Footloose - Going to Extremes (August 2007)

Return to main Footloose Page

We’re often looking for a reason for our trips in and around Australia. Some of us are obsessed with fishing, others want to hunt, go diving or surfing while others just want to get away from it all.

Other travellers, yours truly amongst them, take on a historic angle as an excuse for a trip and follow up on the routes of the early explorers and drovers. You can pick any of the well known explorers or some of the lesser known pioneers as an excuse to travel a certain route and you are sure to find an interesting way to get from one place to another. If you are lucky enough to be a fourth or fifth generation Aussie maybe one of your fore fathers or mothers travelled in this country when blacktop didn’t circle the continent or cut it in half. Following their travels is sure to add another dimension to your very own journeys.

My great grand father travelled from Adelaide up the OTL line to Alice Springs and Darwin in the early 1870s and then out to the ruins of the Port Victoria settlement on Cobourg Peninsula. To follow up on those travels has, for a long time, been a goal I’ve yet to accomplish, but it is something I will do!

Many years ago we ran a small yarn on a couple of guys who went around Australia, ‘Going to Extremes’. And I’ve often thought that was a great excuse to travel Australia, although their seven day trial in a Defender would be one I’d rather repeat in a lot more time in a more comfortable vehicle.

Now here is the idea. The first points to go onto the wall planning chart are the eastern most and western most points of the continent – Cape Bryon in the east and Steep Point in the west, respectively.

Cockle Creek and the end of the road in Tasmania

Then you add in the northern most point – Cape York, while having a bit of a think about the southern most point. You’ve really got to include Tassie in all this, so a trip that takes in Cockle Creek – the southern most road access point in Australia has to be on the agenda. If you want to include Wilson’s Prom, the southern most point of the mainland you’ll need to take a long walk to the lighthouse (or con the national parks ranger into a lift) that marks this spectacular place.

Once you have those places you can add a few more.

The highest road accessible point in Australia, on the blacktop anyway, is at Mt Hotham in Victoria while the crest of Mt Pinnabar in the far north-east of the state and overlooking the Murray River at Tom Groggin could just well pip it for being higher. For the lowest road accessible point, there is no doubt – the access track to Lake Eyre in South Australia.

The place that has recorded the lowest temperature in Australia is Charlotte Pass in NSW, when in 1994 the temperature dropped to minus 23°C. At the other end of the scale the Australian record for the hottest is 53.1°C (127.6°F) recorded at Cloncurry, Qld, in January 1889.

More famous than the Cloncurry record is the Marble Bar (WA) record where the maximum temperatures recorded equaled or exceeded 37.8°C (100°F) on 161 consecutive days. Now that is hot and happened between the 30th October 1923 and the 7th April 1924 and still remains a word heat record.
  
The most consistently wet place in Australia is Waratah in Tassie with an average of 314 'rainy days' per year, while the wettest place is Bellenden Kerr (QLD), near Tully, which received 11,251mm in 1979. An impressive 960mm of this rain fell in just 24 hours in early January of that year. As can be expected the wettest town in Oz is Tully, with an average rainfall of ‘just’ 4204mm.

At the dry end of the scale is Mulka Bore, just west of Lake Eyre in SA, which averages just 100mm (4 inches) of rain a year.

The Australian wind record goes to Mardie, a cattle station in WA, where winds gusted to 259 km/h (162 mph) during Cyclone Trixie in February 1975.

So there’s an excuse for your next trip around Australia - Go to Extremes!

Return to main Footloose Page