Way Out West

Well we’re finally back after our 9 day exploration around the NSW/Queensland border area which proved to be quite a trip with more than 3,000km of road and track covered.

We’ve had enough steak for little while now (almost every lunch and dinner, and in the case of some locals a bit of breakfast too!), but have also been ‘youthified’ by bathing in a mud spring in the middle of the outback (and knocking back a bit of locally brewed date wine)! You can apparently ‘jumpstart a jumbo jet’ with the date wine, but we didn’t feel too bad on it.. We were unfortunately not passing through at the right time to see the ‘World Lizard Racing Championships’ advertised in one of the outback villages we went through, but enjoyed the friendly country and small town feel of the outback settlements. Top prize for imaginative name has to go to the village called ‘The Risk’, which coincidentally has a railway crossing called “Grieve Crossing” … difficult not to laugh.

We stayed on Kilcowera cattle ranch ‘neighbouring’ the national park, and aside from the surprise that we had to drive 100km to get to the house (outback farms in Australia are BIG…) we enjoyed the place, not least the hot showers that came directly from an artesian bore!

We did not encounter any drop bears, but were fortunate to encounter emus, kangaroos, wallaroos, snakes, goannas and lots of birdlife. (For those not in the know, ‘drop bears’ are a mortal danger in the region – perfectly camouflaged arboreal bears which have heavily padded posteriors and hunt by dropping out of the highest branches of the tree, concussing their prey with said posterior before feasting lavishly on their brains.)

We organised both the Border Ranges area and Currawinya trip through Araucaria Ecotours – a nice family run ecotourism operator near Brisbane – we’d recommend them if you’re in the area.

Early morning in the Border Ranges area.

Mountain forest in the early morning in the Border Ranges

Looking out from the side of Kooralbyn valley.

The granites in Currawinya National Park

No winding roads round here...but they are long. Currawinya NP.

Evening approaches in the red dust world of Currawinya.

Waterhole in Currawinya National Park.

Relics of the agricultural past abound in the Currawinya area.

A bright starry evening in the Border Ranges.

Without light pollution the Milky Way is stunning in the Outback.

Next stop Fraser Island. We hope you all had a good easter break and stay tuned – we’ll try and put up sme nature pictures from this trip in coming days.