Out on the Plains

We will get to the subject of the Carol of the Birds by John Wheeler - apparently written in the 1950s - a bit later, but we were definitely on the plains today.

After leaving Emerald we headed North for 100km to Clermont.  As their sign suggests ...

 .. this is a mining town.  In fact just on the way out is the entrance to the Blair Athol mine, sold yesterday for $1 (and a liability of $m80 for rehabilitation!)

As we started a walk around the town we found a shrine to St Mary McKillop.  I don't think she actually came to the town, but it was where her order was re-established in Queensland after being kicked out of the State by a grumpy Bishop.

 This was adjacent to the Hood Lagoon, a very attractive park area.

 A modern version of Smiley and his mate were fishing for turtles.  (Obfuscation to defeat killjoys.)

They had caught 2 and just put them in a pond to watch them swim around before being released back into the lagoon.They were very persoanable kids who responded to Tammie being 15 with "Holy crap!"

Adjacent to the lagoon is a series of war memorials including one to Billy Sing, an Australian sniper at (inter alia) Gallipolli.  He had at least 150 victims.

As we headed North I noticed some big birds flying around and standing by a dam.  When we stopped they turned out to be Brolgas, a few of which danced for us (as the carol suggests they should when on the plains). My initial count was 394 but then found another~100 on the far side of the dam and a further ~200 in the sorghum field on the other side of the road

 This is the country we drove through: I was quite impressed that there was only one roadhouse in 376kms!  Most stations were 25kms or more off the road.

Towards the end of the drive (only about 100km to go) we started to see many small termite mounds in the paddocks (as well as many large Brahman and - probably - Droughtmaster cattle.

 We got to Charters Towers and have found the campground into which we were booked.  Pretty good with much tropical vegetation.

• Bird of the Day: Brolga wins both the individual and flock categories.  Red-winged Parrot was a contender for the individual gong!
• Vegetation of the day:  Leucina in the paddocks.  This is a bush planted so that cattle can browse it.  See below.  
• Memorable moment: Smiley and mate with the tortoise! 
• Comment of the day:On several occasions on the trip I have seen what looks like currant bushes planted in the paddocks.  I went to the Elders branch in Clermont to find out what it was.  The two very nice women there said it was Leucina.  I asked "how do you spell that?" which got a puzzled look and the answer "Just shut the cattle out."  No, no.  What letters are in the name?" Much laughter and spelling happened
• Pie of the day:  No offerings today
• Troppo moment of the day.  The bogan kids next to us at Emerald who began the day throwing a football at the birds in a tree and then tried to scratch their names into the tree!  Had they used a knife rather than a twig they would have got a blast.

Back to Index page