Sydney to Winton

Dear All,

Many of you will remember our last two winter trips, well we are off again, this time heading to the Northern Territory, to complete a VISE (Volunteers for Isolated Students Education) placement at a cattle station called Nutwood Downs (H on the map below) about 100 km north east of Daly Waters.

We arrived at Winton, Qld. Wednesday 24th June and we have really enjoyed our trip so far.

This map was produced a while ago to show our proposed itinerary, but our route has already slightly deviated, as you will see shortly.

We left Sydney Sunday 7th June to visit family in Wagga (O) then Griffith (C). The road from Griffith north to Qld is known as the Kidman Way and is the most direct route for Melbournians to escape to North Qld. We stopped at Cobar (D) then Cunnamulla (not labelled but just about 100 km nth of the NSW/Qld border).

From there we enjoyed 3 lovely days and nights with the family where we had our first VISE placement near Wyandra (E). We had our first VISE tutoring placement with this family two years ago

Our first real tourist stop was the Blackall Woolscour, which only operates now for tourists, but for nearly 100 years washed wool from this district to get rid of excess weight for the trip overseas to the mills. The scour was steam driven, and is the only one still operating in Australia. In the foreground is an artesian bore, which has been releasing water for over 100 years.

Blackall Woolscour, steam driven - and Artesian Bore

Blackall, like most towns in outback Qld relies on artesian water. The Council Aquatic Centre comprises a thermal pool and Spa, which we sampled for a few relaxing hours. It wqasn't exactly crowded, although there were lots of tourists in town. The small mushroom shaped tower behind Lee produced a shower of water nearly too hot to stay under. By the way, the weather was fine, 27 max and about 8 min at night

Blackall thermal Aquatic Centre

Our deviation from the map above was to turn left at Blackall to Isisford, then north to Longreach.We went to Isisford because of a highly recommended bush camping spot on the Barcoo River. Some of you will know Banjo Patterson's poem "A bush christening", which begins "On the Outer Barcoo where churches are few....." The Barcoo is one of the easternmost rivers in the Lake Eyre Basin catchment.

Lee and van beside Barcoo River at Isisford

We camped three nights at this beautiful spot, but left quickly the fourth morning after it started to rain. The campsite was black dirt which quickly changed to thick gooey slippery mud. We got out just in time. While we were there we sampled some beautiful birdlife and beautiful reflections on the still but very muddy water (there was a weir just below the town). My favourite photo was of the Whistling Kites (small eagles) in a tree over the river

Whistling Kites beside Barcoo River

After the great escape from the mud, we travelled to Longreach. We didn't do the standard tourist things as we had been there before (Qantas Museum etc). Instead we spent 3 hours at Lilly's Lagoon on the edge of the Thompson River. A most beautiful spot, great birdlife as well.

Lilly Lagoon at Longreach

Royal Spoonbills above Lilly Lagoon

And so we arrived at Winton, so far we have covered 2,600 km. We plan to stay here for about 2 weeks, seeing the sights and doing some voluntary work with the Anglican Church here. I guess our time in Winton will occupy the next blog.

God bless,

Peter and Lee.