Birdsville and Lake Eyre - Part 2

It was an early and dark start on Saturday for the trip to the lake. With Birdsville as far west as you can go in Queensland, it wasn’t until 6.45am that the first rays of light sneaked over the horizon. We were already on the road wandering across to the airport to check out the six-seater Cessna 210 we would be taking to Lake Eyre. Josh, our young pilot from Central Eagle Aviation was waiting for us and told us we had enough time to sneak across to the bakery for an early morning coffee. Then at 7.30am we were up and away. I was banished to the back seat this time as Greg sat up front for pilot talk with Josh. But with no one in the seat next to me, I had great uninterrupted views to the left and right as we flew down the Diamantina floodplain down into South Australia.

Like Roma, the Diamantina River is named for the wife of Queensland’s first Governor, Lady Diamantina Bowen (née Roma). Like the Cooper Creek, the Diamantina meanders in many channels. Also like the Cooper it feeds into Lake Eyre after joining up with the Warburton River to the west. 80km south of Birdsville lies the Goyder Lagoon, a 1300 km2 swamp on the junction with Eyre Creek.

The Lagoon is named for George Goyder, South Australian Surveyor-General from 1861-1893. Goyder became famous for his SA “Line of Rainfall” which set the limits for drought-free land considered safe for agriculture. The Lagoon that bears his name is a large ephemeral swamp but is still teeming with water after summer floods in the channel country.

The Birdsville Track is close by on the eastern side of the Diamantina floodplain. The track is 520km long from Birdsville in the north to Maree, SA in the south. Legendary outback postman Tom Kruse (who died recently aged 96) used to have corrugated iron sheets stored along the track to help him get his truck through the very soft sand dunes. At times it would take a day or more to travel 10kms. These days the track is easier and a constant stream of 4WD wind their way up and down during the winter months. The older Birdsville Inside Track in the middle of the floodplain is the original track that was used by the drovers but is now disused as it becomes impassable after rains.

More lakes appear the closer we got to Lake Eyre in the gap between the Simpson and Strzelecki Desert. Eventually the river plain becomes wider as we arrive at the mouth of Lake Eyre almost two and a half hours into the flight. The browns and greens give way to the blue but not without a fight. The watery channels take a long time to coalesce and evaporation and the shallow depth mean the lake is getting smaller by the day. There is still plenty of room for someone to emulate Donald Campbell and his Bluebird world land speed record attempt.

Eventually there is clear blue water and lots of it. We fly over the west and the south of Lake Eyre North (by far the bigger of the two Lakes Eyre) and then head east to the mouth of the Cooper Creek. That mouth remains closed for now though not for much longer. The water from the north is almost at the door of Lake Eyre but is still taking its time to fill in the smaller lakes near the entrance. It should spill over into Lake Eyre in the next few weeks giving it a fresh top-up of water.

We follow the Cooper eastwards to where it cuts the Birdsville Track in two. It has forced a diversion 10km east where a free ferry takes vehicles north and south over the creek. Then we crossed the barren Strzelecki Desert looking out to the massive Moomba gas fields to the south east. We flew over Innamincka but would return in a minute. Our first stop was back across the dingo fence in Queensland at the Burke and Wills Dig Tree.

The 1860-1861 Burke and Wills expedition to traverse Australia south to north was a fiasco. Arrogant Europeans knowing nothing about the tough country they were about to cross, they sent off with camels and a piano taking two months to get to Menindee, NSW when a stagecoach could do it in a week. At Bulloo Bulloo Waterhole on the present day cattle station of Nappa Merrie, just inside the Queensland border, they established a depot at Camp 65. Burke, Wills and King made a dash to the Gulf from here telling the others to wait three or four months if they could.

The men waited at Camp 65 for 4 months and 5 days from 16 December 1860 to 21 April. They left provisions under a tree marked “Dig” (now worn away by age) which were found by Burke, Wills and King when remarkably they arrived back later that day. Too weak to chase them, they set out for a SA property but failed and returned to the dig tree. The original party sent a scout back but found no sign Burke was there and they left again without leaving a sign of their own. Burke and Wills died horrible deaths but King was nursed back to health by local Aborigines to tell the story which has been etched in Australian folklore.

Certainly it was not hard to feel the magic of this beautiful spot and the tragedy that befell the men here – even if it was entirely their own making. After an hour or so we hopped back in the plane for the short 10 minute flight back to Innamincka for lunch. Burke died just to the east of here and a plaque marks the site. Innamincka township did not exist until 1890 and remained a tiny settlement until oil and gas was found by the South Australia Northern Territory Oil Search (Santos) in the 1960s. The welcoming pub does a roaring trade in tourist traffic and we enjoyed a great lunch there before flying back to Birdsville.

I wasn’t expecting much from the final leg of the journey but it was perhaps the most spectacular. We went through the magnificent Coongie Lakes which are a world heritage region. The Lakes system is recognised for its unique environment for desert plants and animals. Wading birds are plentiful, and the surrounding bush is full of desert bird species and is a bird watchers' dream. The smaller lakes scar the landscape as far as the eye can see and all were teeming with floodwaters. The last hour back to Birdsville passed by in the blink of an eye.

Getting back at 3pm we had to immediately get back into Greg’s plane and do the final one hour leg east to Windorah. This small town was unremarkable though the 150kw Solar Farm near the airport was impressive and the rodeo grounds were packed out for the annual campdraft and rodeo. We preferred to stay in the pub which had the delightful name (for me anyway) of the Western Star. It was back to Roma on Sunday to my own Western Star with plenty of memories and photographs of a great hidden part of Australia.

See Part 1.

Birdsville and Lake Eyre - Part 1

I got a message on Wednesday to contact a friend in Roma named Greg who has a pilot’s licence and his own plane. The message was simple “Greg wants to take you over Lake Eyre”. Greg popped into the office later that day to confirm the plan. He was taking three people out to Birdsville on Friday and onto the Lake on Saturday and there was a late cancellation. Was I interested, he asked. Of course I was. With the Lake reputedly full after the floods earlier this year, I agreed on the spot and got excited as Friday approached.

On the Friday morning we gathered at Roma Airport. Greg’s plane is a Cessna 182 four seater and the other two passengers squeezed into the back. I sat next to Greg as “co-pilot” though I what I knew about flying planes could be written on a matchbox. I could read maps however and enjoyed following the route on the charts on Greg’s ipad. Greg did allow me to steer the plane for 10 minutes or so while he consulted charts, something I did with a mixture of elation and terror.

We set off southwest towards Cunnamulla and got there after a hour and a bit’s flying. We weren’t stopping there but enjoyed the flyover view of the town and the Warrego river slowly ambling south towards the Darling. Our first stop was Thargomindah another hour to the west.

We followed the path of the Adventure Highway past Eulo and beautiful Lake Bindegolly National Park.
We stopped in Thargomindah and Greg had to rapidly deal with a vicious cross wind that almost dragged us off the runway on landing. After that excitement, there was the more mundane task of refuelling and eating a packed lunch at the deserted airport.

Then it was aboard, heading northwest to Birdsville. Greg took this circuitous route because he reckoned the Channel Country was more spectacular this way. He was right. The Cooper Creek stretched out like the Nile Delta cutting the brown landscape with a magnificent swathe of green. We passed Durham Downs station, a huge property just to the west of the creek, often cut off for months at a time when the Cooper was in full flood.

On the other side, a huge lake bore into view to the north. We diverted to take a look at Lake Yamma Yamma (formerly called Lake Mackillop). Yamma Yamma seldom sees any water but was full now, feeding off the waters of Cooper Creek while nearby claypans etched into the landscape.

We went briefly across the border into the moonscape of northern South Australia below Haddon Corner before angling back into Queensland for the descent into Birdsville. Perched precariously at the edge of the Simpson Desert, Birdsville survives on the infrequent waters of the Diamantina River, which like every other system in Queensland is flowing freely at the moment.

The town was founded in the 19th century to collect tolls from the droves of cattle moving interstate. Originally called Diamantina Crossing, it was given its current name in testament to vast amount of birds who call the place home. Many of them were perched over the runway making descent difficult and forcing Greg to keep the nose of the plane up on landing so if they did hit us, they would do less damage on the undercarriage. No such drama occurred and we got out to notice the iconic Birdsville Hotel handily placed across the road from the airport. The racecourse was further away on the other side of the river and will be full for the annual races at the start of September.

The town was quiet enough, though there were plenty of caravanners making the pilgrimage along the famous Birdsville Track into SA or into the Simpson Desert. We made the short walk to the caravan park to find the cabin we booked for the night and then to the impressive tourist office to pay for the charter over the Lake tomorrow. Greg decided he would rather be a passenger than a pilot for this leg and who could blame him.

Then it was onto the Birdsville Bakery (which in typical outback style is licensed to serve alcohol) for a coffee and a camel burger (which I was assured was genuine dromedary – though someone at the pub later reckoned it was beef). A walk around the spread-out town found the ruins of the Royal Hotel, the old hospital turned into a museum and Blue Poles gallery owned by the remarkable Wolfgang John.

John is a German who has made Birdsville his home for 18 years. His mother escaped eastern Germany ahead of the Soviet army in 1945 and he was brought up in Bremerhaven and then in southern Germany. But he found his true home in the Australian outback. The gallery is full of magnificent paintings of the desert he so clearly loves. I asked him was the gallery named for Pollock’s painting. No, he replied, the poles out on the veranda are blue.

All this playing the tourist made me thirsty and it was time to check out the pub where I rejoined my aircrew. Everyone went outside to catch the last rays of the sun disappear behind the airport before packing out the restaurant for a lovely dinner. Then it was back to the cabin for a coffee and an early night with the big Lake Eyre expedition to follow at 7.30am in the morning.

Flooding in Roma

The area of Roma I'm living in is doing a passable imitation of Venice at the moment. At around 5pm yesterday evening the normally trickling Bungil Creek peaked at 7 meters. It was enough to burst the banks and flood over the two bridges near my house. The roads around me became rivers and the gardens turned into swimming pools. So far, it is hasn’t been high enough to get into the houses but the Bureau of Meteorology is saying we are not finished with the rain.

The speed was a bit of a shock to me though the warning signs had been growing all week. We’ve had several decent falls during the week and the creek had been steadily getting higher. The cyclepath along the creek has been impassable since Monday but I still wasn’t expecting the water to get to the road level.

There was another huge downpour late on Thursday night and it was starting to wreak havoc Friday morning. I got up to go to work and had to cross the creek to get to Roma’s town centre. The waters had burst the banks and the bridge was under water. That was what the sign said ‘road under water’ not ‘road closed’. Nevertheless I wasn’t keen to drive across in my 2WD car until I saw someone else do it safely. I cagily followed the car across the bridge without incident.

When I got to the office, it was clear the town had suffered storm water drain damage during the night. The waters had gone down but they left the pavements caked with mud and very slippery. In the height of the downpour, some of the drains started to overflow and spilled water onto the lower side of the street. It was the second time this week that had happened. To be on the safe side I parked on the higher side in case it should happen again.

In the office the news soon came through from the SES they were expecting the floods to be bigger than 1997’s version. I knew immediately it was going to be a big day. A few weeks ago I’d done a retrospective in the paper about Roma floods of the past and the 1997 pics were impressive. As were the ones from the several flood events of the 1980s. Much of inland Australia is on a floodplain and Roma is no different. It has been flooded often enough that it caused a 19th century move of the town centre away from the creek.

I figured I would be taking lots of photos for the 2010 flood event so decided I needed to be dressed appropriately and drove home for a change of clothes. The bridge over the creek was now closed but there was a back way via a second higher bridge. I got past a couple of places where the road was “under water” but it was just safe enough to get through. When I got home, the waters were approaching the gate and my landlady was moving everything upstairs that needed to be kept dry. I grabbed a t-shirt, pair of shorts and thongs (footwear, just in case anyone is wondering) and headed back to town the way I came.

On Bungil St just south of where I lived the creek had also flooded the road. The problem here was that there was no other passable road in for those who lived on this street east of the creek. There was one other way in on foot via the Big Rig and I decided to check that out. The Big Rig celebrates Roma’s oil heritage and there is a kiddie train that goes over a footbridge on the creek. The waters had not risen that high and I crossed the footbridge to get to the east side of Bungil Road. I also had to cross the waterlogged sports grounds but it was easy enough barefoot.

The locals I met all looked happy and seemingly unfazed by the rising waters that were starting to get into their gardens. One owner admitted he did not have flood insurance but the atmosphere was almost party-like as they gathered around to admire the novelty of the rising waters. Only once was my own equanimity challenged when some kid casually asked me (perhaps hoping for a reaction) “had I seen a snake?” I said I hadn’t and he told me he’d only seen a baby one. I guess the waters would be flushing them out a bit.

There was an SES boat on hand to ferry people back to the “mainland” west of the creek but that was only being used by a few people to get to the shops or pick up kids from school. No-one was evacuating here just yet. One guy in his 80s was glued to his radio and swore loudly at the council who “couldn’t effin well tell him when the waters would peak”.

In this little field trip I had a camera but left the note pad in the car. I waded back to the footbridge (now extremely wary for snakes) and decided to go back to the office to download the photos. But before that I decided to check out the creek crossing on the main Brisbane road into town. Here the waters were flowing rapidly but just below the bridge so traffic wasn’t affected. While taking photos from the bridge, another 80 year old man joined me. I'd met him before and he sat down on the barrier next to me and chatted about floods past.

He had a cane which he twirled around to add dramatic effect to the stories he told. However I was worried because the shoulder on the bridge was narrow and I thought he would wave it into oncoming traffic which he had his back turned to. This was particularly dangerous whenever the occasional massive road train would shudder past us at 70kph barely a metre away. When I warned him of the impending danger, he pointed his cane imperiously at the dividing line on the ground and said “they can’t come past that”. True, but I was more worried about his cane in the air than on the ground.

Anyway, neither of us came to harm and I went back to the office. The other journalist had been out taking photos too and we compared notes before I headed back to the Creek. Again I went over the footbridge at the Big Rig and waded across the waterlogged grounds. Immediately I noticed the road had been become more flooded in the hour or so I was away and nearly every garden was inundated. Still the mood was optimistic and no house was yet flooded as far as I could tell. One owner on a side street pointed to the brackish water outside his house and said that meant it had peaked. But a few minutes later the SES guys with the boat told me the waters were still rising.

As the rain returned, I went back to the western side of the creek for some more photos. The Emergency guys there told me the creek was now up to 7m and still rising. As if the sight of roads resembling rivers wasn’t surreal enough, a rainbow rose above the scene. It was another picture to add to a great collection today. Finally around 6pm I decided to get back home on foot. I went over the creek bridge that was not overflowing but by now all the access roads to my house were closed. I had to walk back barefoot on the centre of the road as the water rose to waist level in parts.
At my house the waters had crossed the gate and waterlogged the entire garden. The water level had risen to the first of three steps into the house. Although the waters receded again overnight, they are still predicting rain for the next three days and it won’t take much for the inundation to rise further. One thing I’ve learned over the last few days is to not be surprised what water can do.

Byron and beyond: A northern NSW photoessay

An hour and a bit's drive south of Brisbane lies the Laser lighthouse. The lighthouse is on the border between Queensland and NSW on the tip of Point Danger in Tweed Heads, NSW just a stone's throw up the hill from Coolangatta, Qld. The Captain Cook Memorial lighthouse was the first of its kind commissioned in those go-ahead development days of 1971. But the laser technology was unsuccessful and it returned to using more conventional mirrors four years later.
















This is the mouth of the Tweed river just south of the lighthouse. The Tweed is not quite on the border but in most people's mind is the definitive line where Cockroaches end and Canetoading begins. The river begins out of the massive caldera of Mt Warning which blew its enormous stack 23 million years ago.













Another 80km or so south is Byron Bay. The population is supposedly 5,600 but the tourist traffic makes it seem a lot busier than that. A long-time Aboriginal settlement, Captain Cook gave it its decidedly English name in 1770 when he found safe anchorage at what he called Cape Byron. This Byron was John Byron a fellow English sailor who had circumnavigated the world. He was the grandfather of the more famous poet Lord Byron.  















 Today Byron is a compulsory stop on the backpacker route north from Sydney. Most people come for the beachlife and the renowned surf. 
















Byron's most prominent feature is the white lighthouse built in 1901 at the most easternly point on the Australian mainland.

















Captain Cook also named Julian Rocks in a later voyage in 1776. He named the two main peaks for his nephew Juan and niece Julia. They are the remnants of an ancient volcanic eruption more than 20 million years ago. They were established as a marine reserve in 1982 after 10 years of lobbying. The Rocks are one of Australia's top dive spots and a marine reserve providing shelter and food for more than 500 tropical and temperate fish species.

















 This precariously placed fisherman is hoping some of Julian Rocks marine life has strayed close to the mainland.

















Cape Byron Lighthouse was built in 1901 (year of Australian federation) out of prefabricated concrete blocks in the style of New South Wales colonial architect James Barnet, by Barnet's successor, Charles Harding. The 8-ton optical lens was made by the French company, Societe des Establishment, Henry Lepante, Paris and contains 760 pieces of highly polished prismatic glass. The light is Australia's most powerful.

















 The beautiful Tallow beach lies due south of Cape Byron facing eastwards into the endless Pacific.

















This is the view looking back northwards to Cape Byron from a mostly deserted Tallow Beach.

















About 20kms further south is Lennox Head. This is the view to the township and Seven Mile Beach from Pat Morton lookout south of town.

















This is the view south of Pat Morton looking towards Skennars Head.

















This is Lennox Headland from the town of Lennox Head. It was formed from the same eruption (or one of them) 20 million years ago that carved out Mt Warning.

















Enjoying the view of the Richmond River as it empties into the ocean at Ballina (just south of Lennox).

















Town Hall, Ballina, Seat of Ballina Shire council. I used to think that Ballina (with the stress on Bal'-lina) was named after the County Mayo town of Ballina (with the stress on Ballin-ah') but apparently it is an Aboriginal word meaning "place of many oysters" and the Irish settlers in the area were happy with the dual meaning.




















A view of Mt Warning itself from the Murwillumbah-Nerang back road. Because of its height and proximity to Byron, Mt Warning gets the first light on mainland Australia. Cook named this too in 1770 as a "remarkable sharp-peaked mountain lying inland" that alerted him to the dangerous reefs near Fingal Head.
















Lamington National Park on the Queensland-NSW border
















The border post on the lightly-used Murwillumbah-Nerang back road.

Harry Corones: Charleville visionary

There are several grand buildings lining Charleville’s Wills Street linking the railway station with the centre of town. But the most elegant building of them all is Charleville’s most famous pub, the 80 year old Hotel Corones. The hotel was completed in 1929 after five years of construction. The man who built it was the remarkable Greek immigrant Harry Corones.

Haralambos Corones was born in the village of Frylingianika, on the island of Kythera on 17 September 1883 to Panayiotis Coroneos, a fisherman, and his wife Stamatia. After he completed his military service in 1906 the family decided that given the lack of opportunity on the island that Harry would have to emigrate. His application to go to America was rejected for medical reasons so he decided to go to Australia as his mother had relatives in Brisbane.

Harry arrived in Sydney and got a job at an oyster saloon where he worked long hours and improved his English. He wanted to start a business on his own and decided on Charleville in remote south-west Queensland. There he found an empty cafe, owned by a Greek named Theo Comino, was for sale. In 1909 Harry Corones bought the cafe with a loan of £120 and set off for Charleville which would be his home for the rest of his life.

Charleville was a remote, hot, dry and dusty but thriving cattle country town with saw mills, a meatworks and a few other small factories. It was an important rail terminal, and a stopping point for bullock trains and camel caravans, as well as for the many drovers who were moving stock. His new cafe on Alfred Street needed much work, but Harry succeeded by offering good service, good food and warm hospitality.

The following year he bought a bigger cafe and met Paddy Cryan, a travelling brewery salesman from Brisbane. Paddy astutely recognised in Harry the qualities of a good hotel owner. He suggested that Harry should move into the hotel business and take on the lease of the vacant Hotel Charleville. Cryan assured him the brewery would finance the deal and train him in the business.. On 7 October 1912 Harry signed the lease on the hotel for five years at a rent of £ 6 per week. In June that year Harry also became a naturalised Australian citizen.

In 1914 he married and was forced to rebuild the hotel after it was destroyed by fire. The new hotel was bigger and more luxurious than its predecessor. However there were still some rough outback ways to deal with. Boundary rode their horses into the bar, and at times there would be almost as many horses there as people. Harry was forced to change the doors to make them too narrow for a horse and its rider to pass through.

Harry expanded his business interests to open a cafe and Charleville’s first cinema with an innovative generator and electric lighting. The Excelsior cinema at the rear of the Hotel showcased silent movies and vaudeville acts from Sydney and Brisbane.

By now Harry was not only a successful businessman but also a respected member of the community. He served on the board of the Charleville Hospital and was a member of the original committee of the Ambulance Centre and the Fire Brigade Board. He also became interested in Australia’s fledgling aviation industry as a way of ending Charleville’s remoteness.

When Sir Hudson Fysh and others foresight decided to form an airline, which they would name Qantas (Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services), several of their meetings were held in the Charleville Hotel. Harry suggested they gave the Greek names Perseus, Pegasus, Atalanta, Hermes and Heppomenes to five of their first seven aircraft. When the company was launched in 1920 Corones was one of the original shareholders. Qantas’ first scheduled service was from Charleville to Cloncurry on 2 November 1922, and he sent picnic hampers out to the planes. For many years afterwards, Qantas international flights would stop in Charleville.

(Corones pictured left with commissioner WH Ryan.) With his lease on the Hotel Charleville due to expire in 1924, he began to make plans to build his own luxury hotel. He paid £50,000 to buy the ramshackle Norman Hotel, which stood a block south of the Hotel Charleville on the corner of Wills and Galatea Streets. He brought in architect William Hodgen to demolish the old building and put in its place the new Hotel Corones.

In 1929, after five years of planning and construction, the new hotel contained a lounge and writing room, a dining-room for a hundred and fifty people, a private and a public bar, a barber’s shop and a magnificent ballroom capable of seating three hundred and twenty people at a banquet. Upstairs were ornate bathrooms, 40 rooms and a private lounge. It was easily "the best equipped and most up-to-date hotel outside the metropolis".

This luxurious hotel immediately gained a widespread reputation for elegance, luxury and fine service. One of the earliest guests was the aviator Amy Johnson on her epic flight from Britain to Australia in 1930. She filled her hotel bath with twenty-four magnums of champagne which all the other guests later wanted to drink in her honour. Other early distinguished guests included Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, the Wright brothers, Nancy Bird and English singer Gracie Fields. Fields caused a sensation when, in Beatles Let it Be-style, she stood at the open windows and sang the song “Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye” to a large crowd outside.

In World War II business boomed in Charleville with the establishment of an American Air Force Base in the new Charleville Hospital. Harry welcomed the troops and treated them with his usual exuberance and hospitality, holding dances in the hotel every night. One night a crowd in one of the rooms had become so rowdy that an American Air Force officer, driven to distraction by the noise, fired his revolver down the corridor to shut them up. It was the Americans who first began to call Harry “Poppa” and his wife Eftyhia “Nana”. From this time on they were both were known affectionately to all by these names.

Harry’s crowning glory was an MBE he received in 1965. In his later years, he lost his hearing and a large part of his eyesight. He died in March 1972 aged 88, still resident in the hotel that bore his name. A procession of townspeople accompanied his coffin to the local cemetery where he was buried. His wife died two years later. The Hotel Corones still stands as a memorial to the pair but eventually was sold by the Corones family. The building became dilapidated but was painstakingly restored after the disastrous floods of 1990 and was placed on the Heritage List in 1997. There are now daily tours through the Hotel Corones celebrating the grand vision of “the uncrowned king of the West”.

Charleville on the Rocks

Wednesday 5:30pm The Railway Hotel, Charleville. I’m enjoying a quiet drink at Railway Hotel after a day of describing Charleville to itself. This pub near my motel is also known as “The Rocks” but is not living up to its name. Its hardly rocking with three other patrons stretched quietly along the bar. Not much choice by way of beer either. Its either ‘light’ or ‘heavy’ and it's XXXX all the way. But I like this humble pub nonetheless as I like this humble town as a whole.

The Rocks is situated at the edge of town in front of the imposing railway station and offers visitors an immediate chance to quench their thirst after the long trip west. The sign outside the pub tells me it also marks a road boundary between the Warrego Highway pointing the way east to Morven (and then on all the way to Brisbane) and the Mitchell Highway going south to Bourke in NSW. Bourke was the jumping off point for the first white visitors to this area.

The man for whom the road is named, Major Thomas Mitchell (who also bequeathed his moniker to a cockatoo and a town along the road to Brisbane), came up this way from Buree in NSW in 1845 as he sought a passage north to the Gulf of Carpentaria. With his deputy Edmund Kennedy and a mostly convict crew, Mitchell found a river he named the Victoria which he hoped would empty into the sea towards the north-west. Two years later Kennedy launched his own expedition and armed with the local of local natives, he renamed the river Barcoo. He followed the Barcoo north only to find its source not its emptying point.

In 1858 A.C. Gregory came by these parts while on a vain search for the lost explorer Ludwig Leichhardt. After another four years it was William Landsborough’s turn as he too came in search of missing adventurers: Burke and Wills. Landsborough left his mark on a tree about 20km out of Charleville on the junction of the Ward and Warrego rivers. Like Gregory, he was unsuccessful in his search but his investigations did encourage stockholders to move in the rich grasslands. Sydney man Edward Flood founded Gowrie Station which became a crucial point on the stock route from western Queensland to NSW.

Some 2,600 acres was set aside near Gowrie for a settlement in 1865. The first citizen of the new town was Polish-born builder Luis Janetsky who went to Roma in 1859 and came out further west to build a hotel in 1868. That same year, Queensland surveyor W.A. Tully arrived to baptise the new township. Tully was an Irishman, a native of north County Cork. He named the new town for his birthplace: Charleville Tully also gave names to the new streets that were springing up. Galatea Street was named for the ship that took him to Australia. Alfred Street was named for Queen Victoria’s second son and the streets of Burke, Wills, Eyre, King and Sturt took their names for those who died exploring this harsh brown land.

With the arrival of Cobb and Co and then the railhead, Charleville’s future was assured and the town grew rapidly. It was a strategic point for the export of vast quantities of wool and beef. In 1890 Cobb and Co moved their factory here from the coast in order to solve the problem of carriages splitting in the dry outback. The idea was to season timber stocks in the hot interior for durability and the experiment worked. Cobb and Co remained a fixture in town until 1920 when the car and the plane took over. Qantas’s maiden flight was a mail service from Charleville to Cloncurry in 1922. A Greek immigrant named Harry “Poppa” Corones supplied the first in-flight meals. Corones would yet leave a more permanent mark on Charleville but I’ll leave that story to be the subject of another article.

Driving to Charleville

I set off on the long road out west on Sunday morning along the Warrego Highway. Just outside Brisbane a sign told me it was 3,409kms to Darwin. I wasn’t quite going that far, just a mere 760km to Charleville in central Queensland for a two week stint at the Western Times.



The road was long, flat and empty under big brooding skies












and looming clouds that mercifully kept their threatening rain to themselves













Arriving in Dalby, I think or was it Miles? The small towns were starting to become alike in my treacherous memory.










A one horse town in the wheat belt near Roma (must see if I can remember the name on the way home)



















iconic country windmills


















late afternoon sun made it difficult driving west
























Just past Mitchell around 4.30pm and into the home straight...178km to go!






















Mungallala Hotel (between Mitchell and Morven)…tempting but didn’t stop























Monday morning rush hour. Wills Street, Charleville