterways indeed.
From Windorah our planned route would then take us in a generally south-easterly direction along the Diamantina Development road to the township of Quilpie, about 200 kms west of Charleville.
And herein lay another potentially large snag. The brown coloured ribbon which intersects with the road at the 'm' of Diamantina is the famous Cooper Creek, notorious for its sudden flushes of water during rain such as we were experiencing. An, of course, whilst we found a few websites which gave us a pretty good idea of the current road conditions and areas of flooding, we had no way of predicting or assessing what was happening in the catchments of all these many creeks.
In this country, this can be a very serious trap for young players where normally dry creek bed crossings can rise within hours to become (for us) impassable barriers. With my thanks to 'Aussienomads', here is a pictorial example of what I mean, a creek crossing just out of Jundah, one of the towns on our initial itinerary.
From the time we left Winton we were making calculations and assessments on a daily and half-daily basis and as we did so we realised that no matter how accurate the road condition information may have been, we had no way of predicting the future downfalls of rain, the speed with which things can change for the worse, and more importantly, where and for how long we may have had to wait things out if we became stuck.
So, after considerable agonising (I had been breaking my neck to visit the towns along our originally planned route), we decided that discretion was very much the better part of valour on this occasion. We would eschew the real outback and stick to the main highway where at least we knew two things....firstly, the road condition reports along the Landsborough Highway were updated frequently, and two, if we were cut off, we had a range of reasonably well established towns to choose from where we could sit things out in relative comfort.
And so it was that we chose Tambo, a small town on the Matilda Highway just over 200 kms north of Charleville as our destination once we left Ilfracombe. We had passed through there previously and remembered that the Tambo Mill Caravan Park had showed real promise.
As we again took to the Landsborough Highway on the leg from Ilfracombe to Barcaldine, we were reminded of the conditions with which we were dealing,
more than once.
As it was, our reckoning that the road would be clear along all our planned route proved accurate and we continued to relish the astounding grass of the open grazing plains as we made our way due east to Barcaldine.
On this leg of our trip, again we were presented with spots where carpets of wildflowers added their various colours to the backdrop of the lush green grass.
Barcaldine is one of the towns in this area which we have on our 'to do' list.
It is a very interesting place, home as this sign proclaims, to the 'Tree of Knowledge' under which the Australian Labor Party was purportedly born, created by a group of striking shearers who set up their headquarters in Barcaldine in 1891 and met under the shade of this particular tree (now sadly a mere shadow of its former self as a result of age and deliberate poisoning) to discuss their immediate plight and their futures.
It was from this point, too, that these men would launch themselves into the groups of arriving strike-breakers....the scraps were apparently fierce. Interestingly, the hierarchy of the Labor Party was so incensed by the act of sabotage which saw the demise of all but a small section of the tree, that it offered a reward of $10,000 for any information leading to the identification and conviction of the culprit(s). It remains unclaimed!
Just before reaching the Barcaldine CBD a right turn beckoned...we did at one stage consider the alternative of heading further east through Alpha to Emerald and thence south, but it had been raining heavily all through that area as well. This option presented not only the possibility of being stranded in the Carnarvon Gorge area, but the impost of significant extra distance as well. We stayed with new Plan 'A' (which by now was really about Plan 'F')
and headed south out of Barcaldine towards Blackall.
'Three greens'...what a welcome sight this was. With the road clear to Morven and Roma, we knew that we could make Tambo. Mind you this did not last, as I shall explain later.
South of Barcaldine the countryside changed. The sweeping open plains were replaced by timbered country,
but not for long. For the remainder of today's journey we were to traverse alternating topography, predominately sheep country but with scattered herds of cattle as well.
Here, for the first time in some considerable distance, we had the occasional highway joust with one or two big buggers, but these were still a long way from the challenges we had faced in the West, where the protruding loads could take up half of our side of the carriageway.
With the passing of this sign we knew that Blackall was not too far distant. It was time for a break and a re-fuelling stop.
One of our abiding memories of Blackall (we over-nighted here four years ago) was of the town bougainvilleas, and as we made our approach to the main street, here they were again, in full bloom.
We cruised through the divided carriageway of Blackall's main street, re-fuelled at the large servo just south of the town
and continued south along what is now known as the 'Matilda Way'.
And here again, in many places, the highway veges were carpets of wildflowers, mostly yellow,
but with patches of delicate little blues as well, painting the otherwise bare brown dirt with splashes of colour.
In some places, the fields of colour were as good as anything we had seen in WA (even if this somewhat blurry photo does not do them justice!)
With a short stretch of unsealed road under our wheels,
we soon found ourselves descending the low hills
on the last leg of our trip to Tambo.
To our relief, the Tambo Mill Motel and Caravan Park proved to be as we had remembered it...well maintained and welcoming.
Here, at this time of the year, the park offers a booking bargain....first night $30, the second $20 and the third night free! Needless to say, given that we knew at this stage that the road further south beyond Augathella had the potential to be blocked by floodwaters, and that more rain was forecast in the immediate future, we opted for the 'three night plan'. As it was we actually only stayed for two, but I'll come to that later.
For now it was down to the park entrance,
and on past the motel units undercover parking bays
to the far end of the park and our site, which like all here was a drive-thru. We were happy to comply with the request that we moor the van at the entrance end of our side of the double site which allowed our immediate neighbour some degree of privacy in that they only now had to overlook the Cruiser. This is a good system.
With the roadways heavily covered with dolomite, and a strip of lawn available under each awning,
this is very efficient way of providing good amenity even during wet weather, unless it is very, very wet that is. It was relatively fine on our arrival here in Tambo, but that respite did not last. It absolutely poured overnight. In the early morning light I could see that our awning had not been able to protect us from the inundation of water coming from the driveway....again we were sodden.
But so too was the rest of the park.
Large puddles appeared everywhere. The already soaked ground could just not absorb any more. We were more than pleased that our site was almost right next to the heads, which meant that a necessary scurry to the loo could be achieved with an only limited soaking.
The ablutions are another credit to this smallish park. All self-contained, good water pressure and kept very well cleaned.....just what we relish. At least if we had to sit out another day of wretched wet weather, our creature comforts were well seen to. And sit it out we did, again making more assessments of the spread of rain from this latest system to hit the central west of Queensland and its potential to affect our immediate plans.
Needless to say we did not avail ourselves of the park BBQ or the nearby pretty little pool. Ducks we are not!
We did manage to get out and about on the day of our arrival, and at times during breaks in the weather on the following morning. I'll share what we found in Tambo in my next.
I can't end this missive, however, without some comment about the wisdom or otherwise of our decision to avoid the western channel country......best summed up by the phrase 'we dodged a very large bullet'!
Had we gone to Stonehenge as planned for our first overnight, there is no doubt that is where we would have been stuck.....as it transpired, for days. The road on to Windorah became impassable and even the Warrego River had risen rapidly. Charleville, through which this quite major watercourse runs, and which was our ultimate destination beyond Quilpie, was cut off to the world, on all approaches, and remained so for the next week.
Not only that, even if we had been able to back track out of Stonehenge to Longreach, the road south between it and Barcaldine had been cut by the rain from this latest system, a situation which did not ease for three days.
At least we had made it some considerable distance south....now our next challenge came in the form of the Burenda Creek which (normally) passes under the Landsborough Highway a few kilometres south of Augathella.....but not now. It was flooding across the road with significant vigour. The oft publicised local mantra "If it's flooded forget it", rang in our ears. Despite the message of absolute common sense this edict carries, there still are those who will take the risk. (we saw some examples of this in Tambo later) But at Burenda Creek there was no opportunity for the foolhardy to chance their arms....the Augathella 'boys and girls in blue' were on the job ensuring that the 'road closed' signs were obeyed.
All traffic had been halted in both directions. The normally quite busy main street of Tambo (the highway itself) had become eerily quite. And worst of all, the Weekend Australian did not arrive at the local supermarket! At least two vans which had left Tambo that morning limped back a few hours later, and many travelling south had to pull in for the night. Our park was soon chockers whilst we sat tight deriving some measure of smug satisfaction about our recently acquired planning skills.
But we were still watching the entire situation very closely. We knew that we may have to make a very quick decision.
this is very efficient way of providing good amenity even during wet weather, unless it is very, very wet that is. It was relatively fine on our arrival here in Tambo, but that respite did not last. It absolutely poured overnight. In the early morning light I could see that our awning had not been able to protect us from the inundation of water coming from the driveway....again we were sodden.
But so too was the rest of the park.
Large puddles appeared everywhere. The already soaked ground could just not absorb any more. We were more than pleased that our site was almost right next to the heads, which meant that a necessary scurry to the loo could be achieved with an only limited soaking.
The ablutions are another credit to this smallish park. All self-contained, good water pressure and kept very well cleaned.....just what we relish. At least if we had to sit out another day of wretched wet weather, our creature comforts were well seen to. And sit it out we did, again making more assessments of the spread of rain from this latest system to hit the central west of Queensland and its potential to affect our immediate plans.
Needless to say we did not avail ourselves of the park BBQ or the nearby pretty little pool. Ducks we are not!
We did manage to get out and about on the day of our arrival, and at times during breaks in the weather on the following morning. I'll share what we found in Tambo in my next.
I can't end this missive, however, without some comment about the wisdom or otherwise of our decision to avoid the western channel country......best summed up by the phrase 'we dodged a very large bullet'!
Had we gone to Stonehenge as planned for our first overnight, there is no doubt that is where we would have been stuck.....as it transpired, for days. The road on to Windorah became impassable and even the Warrego River had risen rapidly. Charleville, through which this quite major watercourse runs, and which was our ultimate destination beyond Quilpie, was cut off to the world, on all approaches, and remained so for the next week.
Not only that, even if we had been able to back track out of Stonehenge to Longreach, the road south between it and Barcaldine had been cut by the rain from this latest system, a situation which did not ease for three days.
At least we had made it some considerable distance south....now our next challenge came in the form of the Burenda Creek which (normally) passes under the Landsborough Highway a few kilometres south of Augathella.....but not now. It was flooding across the road with significant vigour. The oft publicised local mantra "If it's flooded forget it", rang in our ears. Despite the message of absolute common sense this edict carries, there still are those who will take the risk. (we saw some examples of this in Tambo later) But at Burenda Creek there was no opportunity for the foolhardy to chance their arms....the Augathella 'boys and girls in blue' were on the job ensuring that the 'road closed' signs were obeyed.
All traffic had been halted in both directions. The normally quite busy main street of Tambo (the highway itself) had become eerily quite. And worst of all, the Weekend Australian did not arrive at the local supermarket! At least two vans which had left Tambo that morning limped back a few hours later, and many travelling south had to pull in for the night. Our park was soon chockers whilst we sat tight deriving some measure of smug satisfaction about our recently acquired planning skills.
But we were still watching the entire situation very closely. We knew that we may have to make a very quick decision.
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