The road from Gregory to Lawn Hill is unsealed and corrugated. This seems to be one of the reasons so many caravans are at Gregory - it's too rough for them to get through to Adels Grove. The last 10km was definitely a challenge. The grader was coming through a week after we arrived so that will make the trip a little more comfortable. No blog updates because we're out of range for everything. No phone, WiFi or TV and patchy radio coverage. On our way we passed by the turnoff to the Century Zinc Mine.
We checked into the Adels Grove Campground - into the "generators allowed" area because the tree cover close to the river will provide too much shade for us to charge our solar batteries. A beautiful oasis in the savannah country.
There are lots of walking tracks around the campground and we took advantage of them, walking under the trees and along the river. The water is crystal clear and we could see fish swimming in the river. The water contains many minerals and is a blue colour. There is a high level of calcite which can leave a coating on water tanks and kettles. Adels Grove was established as an arboretum in the early part of the 20th century and there are still some trees from that period in the Grove.
A few kms from Adels Grove is the Lawn Hill National Park. Kilometres from anywhere and it's on the National Broadband Network, so we have good phone and WiFi coverage in some parts of the Park. There's a campground here; bookings are made at Adels Grove, and it's booked out for the next 3 weeks.
We've done a day trip to the park which has plenty of well marked walks for all abilities. We did the 4.5km Wild Dog Dreaming walk through the gorge to the Lower Gorge. The rock of the gorge was brilliant in the morning sun.
Lookout Hill, about 2km from our camp is the only place in Adels Grove with Telstra reception - courtesy of the nearby Century Mine. There's a steady stream of people walking up to this area. On the way there's an area where a group of stone cairns has been built. Once there, there are panoramic views of the area.
The next day we were booked into a half day tour to the Riversleigh Mammal Fossil Site. This was one of our reasons for coming here. We had seen the Riversleigh Museum and processing laboratory at The Outback Centre in Mount Isa. This site is so rich in fossils. Every bit of limestone has fossilised bone embedded into it.
The animals which lived in this area from 5 million to 25,000 years ago include the huge diprotodon, tree climbing crocodiles, carnivorous kangaroos, and the flightless thunderbird. A fossilised turtle species thought to be extinct has been found alive and flourishing in a nearby river.
An area of amazing history and riches. These bones on the right are from the thunderbird. Also in the area is 500million year old Cambrian Era limestone which has chert (flint) nodules embedded in in.
On our way back to Adels Grove we stopped off at a lagoon, well used by cattle and abundant with birdlife. We laughed at the flocks of budgerigars performing for us.
In the afternoon we drove to an area off the Riversleigh Road to see if we could find some rock art. We made our way to the memorial of Sam and Opal Ah Bow, Chinese and Aboriginal market gardeners in the early 20th century.
We walked on from the memorial and Robert and Frank (our camping neighbour who came with us) climbed up some rocks and found a cave with some rock art. On the way back to the car we passed a bloodwood tree, so named because it sap is red. The red sap is used in many ways by Aboriginals and is "farmed" by various animals such as possums.
No comments:
Post a Comment