Turn left, then turn right

After travelling north for four weeks along the A1, in its many different disguises, it felt like a momentous occasion to turn left onto the A6 on Tuesday afternoon. I travelled from Airlie Beach to Charters Towers to start my trip across to the Northern Territory. After about 3 hours, just before entering Townsville, the road branches off and heads west. It only takes about 10 km until the landscape gets a lot more arid. Charters Towers is only about 130 km inland, but it does feel like an outback town and it certainly markets itself as such. It is actually a quaint little town with a lot of historic buildings. It had its boom time in the early 20th Century when it was a major gold mining town. The remnants can still be seen today in the various old buildings, including a stock exchange.

The Stock Exchange Arcade hosts a lovely cafe

Part of the high street in Charters Towers

The weather gods must have known that I am driving across the outback, because they certainly turned on the cooler. In the middle of the night in Charters Towers I woke up shivering and had to put on an extra layer. The temperature dropped below 10 centigrades. I took off on my next stage at 6.30 in the morning and the heater came on in the car. Even at 9 o'clock in the morning it was still only 15 degrees. My next stage finished in Cloncurry, with is roughly 650 km west of Charters Towers. I got there early afternoon, so took my time to have a look around town. I found a museum in a park that showed the history of the town. It is very different to Charters Towers and lives of a mix of cattle grazing and copper mining, which in the past has helped it survive the troughs in both sectors. I found the people very friendly and they were happy to have a chat. Cloncurry is also the place where the flying doctor service started and there is a John Flynn museum documenting its history. Aside from that I found it remarkable that a relatively small town like Cloncurry has four or more pubs (I counted four on my walk around).

One of the many pubs in Cloncurry

The next morning I again headed off at 6.30 to drive the 750 km to Tennant Creek. The first town on my way was Mt. Isa, and I was glad that I stopped in Cloncurry and not in Mt. Isa, which greets the traveller with the sight of large chimney stacks pumping out black smoke from its smelters. Of course, this is a vital part of the Australian economy, and the copper from Cloncurry gets smelted here. The chimney stacks are absolutely massive and an impressive sight once you get closer to them. Once you pass Mt. Isa you can see huge open cut mines in the distance.

The road into Mt Isa

Between Mt Isa and the Northern Territory Border are only a few small towns. The last one is Camooweal, which is only a few houses and a petrol station. It is the last petrol for about 240 km and I needed to top up. The cost per litre was $2.03, compared to $1.72 in Cloncurry and $1.53 on the east coast. I got to Tennant Creek about two o'clock in the afternoon. There is not much to look at, it is mainly a town used by travellers on the Stuart Highway. I went to the local food shop to  buy some groceries for dinner and then to the bottle shop to get some beer. In the bottle shop I had to show my drivers license to prove that I was not a local, because the local population is not allowed to buy beer in the afternoon. I didn't take any pictures in Tennant Creek, there just wasn't anything in town that grabbed my fancy, and I didn't feel like driving out to look for nearby attractions. Of mention is that just before getting to Tennant Creek the A6 reaches the Stuart Highway, which runs north/south, so that's where I would have had to turn right again to get to Katherine, if I wouldn't have turned left into Tennant Creek for an overnight stay.

Turn left at Townsvile, then after about 1500 km turn right again

I headed off again at 6.30 in the morning, but of course Tennant Creek is half an hour behind Queensland, so it was a bit of a sleep in. I backtracked to the right turn that I missed last night and headed north to Katherine. The Stuart Highway is a little bit busier than the Flinders Highway (to Mt. Isa) and the Barkly Highway (Mt. Isa to Stuart Highway), but there is still only about one car every 15 minutes. It is also better maintained and you can drive closer to the 130 km/h speed limit than on the rougher Barkly. 

I did drive just under 3000 km over the last four days, so my main impression of the Outback was through the windscreen of my car. There were some distinctly different types of landscape, from bushy/scrubby to grassy to rocky, but all of them had the same broad horizon and vast spaces, it think it is best described as having "a big sky".

bushy...

scrubby

grassy/barren...

smoky...

on fire

The other big and impressive thing on my journey were the road trains. They are basically trucks with four trailers instead of just the one that you normally expect. Because the highway was two lane all the way they weren't a problem, but if I was on a single lane road I would definitely get out of the way of them early, because they don't look like they could break or swerve easily. All the dead cattle on the side of the road bear testament to the fact that road trains keep going straight, regardless of obstacles.

Passing the front...

...trailer 2 and 3...

...and finishing with trailer 4

I didn't spot too much wildlife, mainly because I avoided travelling at dawn and dusk. There was plenty of evidence of roadkill of all sizes. I had to stop a couple of times because cattle were crossing the road, once for a kangaroo and once for an Australian Bustard, which after a few seconds took off and showed me its huge 2 meter wingspan.

I am now in Katherine, where I am going to stay for a few nights. Tomorrow I am off to Katherine Gorge to do some bush walking and maybe some canoeing. Later in the week I head further west to Kununurra and Lake Argyle.