The inaugural 2004 Legendary Outback Expeditions (LOE) took expeditions into remote Cape York. Read all about the trip in the following article, written by Ron & Viv Moon, which appeared in 3 parts in the July; August and September issues of 4x4 Australia magazine. This is Part III - read on ....

Part I   - Through the Flinders               Part II  - Into the Desert               Part III - Onwards to the Gulf

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Gulf to Gulf - Following McKinlay

Part 3 - Onwards to the Gulf

Following the great rivers of inland Queensland is always special, but our group of adventurers had an unexpected bonus. Blackeye Creek is a small, almost insignificant upper tributary of the Cloncurry River but it was the focus of our intention both before and during our trip. Weeks before the trip had started and after hours of research we had contacted the local station owner and told him that there was a blazed tree and a monument to McKinlay on his property. To our surprise the station owner admitted to hearing about the monument but, as they had only owned the property a year, they had never seen it!

Now with a mud map in hand, as well as info from the property owner and his permission, we were bouncing down a station track, our convoy of adventurers strung out in a long line as we turned off the blacktop and in through one of the property’s boundary gates.

Of course finding the historic spot, even though the grazier had now discovered the position of the site, wasn’t going to be as straight forward as you may think. ‘We even cut a track into it’, they told us.

But, one thing I’ve found about the majority of mud maps is that while they make complete and utter sense to the person who drew it, in nearly every instance some important point is missed out, the map is wrong in places, or is just plain misleading to any other person trying to make sense of it and/or trying to correlate it with the surrounding land. Such was the case this time around.

Frustration was beginning to mount as we led our merry band on a bit of a wild goose chase. Finally after a short time and with the group pulled up so as not to disturb a large mob of cattle milling around a water point, we headed cross country on our own, bouncing along the edge of what we knew was Blackeye Creek looking for anything that looked like a monument. We knew it wasn’t big – just 70cm or so high – and with the tussocky grass reaching skyward at least that high, there was a chance that the monument would slip past un-noticed. We needn’t have worried.

There was the newly cut track straight to the monument – from the property’s close western boundary and not along the creek as the owner had indicated. The contracted grader driver had taken the initiative and cut the track from the closest point – but then had failed to tell anyone about the change of plans.

Still, we didn’t care and we set up camp on the very spot where McKinlay had camped. Then someone took notice of the date – next morning was to the very day, 142 years after the event that we had pulled up beside the very same gnarled coolibah that McKinlay had chosen and blazed.

And that morning, with a low slanting sun sending a ray of golden light in under the branches of the tree we discovered something we had all missed in the shade the evening before. Etched into the wood, at the top of the large blaze that adorns this tree and almost indiscernible but unmistakable was the faint letter, ‘M’ of ‘MK’, which was McKinlay’s characteristic mark left at many of his camps. We were ecstatic!

While we only stayed overnight, McKinlay had camped here for a few days and his wasn’t such a happy camp. One of the men and all of the sheep had gone missing, lost in the nearby ranges. With rations running low, Big John ordered one of the last four bullocks, Blackeye, to be killed for meat and hence the creek got its name. Then three days later the lost shepherd and his flock were found, although Mckinlay noted dryly in his journal that the shepherd’s hunger had reduced the flock by one!

To this point, we had been following McKinlay’s track quite closely since he had come out of the desert and started following the course of the Diamantina River. The country had improved subtly hour by hour as the gravel of the Diamantina Developmental Road had swept beneath our speeding wheels. Near Monkira station we had turned north to parallel the Diamantina River a few days before getting to our camp on Blackeye Creek.

Bordering the great waterway of the Diamantina the well-grassed plains stretch away to the horizon. In the main, only the line of trees marking the course of the multi-channelled river break the expanse of golden grass and it is no wonder that vast sprawling cattle stations such as Davenport Downs take up the rich grass land spawned by the river.

Passing through the Diamantina Lakes National Park we pushed on past Old Cork Station, its nearby waterhole one of the longest and best on the whole Diamantina. The main building here is heritage listed, but that is doing little to save it from dilapidation and it is in much poorer condition than when I first saw it back about 12 years ago.

While McKinlay had travelled a few miles more along the great river before following a tributary he called Middleton Creek westward, we turned west along little used station tracks and paralleled his route to what is now the main Winton-Boulia road.
Much of our route, in fact, through central Queensland was on tracks used to connect one vast cattle station with another and these are maintained irregularly by the local shires. If we were lucky enough to be close behind a grader the tracks were smooth and quick, but if we slipped onto a route that hadn’t seen a smoothing blade for the past year we could expect a slower, bumpier trip.

Of course, when we did pass a grader driver there was a lively repartee over the radio and we often stopped for a quick word. For these guys used to their own company and working the backroads where a half dozen vehicles a month or so were the norm, our menagerie of 19 caused much comment!

At the tiny pub of Middleton, located on the blacktop halfway between Winton and Boulia, we really were in McKinlay country as the first of the civil monuments to the explorer was in a prominent place opposite the pub – the only building of any consequence in Middleton itself.

It had been a long haul from the last fuel stop at Birdsville and the refuelling took an age as the old diesel pump whirled, whizzed and gurgled in its mammoth task. We sat in the shade of the verandah drinking coffee (it was too early for a beer – can you believe that?), eating egg and bacon sandwiches and admiring the view of the stone studded battleground across the road which doubles as the little-used footy field.

Later that day we came to Blackeye Creek and its monument and the next day saw us come into the tiny settlement of McKinlay, which straddles the main Matilda Highway between Cloncurry and Longreach.

While there is another monument to the explorer at McKinlay, the town’s bigger, more modern claim to fame is the old local pub which was made famous as the Walkabout Creek Hotel in the Crocodile Dundee movies. Such a big draw card couldn’t stay hidden down a back road so a few years ago the publican at the time shifted the building, lock, stock and barrel up to the main road where any passing traveller, thirsty or not, would have to stop. And we did!

Now the Gulf country was getting close and we hurried on. An overnight stop on West Leichhardt Station was followed by an ‘interesting’ drive along the River Road from the historic hamlet of Kajabbi and its Kalkadoon Hotel north. Few people apart from station hands use this track and for us it was an easy way of following Big John’s footprints north. But at every homestead it became a guessing game on which track to take – the most obvious track invariably going between homestead and sheds or yards while the main route was faint and often overgrown.

That evening we pulled up at Leichhardt Falls, one of the most visited sites by early explorers in the Gulf country, including McKinlay, and you can understand why. It’s a top spot to camp and we wound our way amongst the trees and set up camp on a sandy island, just a stone’s throw from the main falls.

The cascades formed by the river above the main fall are a great place – and a safe place - to cool off. But you need to be careful up here as big crocs do lurk in the waterways and swimming in long deep dark stretches of water such as a billabong is not recommended.

From there, McKinlay reached within ‘four to five miles’ of the coast near the mouth of the Albert River, 276 days since leaving Adelaide. We arrived in Burketown, near the mouth of the same river just 16 days after leaving Port Augusta. And we, like Big John, did not get to see the sea!



Warned by locals that the Wet season rains hadn’t subsided enough to let us get to the coast we decided to at least give it a go. We set out warily from the town across the last 30 or so km that separate this small community from the sea proper. A few hours later, as predicted by the locals, we gave up – in front and all around us were the still wet saltflats that guard the coast in this part of the world. Underneath that white crust lay stinking, rotting, soft, oozing mud and there was no way we could drive a vehicle safely over it.

Disappointed just a little, but resigned to the power of the elements, we turned our back on the Gulf and headed for Escott Lodge where our party of adventurers were to have their last dinner together – an extravaganza of mudcrab, oysters, prawns and barramundi in paperbark. McKinlay too had celebrated his arrival at the Gulf with the killing of the last of the sheep, but he had a lot further to go before his trials and tribulations were over. While he referred to the dash for the east coast as ‘our homeward ramble’ it was to become a battle for survival. He did it without loss of life and thereby blazed his way into the history books as one of the better, more capable explorers.

                                                    

For our part there would be no such accolades but within our party, one and all had a satisfied and fulfilling feeling that they had experienced much of what our early explorers had endured. We had done it easily but not without facing the challenge of remote country travel and all that brings – the shared enjoyable experiences that any good remote outback trip provides.

We had touched a little known part of our nation’s history, enjoyed the passing parade of different country and had successfully travelled from Gulf to Gulf. Port Augusta may have been just 16 days away but it seemed an age in experiences, deeds done and activities shared.

Travel Planner
Fuel and limited supplies are available at McKinlay and Burketown. Cloncurry has a bigger and better choice. All places can supply accommodation and camping.

Diamantina National Park, camping, ph: (07) 4657 3024, web: www.epa.qld.gov.au/projects/park

Middleton Hotel, accommodation, camping, meals and fuel as well as a cold beer, ph: (07) 4657 3980.

West Leichhardt Station, accommodation, camping, ph: (07) 4743 8947.

Kalkadoon Hotel in Kajabbi offers accommodation, meals and camping nearby as well as fuel and general supplies, ph: (07) 4742 5979.

Images courtesy of Offroad Images - Action pics from all over Australia.

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