Thursday, July 4, 2013

Northern Queensland travels - Outback Queensland

Our camper van drive across the top of Australia included two overnight stops in the Northern Territory, and then two in Queensland. I have to confess that where the N.T. surprised us with its varied and green landscape, Queensland surprised me with its monotonous and barren landscape. Not only that, it has a 110km / hour speed limit (admittedly in line with the rest of the country and perfectly reasonable), whereas the N.T. allowed us to zoom along at 130km / hour.


If there were any slightly boring bits to our driving, they were in the section between the inland Queensland border and Cairns!

With the above said, Queensland did provide more frequent towns for driving stops, and larger towns with more amenities, so that was appreciated. Our first stop across the border was Mt Isa, an actual city, which was built on the back of copper, lead, silver and zinc mining. One of the first things you notice when you drive in is the smoke stacks, mining buildings, and moulds of moved earth.

Mt Isa
In our original driving plan, which included a night at Tennant Creek and not Barkly Homestead, we had intended to stay overnight in Mt Isa. By driving a bit further the day before, we instead reached Mt Isa for a late lunch, before travelling a further 100km or so down the road to Cloncurry.

More Mt Isa
Lunch options in Mt Isa were not super inspiring, so we settled on Subway rolls and ate them before climbing the city lookout to give the views shown above.  There was also a helpful sign telling us we were 2659km from where we started in Perth. Thank goodness we didn't drive all of it!


Where Mt Isa was large, our overnight stop Cloncurry was small. We stayed in a Discovery Caravan Park that seemed to be used predominantly by miners (who stayed in the onsite cabins). When I went out for a brief run in the morning (there's nothing like a day of driving to inspire morning exercise on holiday), I found myself being chased by a dog. After recovering from that trauma, I had to walk past a very large group of miners when I returned to the caravan park. It was a stressful morning! Cloncurry is a bit more memorable than it perhaps should be.


After Cloncurry, we hit what is known as the outback Australia dinosaur trail. I really had no idea that Australia used to have dinosaurs, never mind that dinosaur fossils and skeletons had been discovered in Queensland. It turns out that we did, and they have. One of the more impressive is known as 'Hughie', the skeleton of which is housed in the town of Hughendon (thus the name), and who is an example of a Muttaburrasaurus.

Hughie the Muttaburrasaurus

We stopped at Hughendon for lunch (of the self-catering variety), before our last 'outback' overnight stop in Charters Towers. I wish I had taken photos of the Charters Towers town. It had stone buildings, from an era where buildings were designed well, and seemed like a very different place to the mining communities we'd been passing. It was a nice town.

It also provided pizza.

Vegetarian pizza, half no cheese

I enjoyed our camper van cooking, but a hot fresh pizza on a thin woodfired base, topped with vegetables and helpfully made without cheese on one half...well, it was an exciting dinner prospect. We served it with carrots. It was great.

Charters Towers Big 4 caravan park

From Charters Towers, it was a reasonably short distance before we hit the greener, lusher scenery that makes far north Queensland as beautiful as it is. We also hit the first of many fields of sugar cane, an attractive sight after two days of rather empty driving.


From there, our trip went on to Cairns and then the Daintree, which very much deserve their own posts.

Have you seen any dinosaur bones / fossils? And what sort of scenery do you enjoy driving through or by?

28 comments:

  1. that welcome to queensland photo is brilliant - so apocalyptic, it could be from a sci fi film.

    I didn't know that you could see dinosaur bones up north or the Queensland was far more barren than the NT - my memory of (very little) driving in the NT was that there wasn't heaps to see in the Top End.

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    1. There's not a lot of 'things' in the NT but the landscape is more varied than Queensland is - but then Queensland has more 'things' so I suppose its a fair trade!

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  2. It's amazing how different the landscape is from one place to another. And super cool about the dinosaur bones!

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  3. I'm really enjoying your descriptions of your trip - there's so much of Australia that I've never seen.

    I did know we had dinosaurs, but I didn't know there was a dinosaur trail in Queensland - very cool!

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    1. I'm so glad you're enjoying these posts Catherine - I'm never sure how much people want recaps of others' holidays so you've reassured me :)

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  4. Getting chased by a dog is scary! Not the best way to start off your morning. Glad that you weren't hurt.

    I have seen dinosaur bones & fossils in a museum when I was younger, but it has been a long time. Pretty cool stuff to look at!

    Did you take some pictures of IM in Cairns?

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    1. I did! They didn't come out very well (it was getting dark) but I'll be posting them in my next (Cairns) post :)

      I wish I'd seen dinosaur bones as a child - I imagine they'd have been even more amazing then than as an adult!

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  5. Holy crap, I don't think I've ever been on a road that's 130km. And also, Queensland is super barren looking, that's crazy. Too bad you got chased by a dog, that's scary. Looks like you're having a great trip otherwise!

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    1. Initially, driving at 130km/hour was nearly as scary as the dog :P Fortunately both ended ok!

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  6. My mum was born in Mt Isa. But don't blame her for the food.

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    1. I never knew that (although I suppose that makes sense)! I'm sure she appreciates Canberra food all the more for her starting point ;)

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  7. I really want to visit the Riversleigh fossil site in that area of QLD one day - it sounds fascinating!

    Food options in outback towns are generally pretty crappy - it's lucky you found a Subway and some pizza.

    Love the last photo of the sugar cane fields with the mountains in the background as it reminds me of so many wonderful trips I've had to FNQ - such a wonderful area of this country! Looking forward to the next posts!

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    1. Subway is definitely a good fall back. We found one in Katherine too ;)

      I'm looking forward to doing the FNQ posts!

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  8. Yum to that pizza and also very jealous of how much warmer it looks there compared to Melbourne right now. It is freezing.

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    1. It's pretty chilly here too compared to up there! It's funny how quickly you forget temperatures when you're in a different climate again.

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  9. There's so much in this post! I've heard lovely things about Charters Towers. I find that 'Welcome to Queensland' sign quite amusing - there's nothing there! I've often wondered what it would be like to live in a town like Mount Isa. Just in the middle of nowhere! xx

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    1. I know! I'm not sure I'd cope will, truth be told. The middle of nowhere might be manageable if the 'nowhere' was a forest or green countryside...but not so sure about Australia's version of it ;)

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  10. I can't believe you were in Charters Towers! That's only an hour from us! I'm jealous of your fossil pictures. I super want to head out Richmond and Hughenden way, to have a look. Andy's parents spent a bit of time there last year and really loved it. But Andy is disdainful of anything inland! And since he drives and I don't, he has a rather large say in our road trip planning.

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    1. You'll have to work on him ;) I do wish in hindsight we'd planned Townsville into the trip. I was mapping the route on Google maps and it took us up inland from Charters Towers. It wasn't until we got there that I realised how close Townsville was, and how the coastal route wasn't that much slower anyway! Next time...

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  11. Love this post! I am from Queensland but have never been to these places.

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  12. I never knew there were dinosaur bones ins QLD! That's awesome! Even more of a reason to get exploring this wonderful country.

    I've loved reading about your trip. I've just got back from a little beach holiday myself. I'm feeling a little guilty for not documenting and blogging it.. but it was nice to have some down time where I didn't 'have' to do anything. Perhaps next time I shall take a leaf out of your book and share the trip :)

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    1. Sometimes it is nice just to relax :-) I find it a good way to remind myself of what we did / saw, but if it was a chore I'm sure I'd skip over it!

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  13. I love the changes in scenery! You just never know what you are going to get in Australia.

    I went to some awesome dinosaur places in Argentina. A friend found about them on the discovery channel and we went to the middle of the country on a whim which turned out to be the most amazing place. Got to love a dinosaur.

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    1. How cool! I love it when whims turn out like that :)

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