I hate everything about driving. The
endless sitting, the tedium, the burning of fossil fuels and
subsequent destruction of the environment, the boredom of sitting for
any length of time longer than about one minute with nothing to read
and no puzzle to do (I get a headache). I abhor it all. Conversely,
I love walking and could easily walk for 8 to 10 hours a day every
day of the year - particularly if I could always walk on tracks and
trails that are new to me. Forest, meadow, mountain, beach, it
doesn't matter, I love to walk.
Unfortunately, from Mount Isa we had a
lot of driving to do. First to Camooweal, a community of 300 people
about 190 km west of Mount Isa and then north on bumpy dirt roads to
Boodjamulla (Lawn Hill) National Park. We stopped a night in
Camooweal which meant I could walk for a couple of hours on a track
down by the Georgina River where 30 or 40 caravans were parked with
generators running and the ubiquitous Australian sitters plunked on
their backsides in lawn chairs for hours, even days. Apart from the
human nuisance, the track was very pleasant along the Georgina River
past waterholes green with water lillies, the air filled with the
raucous call of Sulfur Crested Cockatoos and the odd haunting
trumpeting of Brolgas.
Lily pond on the Georgina River
The drive to Boodjamulla was very
painful and, at the start of the trip, I had to work hard to calm
myself and not panic at the thought of five or six hours sitting.
Doug found the entire trip very gruelling as he was worried the
entire way that the kayaks would rattle off the roof, the oil pan be
unceremoniously ripped from the underside of the vehicle, or all four
tires puncture at once. I simply drove as carefully as I could and
then did not fret. After all, there was nothing more I could do.
We stayed three nights at Boodjamulla
National Park (the topic of a separate blog post) but then had to
endure the return drive to Camooweal. In Camooweal, I finally felt
my virus had receded enough for me to return to more vigorous
exercise and, our last morning there, I got up at first light and ran
sprints down the red dirt road leading out of town as the burning red
sun crested the flat red earth and then came back and plunged into
the cool water of the swimming pool.
More driving confronted us. West along
the Barkly Highway through the flat and featureless grassy plains of
the Barkly Tableland where a line of trees seemed for ever on the
horizon but which we never reached. We turned north at Barkly
Roadhouse ($2.10 litre for diesel fuel) and drove for long distances
each day across the same flat, featureless plains to the Carpentaria
Highway at Cape Crawford (a long way from the sea). At Cape
Crawford, we detoured east to Caranbirini Conservation Area, though
how we convinced ourselves to drive 64 km out of our way is
unexplained.
Organ Pipe formations at Caranbirini
Caranbirini has about 8 km of marked,
not necessarily well, walking tracks and we walked the entire
distance impervious to the midday sun we were so glad to be out of
the car. The turrets and spires of the sandstone formations (called
organ pipes) were tantalising to climbers and, as we wandered along
them, we couldn't help eyeing potential routes.
We had initially planned to travel
north for a couple of nights into Linmen National Park but the
prospect of almost 300 km of dirt road driving for 2.5 km of walking
track deterred us and we continued west to reach the Stuart Highway
just south of Daly Waters. The treeless savannah gradually gave way
to lightly timbered eucalpyt forest with sporadic waterholes along
drying creeks.
I could climb this and this and this....
One last push north brought us to
Mataranka, a small service town near the Roper River where we turned
east again and drove, gratefully, only 12 more kilometres to Elsey
National Park where we could finally remove our bodies from the
vehicle for a few days and engage in those activities for which
humans are designed.
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