Another kinda long day through sparsely populated country, with just a break or two.
After yesterday's tiring day, we got on the road late--10:00--and drove west. About half an hour out of Mitchell, we spotted a turnoff for "Ooline Park", to find an out-of-the-way set of picnic tables and a bunch of numbered posts along a hillside trail. Nothing else. I was interested in finding the wily ooline tree, a rainforest remnant tree known to be growing in those semi-arid parts. No luck, though I did finally a good picture of a 5m tall prickly pear cactus. They grow big here! Can't imagine what it was like when they took over much of inland Queensland for those few years in the 1920's before they imported a caterpillar as bio-control.
Still, I was surprised to still be seeing woodlands, with rolling grasslands here and there. I keep wondering 'where is the Outback', but we just keep passing more and more stations and little towns and dirt roads and sheep and strange looking cattle. At the small town of Morvern, we headed south 11km to Tregole National Park, a smallish national park that has a large stand of these ooline trees. I'm sure it did, and we walked down the botanic trail--but each plant was labeled with a number, and there were no brochures to tell which were which. Grrr. There were a good thirty species. I did recognize some--the poplar-leaved eucalypt, the silver ironbark, and the bottle trees... but others are a mystery. I did see a curious thing--an orchid growing high in a eucalypt. I thought this was amazing, considering it gets to 35C every day in the summer and even in the mid-20's Celsius in winter.
Anyway, we left, and kept driving. We were still interested in doing the Salvador Rosa section of Carnarvon Park, but are worried about getting bogged in this notorious 'blacksoil' we've been warned about, especially with the rain yesterday. So instead of stopping at Tambo, we decided to head on to Longreach, which has a few interesting tourist bits like the Qantas Founder's Museum and the Stockmen's Hall of Fame.
The drive was long, but not quite boring. Somewhere before Tambo the prickly pear cactus disappeared and the plains opened up--there wasn't the up-and-down of the country around Roma or Mitchell. We also had a weird wildlife sighting--three broglas, a type of crane. One of the brogla had been hit by a road train, and was flapping about in the road, while its two mates looked on. It was kinda sad.
We took a back highway via Isisford to Longreach... I drove those last few hours, arriving at Longreach just after sundown, and was quite jittery. A lot of wildlife had come along the grassy verges of the road to feed, and I often had to stop to let the kangaroos bound off or sometimes emus or cattle or sheep. Today was the first day where we've seen lots of wildlife--in particular emus and kangaroos. I've found that what I've been calling 'eastern gray' kangaroos are really 'euro' kangaroos. We noticed that by looking at how they hop. Eastern grays hop upright, kinda stiffly. Euros bend over. We've only really started noticing that today.
Anyway, after dodging wildlife, we pulled into bustling Longreach, got a fabulous room, had a good carvery dinner at the motel restaurant, doinked on the computer, and fell asleep. Tomorrow is a half day of sightseeing, then down towards Blackall and Tambo. Probably Blackall, it looked more cozy.
WOW!! Kangaroos bounding around! Sounds like enormous fun. Can't believe that there are some plants somewhere that you can't identify (yet)! XO JMP