Monday 5th July 2021
We had an overnight low of 2°C and it was only 4° at 7.30am. We had a lovely quiet night at Gum Hole camp in the Diamantina National Park until the corellas started squawking at 5ish.
We headed off on our way this morning with our first stop being the Gum Hole stockyards. We were hoping to drive the 90km Warracoota Circuit Drive but unfortunately the Road was closed at both ends. So we continued on our way to Winton through the national park. We drove through beautiful plains with the occasional mesa. (an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge or hill, which is bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and stands distinctly above a surrounding plain).
We stopped Hunters gorge campground and went for a walk down to the river where we saw a pelican floating down the river. The dried mud was quite amazing as it splits as it dries out, then cracks and as you walk on it, then turns to dust. If it rains they sau you need to run for the hills as the torrents of water fill the river and the plains become water filled. They suggest you have 2 weeks supply of food in case yogurt stuck and can’t get out as the roads become impassable.
David can’t believe how many people are at some of the most obscure camps in Australia .
We pass through the Diamantina Channels which has little tributaries everywhere running off the Diamantina River. Where there is water there is lots of trees and vegetation.
We stopped at the Rangers Station hoping to find out when the circuit drive would be open but he was nowhere to be found. The Rangers station is located at an old station which is setup as a tourist stop. We then headed to Janets leap offering a bird’s-eye view over the braided channels of the Diamantina River.
We then continued driving and came to Mayne peak in the Mayne Range where we also saw the Mayne pub bore, Mayne hotel ruins and underground Cellar.
As we drove along there were some incredible green patched which DB named the turf farm. Even though there was so much green vegetation the cattle we saw were very thin.
We drove through Brighton Downs cattle farm to the Old Cork homestead ruins which we were hoping to stay the night at as it was 3.30pm and we still had a long way to go to the Lark Quarry, unfortunately there was no room here so we continued on. We passed the New cork homestead which was very modern with a Red roof and it appeared to have mains power. We continued on to Lawrence lookout where we passed 2 water tank trucks. We still kept driving and hoped to camp about 20km N of Lark Quarry so we could head back there tomorrow morning but Little Jack campsite that was on Wikicamps appeared to be on someones property and wasn’t really a designated camping spot so we decided to drive the 80km to Winton.
We saw lots of cattle, sheep and kangaroos along the road about 20km out of Winton. When we reached Winton it was so crowded, the motel and one of the caravan parks had no vacancies and the other caravan parks looked really crowded so we headed back out to a roadside camp on Little Mistake Creek. A freebie camp by the creek on the side of the road but at least we weren’t camped on top of someone else. We watched a beautiful sunset as we made dinner and settled in for the night.
“Dinosaur Stampede National Monument at Lark Quarry Conservation Park in Australia is considered to be the site of the world’s only known record of a dinosaur stampede, with fossilised footprints are interpreted as a predator stalking and causing a stampede of around 150 two-legged dinosaurs.”