Birdsville to Innamincka

Friday 18th August

On our way to Birdsville today, we passed the ruins of the Carcony Homestead built in 1877 and eventually abandoned in 1904 by the Kidman family, the environment being unsuitable for running stock.

This is a lonely, windy place.

  

Close by is Oasis Bore that was drilled in 1954 to provide water for the animals on the stock routes to Maree.   The bore is 800 feet deep and the water at the surface is 85^oC, it flows into a pond where the temperature is around 30^oC.

        

Birdsville is an iconic town on several different stock routes from cattle stations in the north to the railhead at Maree in South Australia.   This place is a mecca for outback travellers, it is a very long way from anywhere and is situated in the north east corner of the Simpson Desert.     The Simpson is a special place which consists of hundreds of parallel sand dunes that are oriented north north west / south south west by the winds.   Crossing the Simpson involves driving over these many sand dunes, not somewhere where we could take the Bushtracker!     We had lunch at the pub, the walls are lined with photographs of the history of the place and is fascinating.   After refuelling and doing some shopping (including getting the tee shirt!) all at the roadhouse,we go to the  tourist information for maps etc and then look for somewhere to camp for the night, there is plenty of free camping just out of town.

   Sign outside the pub  

Saturday 19th August

We spent an hour or so this morning  pottering around Birdsville, mainly having coffee at the bakery and taking photograph (note, the bakery is licensed!).   It is difficult to imagine the town having 6,000 people here over a weekend  in a couple of week’s time for the annual horseraces.    To demonstrate the problem of providing for peoples needs we notice on the side of the road out of town that there are water standpipes in the bush about every 150m, obviously this area is used to accommodate all the visitors who camp in tents, campervans, trailers or caravans.   We’re glad we are on our way, the place is already beginning to fill up.  

 

A quick look at Birdsville’s town water supply, which is another bore, this one is 1200 metres deep and the water is 100^oC when it reaches the surface, the steam is used to produce electricity and the water is cooled over a metal cone then pumped up to storage tanks.

      The town sign reflects the opening up of the Birdsville Track stock route  

After 30 mins we reach a grader, the driver tells us that they will get the job finished at Birdsville, for the races, we assume that they do this each year.    This a real bonus for us as the track is good for the next 100 ks which gives us an opportunity to get some ks behind us much more comfortably.    Lunch is taken at a rest stop which has a toilet, whoever replaced the toilet door had a sense of humour!

    Shortly after lunch we have to leave this road and turn right onto the Cordillo Downs Road, which we are expecting to be much worse.     In fact it turns out to be quite reasonable, there is little or no traffic but we stop to talk to a guy in a small Renault, who tells us the road after the South Australia border is much better.   He is complaining about this bit of road but is planning to go to Broom via Alice, we feel obliged to inform him that this piece of road is a highway compared to where he is planning to go.

Our next excitement is crossing into South Australia

   

Crossing the border into South Australia brings a change in the road conditions, not necessarily for the better.

The Cadelga ruins are another example of a plan which failed, it is sad to think of all the effort the people put into establishing this sheep station only to discover that the rainfall was totally unreliable. 

      

The landscape opens up again after the border and it is magnificent, we are now in the Sturt Stony Desert and the road comprises largely of loose stones. Long sections have been graded and some of it is very comfortable but there are a lot of dry creek beds and the lead into and exit from these is usually very rough.

     

To give you a rough idea, as the crow flies, we are currently approximately 800ks east of Alice, 650 north of Broken Hill and 600 west of Bourke, the roads are dirt in all directions.

We have a target campsite tonight but think we may have missed it, a discussion ensues and we decide to carry on a bit further, another 1k and there it is ………..it’s been a long day and as we are going further and further south it is getting colder and colder!   Long trousers again soon, Tibooburra which we are due to visit soon was –1^oC last night!

Sunday 20th August

The next 150ks into Innamincka are through some awesome landscapes. We’re on the borders of the Simpson Desert and the Sturt Stony Desert so we haves  some of the Simpson characteristic red sand dunes on one side and the flat stony surface of the Sturt on the other.

  

Our next stop is the Cordillo Downs Station.   The sheep shearing shed is reputed to be the biggest in Australia.   It is no longer used as the station changed from sheep to cattle several decades ago but the building is impressive, made from local limestone with a curved corrugated iron roof, a sensible method of construction for these parts as it is virtually self-supporting and doesn’t require lots of structure.

             We have a discussion and believe that we have seen a bigger one than this, built in wood, somewhere near Lake Munga.

Innamincka is a very small township, which has a fairly large passing population, there is a large area (several hundred acres of bush) where camping is allowed and there are a lot of people here at the moment.   It was quite late in the day when we arrived so were very quickly into the wine and nibbles but satellite spotting is difficult tonight because of the cloud cover.    We actually had a few spots of rain during the night – we really don’t want any of that out here in the red dirt .