Day 139 - Black Cockatoos

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Charters Towers to Truck Stop, 70km North of Charters Towers!

The Gregory Developmental Road might not be the most direct route to Cairns, but this Sunday it proves to be both peaceful and surprisingly beautiful.  We suspect the school holiday traffic is all on the coast, so it's just us and the occasional caravan or road train out here.  The road tracks NW out of Charters Towers, heading, well, to a couple of road houses, a lot of cattle stations and a few out of the way National Parks.

The road is often closed by flooding, as it is crossed by multiple creeks and rivers.  We were shocked to ride past the 12m high post marking the 1946 flood level of the Burdekin River.  If we were here a month ago, this whole area was underwater.  Now we just get to appreciate all the green growth juxtaposed against the red rocks.  The colours of this place are gorgeous, and constantly change with the light.  I wish I knew the names of the trees, shrubs and grasses I am admiring.  There is this grass, that in my head I call 'strawberries and cream' as the flowering seed heads are just those colours, huge swaths grow along the roadsides, the pink and white ripple in the breeze.  

I'm not the only one appreciating the after-effects of the flooding.  The birds are all out as the plants produce nectar and seeds.  Today we are graced with galleries of black cockatoos, their calls somehow more pleasant than that of their white cousins, we usually hear them first, then spot them.  We have this fantastic kilometre as we coast downhill and a group flies along above us, calling out and flashing their red tails.  I am reminded of John Williamson's song 'Hang my hat in Queensland' where he says "sprinkle my ashes with a yellow tailed cocky".

Another milestone!

The scenery around us evolves as we cross rivers and small ranges.  The area was once, 2.4 million years ago, the scene of a large lava flow, and sculptural collections of dark basalt pop out of the earth everywhere you look.  Accompanied by red earth anthills, thousands of them, Kerstin  thinks they look like garden gnomes.

Proud pedaller


Our resting place for the evening, the truck stop, is mainly chosen because it has a picnic table.  Don't underestimate the ease that a simple table and bench bring to your life!  A comfortable chair is a luxury I dream about.  Seriously, I can live without the toilet, even running water, but a comfy chair, sigh.  But this decision almost ends in disaster...  As the whole area around the picnic tables is infested with calthrope, which you may know a five corner jack or maybe goatshead.  They are a hard spiney seed that will go through just about anything, including bike tyres and inflatable camping mats.  Luckily, the crunching underfoot, lead me to check the soles of my shoes, before we had wheeled the bikes off the concrete pad.  We then spent quite a bit of time removing the spines from our shoes, and double checking the tyres.  Crisis averted!




Location: Greenvale QLD 4816, Australia

Comments

  1. FrancieJune 28, 2022 at 2:25 PM

    Beware the Calthrope! About four - five days to Cairns? Safe riding and take rest stops

    ReplyDelete

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