2nd June 2026: Awoke to a golden morning light on the gum trees and the sweet notes of the butcherbirds. We packed up and turned on the Kennedy Development road in the direction of Hughenden. We visited the Lookout over porcupine Gorge downstream of Pyramid Rock and it was far more spectacular as the Porcupine Creek ran along the bottom of high sandstone gorge walls 120 million years old with a layer of basalt on top. We then took a Google directed shortcut to Prairie but had to turn back when we came to a place where the road across the Flinders River was entirely washed away. We backtracked and had to go via Hughenden along the Flinders Way to Charters Towers. It was a town filled with some attractive building left over from when CT was in its heyday gold mining days. We filled up with diesel and had a large shop at Woolworths before heading to the Charters Towers Tourist Park for a drive-thru site. I cooked a vegetables and salmon and pasta in cheese sauce affair with a green salad. We head for Inner Springs tomorrow on our way to Cooktown.
24th June 2026: had a relaxing start to the day then decided to go on the afternoon tour of Fairview Station in a large bus-like 4 WD, led by a guy who has a good driver but didn’t seem to know a whole lot about the place. There were only 4 of us on the tour, and I volunteered to open the gates we had to go through. This involved getting out and into the vehicle without an extra stepping stool and opening a variety of fastenings on a number of gates , only one being a padlock! Fortunately I could do it! The Station is 1,000,000 acres and home to 10,000 to 20,000 cattle Brahmans and a type of Red beef breed. At each muster, the cattle are first spotted by helicopter. They are never able to round up more than 70% of the herd at one time. They don’t use cattle dogs because they bite the cattle’s leg or nibble their ear and then that particular animal can’t be sold once it has bite masks. The cattle mainly go to cattle sales in Mareeba, with a few sold locally. We didn’t see much wild...





Spectacular gorge!
ReplyDeleteFUN FACT: Charters Towers town has a population of less than 10,000, yet it is home to the ‘Goldfield Ashes’, the southern hemisphere’s largest (and likely the world’s) annual amateur cricket carnival. Over 300 teams took part in the 3-day carnival in January 2026. Games were played on a variety of playing surfaces and spread across formal cricket grounds, parks, various sporting fields and school grounds.
ReplyDeletenever heard of it! Are our cousins from the Sub-continent represented? (Craig here)
DeleteA beautiful first sentence Suz ((Craig here)
ReplyDelete