North Queensland then West

Our Dig Tree expedition was a great success. We returned with a little diesel left in the tank. About 50k till the light would come on. There was no driving around out there so lots of walking.

The Saturday night rain effectively held us in place until the road dried out. We had 50 plus millimetres at least so the road and flats got quite soft. Nice icky, sticky, ooey, gooey, black mud. The van tyres even sank in sank a couple of inches. Others campers rushing to leave did about 50,000 dollars of damage to the road. One large van ploughed about 10 kays of ruts and several others made them worse. The grader probably won't be in for six months after the real wet season.

The road had been closed but we had no idea. No phone, internet or visitors to tell us until after the fact. We of course had our satellite communicator and channel 1 UHF repeater is monitored. In an emergency we would not be alone. The nearby station would have come over to warn us if there had been a need.

We are now spending a last couple of nights with no communications and are almost ready to head back into the world of internet and see what has been happenning for the last week or so.

This last couple of nights here has been pleasent weather. Even the 500m walk to the toilets and showers near the hotel is no real effort in the cool weather. Today we walked over 10k including quite a distance along the Wilson River and its flood Plains.

We were surprised by this area. The river has waterholes and a surprising amount of birds. It was different to how we imagined.

To BEE, or not to BEE!
Yesterday I heard a lot of buzzing like bees. Looking down towards the sound I noticed what looked like bees tending burrow homes. Are these the native burrowing bees? There is no internet here to research so watch this space!

We are back in comms at Thargomindah but so far we are not certain about the bees. These ones are not actually ones we can find described so we may need to phone an expert.

Next day before we leave.
We did the walk to the amenities, a neat 1k round trip. Then a "short" walk along the river. This ended up near 2k each way but was totally rewarding.

Every walk in this area yields surprises. Lots of birds chattering along the river as we walked. At the place we are camped is a fairly steep mud bank lined by many gnarly trees. These keep the shape of the river with soil retaining root systems. As we ventured further along the terrain changes. The river channel has cut its way through weak conglomerate as it curves through pebbled woodlands.

It is so pleasent to walk in this area with the open spaces and light ground vegetation. After this trip I can imagine returning just for a longer stay in this amazing area.Les mer