And then it rained some more. No more than a few mil, but it felt like a dagger through my hopes of some sort of escape anytime soon. It was now day three of my incarceration. Getting to solid ground was turning my Tradie boots into snow shoes. I realised with a festering sense of dread, that this four day drying projection did not include me.
And then, out of nowhere, this King Gee guy and his wife, turn up. His name was Tony as in “What’s your name?†No, I didn’t run over to him crying like a $2 street whore. We had a conversation about his epic drive across from Wilpena Pound after the deluge and he noticed my predicament (gesticulating wildly may have played a minor part). He said “No worries, I’ve got a winch. I’ll have you out in no-time.†It was if he had thrust the winning Lotto ticket into the palm of my hand. Sure enough, after five minutes of prep, we inched our way to solid ground. And then, he was gone (Who was that masked man?).
I sat there in the Jeep for about 10 seconds and then, in a visceral reaction, scarpered up to the ridge like a goanna up a tree. Once on solid ground, I jeered and abused my tormentor from a safe distance and for the first time in several days, slept well.
Of course, 42mil has consequences on these black soil plains. My plans to take that shortcut from Innamincka to Betoota up the Condillo Downs Road were now history. Only a 500klm backtrack and detour would have me in Birdsville….and I hate backtracking. A case of Hobson’s Choice, but I think my recent experience of being marooned forced me to go black top, and not chance another stranding. It was a long day. The upside was I took some photos I should have taken on the way in.
Out here, runoff either pools for days or weeks, or it runs quickly down the slightest incline to turn sandy creek beds into fast flowing streams. Neither option is good for adventurers. You can sit around in one spot for weeks after a perfect storm. The run to Innamkincka takes you through a small part of the burgeoning gas industry. Arrows point to unseen gas wells and a polite reminder that it’s private property. I spied one gas centre on the run back. It stood out like the Emerald City on a shimmering plain, or a location from a Mad Max movie (take your pick).
At the end of that day, found myself at Eromanga. This is dinosaur territory and there’s a lot of it. Much of inland Queensland was an inland sea and, in combination with the tectonic movement and the preservation qualities of the black soil, keeps throwing up fossils to the surface. As with a lot of towns so far, they make RV’ers welcome.
They have one major attraction and that’s ‘Cooper’, well some of him, anyway. Two clicks south of town near the airport is his home, The Ergomanga Natural Sciences Museum. Couldn’t resist a tour. While the displays and video were great, the real action was in the Preparation Shed, where volunteers with nothing more than dentist drills and tools, free eons of dirt and rock, millimetre by millimetre, to expose the fossil to daylight. One dinosaur femur can take two weeks to ‘un-stitch.’ The patience of Job and laser like focus are the only job requirements.
I left town just after 11am with my sights set on Wyndora, the last town on the run to Birdsville. The landscape was green and after recent rains, plenty of water off to the sides. It’s not like WA. There are plenty of trees and edging towards Channel Country, concrete causeways, sometimes hundreds of metres long start bobbing up.
Back to single lane roads again, but the verges now more benign and oncoming traffic is almost non-existent. Eventually, late afternoon, made the little outpost Windorah, and settled in for the night. The next day would be the push to Birdsville, but unknowns to me, the otherwise flat and featureless plains held a secret that was to become a highlight of my four years on the road.
