There actually is a Black Stump! A small town called Blackall, about 200 km southeast of Longreach, QLD, has a monument to what I thought was a bit of legendary folklore. The Black Stump was an actual marker for surveying purposes whereby the surveyors used it as a base to rest their instruments, back in the day. The original black stump was converted to a pile of ash during a fire and was replaced by a piece of permanent petrified wood in 1988. So we can now rest easy in the knowledge that the legendary Black Stump actually exists, and the modern version of it will easily survive famine and flood and a nuclear war. (Sooz: For those not native to this country, anything way out west is considered ‘beyond the Black Stump’).
As previously mentioned, many of the towns in outback QLD have spas & swimming pools of warm/hot water fed from the Great Artesian Basin. Some of the bores are up to 3 km in depth, and the water that rises from them can be anywhere between 35 degrees C to almost boiling point! Ouch! The water that we have enjoyed soaking ourselves in in several little towns probably fell as rain up to 2 million years ago. (Sooz: Amazing! I will never get tired of artesian spas.) I never knew that the western side of the Great Dividing Range is made up of porous rock through which rainwater can seep and enter this vast underground reservoir that could easily be classified as a natural wonder. So many people in outback NSW, QLD & SA depend on it as their source of drinking water
Chook Races On the way to Charleville, QLD lies the tiny outback town of Tambo. We stayed here for one night as a stop-over and there are two attractions – a hot spa with a 50 metre pool fed from the Great Artesian Basin and a pub that has chook racing every night of the week. There is no need to expand on the spa thing, but the chook racing requires some elaboration. Some bloke named Ben with a bushranger beard and gift of being able to entertain, purchased the only pub in town a few years ago and decided to run chicken races to raise money for the Royal Flying Doctor service. Thus, he dyed the feathers of a dozen or so chooks with bright colours (it looked like they were dunked in buckets of dye) and gave them silly names (like ‘Priscilla’ for the pink one) and then auctioned off each one to the highest bidder on the day. Before the auction, Ben was particular in letting the punters know what the form guide was for each chook – how many times it had won and when the last time it had crossed the finish line first etc.
The person who successfully bid for the winning chook would get half of the total purse from that afternoon’s race, while the balance was a donation to the RFD. It was a hoot and total chaos. He had constructed a rectangular pen – about 10m x 3m with a middle fence that divided it lengthwise (Sooz: creating a “track”.) The chooks ran around this enclosure following a remote controlled car that had a container of food taped to the roof. The chooks chased after it and the winner was the first chook across the line after 10 laps of the pen. There were more tourists watching this event (about 30) than there were residents in the town! This is the type of thing that one travels to these remote places to see. It was priceless and the bloke running the show – Ben – is a classic outback character. Good on him. (For the record, I bid on a chook but did not end up owing one. The one I wanted ended up being the winner but sold for $100. The winning punter got $190 for their $100 outlay).
Click on the image “BEN’S CHICKEN RACING” for the video
Charleville’s main attractions include a USA WWII ‘secret’ base experience, a Cosmos centre and a Bilby Experience. The WWII thing is a pretty good display of a US military airfield that was a top-secret base set up during the war. At that time, there were 300+ planes including Flying Fortresses that were camouflaged and hidden in the bush around the already established airfield that the Yanks extended and modified. They stored the top secret Norden bomb sighting instruments in concrete bunkers along with all sorts of other equipment that enemy eyes were not to see. There were all sorts of black & white original American made videos from the day of what life would be like for the USA servicemen when they arrived in Australia, and what was expected of them regarding interacting with the locals and how to handle the local culture and language. Very quaint. (Sooz: I am not sure how you hide 3500 American servicemen in a town of 1500, but hey, they seemed to manage it. The base was destroyed after the war. The only remnants are the improved airfield and some building foundations.)
The Cosmos centre is a star gazing experience where we started by sitting outside and looking at the night sky, spotting satellites and looking at planets through some pretty good telescopes. All with commentary from an ex Aust Air Force pilot, mathematician and space enthusiast. Jupiter and Saturn were the evening’s feature viewing and it included a cameo appearance from the International Space Station that flew by quickly, as satellites do. Then we moved into a planetarium for zoomed in views of distant stars and galaxies and all sorts of info about our night sky and the brain seizing numbers that are the distances from us to them and in the end it’s a reminder of how insignificant we all are in the big scheme of things.
The Bilby experience was all about a program that was established locally by a couple of dedicated heroes to save this gorgeous little nocturnal marsupial that has been decimated by feral cats and foxes. The program has bred several hundred bilby’s over 15 years and the newly bred ones are released into a protected area outside of Charleville (protected by a special fence over a 29 sq km area in Currawinya Nat Park). They were almost extinct until this program started. Are you thinking about making a donation in your will to some good causes? This Bilby thing is one and the Royal Flying Doctor service is another good cause that you could consider. (Sooz: There were originally two species, but the Lesser Bilby became extinct in the 1950’s. The young woman who led our tour was quirky, but really enthusiastic. She won over our hearts almost as much as the Bilby’s themselves.)
While in Charleville, we learned of a rather nasty shift in weather whereby we were not going to be able to avoid several days of significant rain. The thought of being in a remote flood-prone town where red dust rapidly turns into gluggy bog and things easily get washed away had limited appeal so we left Charleville a day early and set sail east for Roma rather than south to Cunnamulla.
On the day, more than 4800 head of cattle were auctioned in a frenzy of unintelligible jibberish that was both fascinating and mesmerising. Amidst all of this was the constant movement of the beasts for transport to their new homes, be-it another cattle station, an abattoir or a feed lot etc. They were herded by girls on horseback who were so precise and careful with the control of both their horse and the cattle they moved. What skill. There were also hardened roustabouts who held what looked like broomsticks with white hessian bags tied to the ends that they used to slap the bums of the cattle to keep them moving.
We witnessed a calf who had been born moments earlier finally pick itself up to take its first steps in life.
We got chatting to one of the station owners who would have been in his late 70’s, was weathered and gnarled and wise yet simple and who had lost his wife a year ago and was now managing their 250,000 hectare station on his own. How he does that is beyond me.
The whole thing was an enriching experience and a glimpse of an entirely different life, and a life I would have loved to have been a part of. (Sooz: Leigh spent the entire day at the saleyards. I had to have a break for lunch and to get out of the fray for a while.)
We ended up in Roma for 5 days and managed to avoid some of the rain that other centre received, however we now faced the issue of road closures in many directions.
Tambo Mill Motel and Caravan Park QLD 5/10
Cobb & Co caravan park, Charleville QLD 4.5/10: Sooz 3/10
Big Rig tourist park, Roma 5.5/10 QLD: Sooz 6/10
Great to hear from you! I was starting to worry! I think the rainbow chicken thing needs to be copied here in the South of France! I have to see a about that! Looks like great fun and exciting challenges. Keep trucking along! Sooz, I’m going to talk to Phil about that Secret Base! Love to you both. Keep it safe. xo
Thanks for the update Sooz and Leigh. Sounds like you are having and amazing time. I wouldn’t head too far south yet as apparently we may get snow in parts of Vic today. Take care
Travel safe & thanks for the update, guys. Good to see you’re having fun on your great adventure
You’ve driven all that way to go watch coloured chooks running around in circles – half of which didn’t know which direction to run in. Lovely. Did you at least get to eat the one that came last?
Botto and Suzy!
Love following the blog, production qualities breathtaking-thank goodness for Suzy!!!
Wal x
Hey you two,
Thinking that the Black Stump restaurant chain was still operating and you would get a seating.. ehhh…The meat out there is tough…. Bos indicus .. Brahman…
Keep the adventure going. loving it. .
Angus& Mairin xx
Such an impressive blog – great for us and will be a fantastic record for you down the track – well done – your IT skills astound!! Keep enjoying yourselves.