Whistle Stop – Heading North West to the Kimberley

Queensland ‘s inland country towns on the major road route north west are putting on a big effort with their smart main streets featuring heritage buildings and lots of local attractions and museums. The pride of the smaller towns is evident in spite of the hard times faced in many rural communities.

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The opportunities of tourism, (now locals tourism due to Covid) have really been embraced.  There are sizable numbers of visitors passing through these places during the cooler months, especially grey nomads. 

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Along with motels, hotels and caravan parks, some centres even offer free sites for independent travellers. They then make every effort to attract and entertain visitors and encourage patrons to dine and provide some welcome expenditure in the towns. 

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Once in the outback (past the black stump at Blackall), the colourful vast plains country around Winton was especially striking. By Cloncurry, the efforts regarding civic pride were a bit more piecemeal with piped music in the main street but the main park being dug up by big machines. Nothing remained of Mary Kathleen – a former mining town which had been auctioned off in its entirety. The geography became more hilly approaching Mt Isa a city of working folks in high vis. There were hundreds of visitors staying in vans and caravans at a dam near to Mt Isa showing the amount of people travelling and holidaying at the moment. The towns dried up after that – Camoweal is tiny. 

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At the Northern Territory border, there were signs but no checking of Covid registration or quarantine which featured on the Western Australian border. The road deteriorated a little but the speed limit increased to 130km and the distance to the Stuart Highway took 6 ½ hours (the Barkly Highway) of unremarkable landscape and that all important right turn to the north. 

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After a night at Banka Banka on the Stuart Highway – a comfy roadside caravan camping setup that also catered to workers on a nearby gas project, we turned off soon after onto the dirt, on the Buchanan Highway. The road surface wasn’t too bad and we only passed two road trains in the 300km or so of travel. For the first, following earlier advice, we pulled over and the wind direction left us shrouded in a huge dust cloud and we were unable to see for quite a time (felt like a few minutes) after the trailers had passed. The second time the wind was to the side and much less blinding. No wonder you come to a halt when they pass on a dirt road and give them the full width of the road, notwithstanding all the potential for windscreen damage.

We also had our car’s first creek traverse at the delightfully named Dashwood Crossing. This was situated just before Victoria River Downs station – the major cattle property of the area. It was a major corporate place owned by Hewtesbury (I think) with 6 helicopters visible at the front. 

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We finally arrived at Jasper Gorge – our night time stop – and got a taste of the impressive red landscape of the north-west. The sunset of the gorge was magnificent though our first crocodile warning sign, way inland from any sea or ocean we knew about wasn’t so welcome. 

We were done with all day drives as we’d got close to the Western Australia border. Yay

More time to visit museums and attractions en-route would have been nice, but sadly wasn’t feasible given our distant destinations – another time given they’re a ‘little’ closer to home.