Monday 21st August
Today we left the caravans behind and decided to drive up to Coongie Lakes. These are part of a vast river and lake system in an area that includes southwest QLD, northeast SA and southeast NT, called ‘channel country’. It is generally pretty dry but when they have good rains in QLD about six weeks later the water makes it way into ‘channel country’ and ultimately to Lake Eyre, which is the remnant (together with other salt lakes) of the inland sea that many of the early explorers were looking for. More of this later (groan@!) When this water comes down it floods vast areas of low lying land, washes out tracks and bridges.
As a result of recent rain in QLD there is still quite a lot of water in the creeks, rivers and lakes and Coongie is one of the largest. Unfortunately the track to get there is very corrugated as it has never been graded, the trip of 103 ks takes a long time. However, it is well worth it, just to see this amount of water in the desert is amazing, plus all the birds that fly in whenever there is water, is a sight worth travelling for.
We made this our lunch stop, had a quick drive round a small part of the lake and then had to set out for home because we did not want to be driving in the dark.
These are some of the corrugations on the track. 
By the time we got back to our campsite we had had enough corrugations for one day and it was late enough to go straight to wine, nibbles and satellite spotting, no cloud tonight so we did pretty well, into double figures any way.
Tuesday22nd August
Following on from yesterday’s comments about explorers, today we went off to find the ‘Dig Tree’ probably the most famous tree in Australia. I’ll provide a link to the story of Bourke, Wills and King and of their expedition but in short the three had managed to reach the north coast of Australia from Adelaide, a phenomenal achievement in itself and were on their journey back, by this time they were running out of food and equipment, perversely water was not a serious problem. They were way behind schedule and a search party was sent to find them. The search party waited for several weeks at in the vicinity of the ‘Dig Tree’ but finally had to give up waiting and headed out. On the evening of the same day Bourke, Wills and King made it into the camp but it was too late Bourke was dying, Wills died shortly after. King went and lived with the aboriginals for a while and survived. Why the ‘Dig’ tree,well, Brouhe, the leader of the search party, buried a camel box full of provisions, with the instructions for where to dig, carved into a tree. There is confusion over what message was actually carved into the tree and, in fact, the ‘blazed’ (carved) tree that was found by the early settlers was actually from a later expedition. Below is a picture of one of of the marked trees, it reads B LXV, meaning Bourke’s Camp No 65. Bourke’s grave is further downstream in a beautiful spot under a coolibah tree, on the banks of the Cooper Creek. Both Burke’s and Will’s bodies were taken to Melbourne for a memorial service several months after.
We decided to have dinner at the hotel, a very large, new restaurant – an attractive addition to the old pub. The food was good but more remarkable was the wine list, which included two vintages of Penfold’s Grange, a 2005 at $600 a bottle and a 2008 at $840 a bottle! Innamincka has a population of 150 but obviously gets some very affluent visitors, who fly in to do the things we have been doing.
Wednesday 23rd August
We set out down the Strzelecki Track, another stock route to the railhead at Maree. We had been told that it was in quite good condition and in fact it wasn’t too bad. On the way we passed through the oil and gas fields of the Moomba basin.
A little further on an interesting construction comprising the dried bones several different animals, plus a few trappings of human clothing, men’s briefs and a red bra!. We speculated on the origin of the ‘artwork’ and someone suggested that the folk out here had very little else to occupy them!
After turning left at Merty Merty Station, the road got considerably worse again and we decided to stop for lunch, in the lee of a convenient red dune.
For the rest of the day we were up and down as the road crossed dune after dune after ………………. In addition, the corrugations got worse, every so often there would be a stretch where we could get up to 50-60 but just as you felt comfortable it was back to the corrugations again. Eventually we rolled into Cameron Corner, this is where QLD, SA and NSW meet. The ‘Corner Store’ is where you pay your camping fees, $10 a night for a level parking space of red dirt and the use of the toilets. $5 goes to the flying doctor (RFDS) and they have quaint ritual of sticking the note to the ceiling. A piece of blue tack is attached to the note and the note is then wrapped round a 50c piece. You have to face the bar and throw the combination up at the ceiling, where the blue tack sticks, the note unfolds and the coin returns to earth!
It’s dark by the time I have changed a wheel due to a valve leak so time for satellite spotting plus the usual!
Thursday 24th August.
This is a desolate place, the wind chill factor is probably about –3oC and as it is early morning the sun is not really conducive to photography.
This pane is parked across the road, we wonder if it tried to land on the road, Oops!
Then we set off for Tibooburra.
The road from the corner was quite good to start with but quickly deteriorated into some of the worst corrugations we have encountered on the trip so far, very slow going down to 10-15 kph for much of the time. There were no camping spots along the way, so we flogged on to Tibooburra, getting breathalysed about 10 ks out of town! The policeman wanted to know if we had seen a Pajero towing a camper trailer as he was supposed to be down the Strezlecki Track and his friends were becoming concerned about him.
We had been to Tibooburra about 23 years ago and apart for a couple of new buildings nothing much has changed.
Alloveroz 