A Flurry in Cloncurry

Caravan Parks are usually pretty quiet and staid affairs once the sun goes down but we were awoken from our slumbers around 4am by a rather loud (dare I say maniacal) dialogue from a woman in a tent just 20 metres from us. She was in her early 40s I guess from what we saw earlier in the day and the gist of the conversation was her questioning the conjugal rights of her partner, complaining that she badly needed a rest and wasn’t three times a week enough (to paraphrase and omit expletives)? After a short silence there was a chorus from the surrounding male grey nomads (with a hint of envy even) agreeing that she did have a fair point there, and there followed a chorus from the female grey nomads “Amen to that, dear!” The guy kept a low response at all times so we couldn’t hear him but whatever he said arced her up even more, and so it went on for about 20 minutes until either or both fell back to sleep, and the caravan park residents followed suit.

On the way to the ‘Curry we were obliged by a road train driver throwing up a rock our way, giving a rather displeasing large chip mark on our windscreen. As we drove through Cloncurry we happened upon a windscreen repair business and asked if he could fix it tomorrow – he said no he’d be away tomorrow but “drive it through, I’ll fix it now!” As I got out of the vehicle I happened to notice a tangle of bare wires hanging out of the trailer where it should have been connected to the car. Somehow (and we suspect it happened outside of Lawn Hill) we had obliterated the connecting plug which was nowhere to be seen.  The windscreen guy said to try the bloke across the road, which I did and he obligingly wandered across and reconnected the electricals while the windscreen was being patched. Country towns are cool! Nothing seems to be any bother to these people.

                                              Maurs runs with Banjo the Dinosaur

From Cloncurry we drove back down to Winton, checked out another Dinosaur Centre but one where you see actual dinosaur bones rather than replicas (a rarity anywhere in the world), and through Longreach but then got off the beaten track a little by checking out the smaller towns of Stonehenge (the van park was full there – had two vans in it) and Jundah, where we camped for the night. We took a “tourist drive” along the Thomson River in the late afternoon (plenty of water still in these rivers) to check out the bird and animal life. That evening while we were having our showers we could hear a band playing at the local pub – a quality band! So off we set for a couple of drinks and enjoyed a two-piece group with a big sound called Mick Lindsay (Mick had a guitarist called Grant with him). As a muso he was arrogant in a friendly way – “any requests?” he asked casually – he could pretty well play anything but he specialised in Southern US country rock, and they gave their all for less than 20 people in the audience (so the whole of Jundah was there). Very enjoyable and unexpected night. He was on his way to play at the Birdsville Races. You can look him up at www.micklindsay.com – worth a look and a listen if you have a spare moment. Maurs had the added thrill of being hit on by the village idiot – he was fat, drunk, and cavorted in front of everyone like a barefoot John Belushi – but, as Maurs rightly pointed out, he was a lot younger than her and it was a male, unlike other occasions when she has been hit upon in pubs.

                                                   Real dinosaurs - real bones!

From Jundah it was on to Windorah – a metropolis by Jundah standards, where we had a morning coffee and moved on quickly to Quilpie.

                   Things move kinda slow at Windorah - of course, it was Sunday morning.
It’s about 200 km of single lane bitumen with high shoulders onto gravel so if you happen to meet someone coming the other way you have to gingerly get one set of wheels off the road and hope the other guy doesn’t cough up yet more gravel onto your windscreen. The road carnage along this stretch was appalling with loads of dead roos, emus, cattle, feral pigs, feral cats, and slow birds. Maurs had to stop outright for a wedge-tailed eagle who just eyed us off until he lumbered a few metres off to the side of the road to let us past. This was luckier than one hapless traveller whom we met in Quilpie – a wedge-tail had flown into his windscreen making a rather large mess of it and ruining his chances of making the Birdsville race meeting (I’m not sure that he was so willing to stop for it though).

                                                Don't mess with the wedge-tail....

Outside of Quilpie is a public fossicking area where people can have a dig and give rocks a whack with a hammer. Are you catching on to a theme here? Of course we went out for a fossick. The target this time? Opals. In an inspired piece of team cluelessness, Maurs asked me to bring a cloth over on which to rest our findings. I placed this cloth on the ground and picked up a random rock to keep the cloth from blowing away. She picked up the rock and saw a tiny glint of opal on one side of it. She whacked it to make it into a smaller rock to keep but when she did, it broke open to reveal more opal inside – to the extent that she got the opal guy in town to cut out a not-too-shabby piece of pure opal for jewellery plus he polished up the remainder of the rock for a nice conversation piece (yes we do intend to bore you about this when we see you again!) I fear our fossicking days are not ended yet either.

                                     Our opal find, all polished up! Not a bad morning's work.

I should mention bore water for those unfamiliar with it. Water in this part of the world is artesian and has varying concentrations of Hydrogen Sulphide. It’s good water – so soft you can hardly wash the soap off yourself, but it does carry the distinctive odour of rotten eggs that tempers any notions of long showers – particularly after one has had an egg for breakfast (particularly galling!) As everyone out here says, you get used to the smell – but crikey, I reckon it takes a while!