Capricorn Way Highlights - Gone 'troppo' along the Tropic of Capricorn

673 kilometres of highway connecting East Coast Queensland to Outback Queensland that generally follows the Tropic of Capricorn....simples !

We figured it was rude not to; what's not to love about a long straight bitumen (tarmac for UK readers) road with towns along the route that have stuff to see and do.

Rockhampton is the official start of the route but we started it from the actual coastal town of Yeppoon. Supplies were all replenished in Rockhampton resulting in an overnighter in a great free camp on the fringe of an amazing oasis of greenery and artificial waterfalls.

And then the planning; a list of possible 'must sees' which, amazingly, became absolute highlights of the route and, best of all, some complete surprises too...

Fossicking and Mines, Museums,Murals and Sculptures, it had it all.

Mining, and in particular large scale mining, is an ongoing issue and discussion point for us as we travel through Australia and I don't think our view will change anytime soon. The reliance on fossil fuels and the sheer volume and obscenity of it; not just environmentally but financially, sticks in the throat somewhat. Vast swathes of land being butchered to extract coal, in particular, which is then sold to China, Japan, Korea who (allegedly) stockpile it. There's a reason that within the Top 6 richest people in Australia, three are from mining. The richest being Gina Rheinhart who is worth absolute billions.

We also see the effect mining has on small towns; frankly, they're kidding themselves when they say it brings money in to a town. Yes it does and, yes, they put in a bit of infrastructure like roads or finance a museum. But from what we're seeing there are a lot of 'fly-in, fly-out' miners who live in purpose built villages with purpose built canteens and employ their own cleaners etc. These miners have to be 'dry' so don't even frequent the town pub.

And then they leave.....once they have what they've dug. They leave and, as a consequence, small towns die. 

Yes, this is a very simplified version of events, and I'm sure some of the communities do benefit but to what cost?

I'd like to see vast swathes of solar farms and wind farms, and movement to renewables given how flipping hot and sunny it is here in the Outback. It's slowly coming as we have seen the odd one here and there but there is such a huge opportunity for Australia to lead the world in renewable energy.

A large section of The Capricorn Way does contain BIG Mines ; particularly around Blackwater there is newly discovered stuff at Emerald. No surprise that there's a railway line along this stretch...but only for the mines, the pleasure trip stretch that operated from Rockhampton out to the coast no longer operates.

Anyway that's my grrrr grump about fat cats & mining!

However....Fossicking, well that's a different story! The 'on your hands and knees' (not my knees) with a pick and a bucket type mining. We had promised ourselves at some point to have a go at fossicking as along this stretch there are gem fields. Mainly near Emerald, Sapphire, Rubyvale.....I wonder what gems you can fossick for there...?!!

But no precious gems for us on this trip, oh no, we decided to have a go at fossicking for 'Thunder Eggs' or also known as Volcanic Birthstones.

Mt.Hay is not far along the Capricorn Way and is the site of an extinct volcano. The phenomenon of the 'eggs' is caused by bubbling lava combining with a lake. As the molten lava shells formed around gas bubbles, they then cracked allowing gases to escape. Siliconsliquids and impurities then entered the cracks and formed the mysterious designs. The finished articles can be polished on the outside or cut and then polished to reveal the beautiful colours. At Mt.Hay there is also a type of volcanic lava that is green when polished (Spherilitic Rhyolite for those geology buffs!)  We just thought they were pretty, and judging by the finished specimens in their shop fetch a pretty good price for large pieces.

The handy thing for us was the campground was on site so we could have a little fossick a stones throw away (ahem!) from the van. Armed with a bag and a fossicking tool we were given top tips by the owners, who were a lovely couple, and off we went. Don literally dumps a big pile of rocks, splits it into small sections, and away you go. It wasn't too long before we were able to spot likely specimens as they do look a lot smoother than the other rock and were egg shaped/little poops! 

Part of the deal was to select your two finest specimens and Rae cut them in half for you to reveal the pattern inside. 

A fellow Kiwi, she was more than generous and actually split quite a few for us which revealed amazing colours and shapes in a great souvenir of treasures.  Blimey, if this was the start of the highway what else did we have in store.......

Thankfully our recent fossicking foray meant we were able to identify the main items on a large lizard sculpture in Emerald! It had a number of fossicking picks throughout the sculpture. 

We pushed on from Emerald and found another great little donation stay. The donation stays are       a responsibility for campers to make a donation in lieu of clean toilets (sometimes showers too) in a small town. This was the very, very small town of Bogantungan. This once thriving town died with the closure of the railway line. It has sadly the claim of the worst railway disaster in Queensland when a passenger train derailed in the 60's due to a tree falling and dislodging the bridge pilings following a flood. The small station is still there and although closed did make for a great evening drink at sunset location....a worthy donation.

The next major town along the route is Barcaldine but not before a quick stop at two small towns to see what they have to lure the unsuspecting tourist in!

Alpha maintained it was the town of murals which, given some murals and silo's we have seen to date, was perhaps pushing the description a little. Some fading murals on corrugate undoubtedly, when they were first painted, looked impressive but had fallen to the harsh sun of the Outback. They did promote their Dip Yards in the tour guide too. A bit of a stretch as, funnily enough, we weren't that keen on looking at where they dip the cattle for ticks!

Jericho (yes really) fared a little better in the amusing the tourist stakes. It has the honour(allegedly) of possessing the smallest drive-in movie theatre in The World.  It did start to lose us a little on it's association with Joshua and the Battle of Jericho which even included a huge sculpture in an artistic representation of the biblical story. Jericho had a lovely designated camping area by the Jordan Creek (yep). For a small donation of $5 we had a riverside camping spot with fire pit. Yep, in the battle of Alpha v Jericho, a win. 

One thing we have realised the 'camping' Aussies love a good fire whatever the temperature! If you can't beat them join them so as we don't have room for wood in the van we went foraging.....gingerly! Managing to retrieve enough for a lovely small blaze as the sun set.

Next morning 'Barcy' bound (Barcaldine) and we had 2 nights in a gorgeous little campground; catching up on washing and replenishing. We liked Bar-call-din (pronunciation lesson) which felt like it had a really good community vibe happening and included some great indigenous initiatives too.

The Ridgy Didge cafe being a great example. Cheryl Thompson is the owner of the cafe and created Coolamon coffee for the cafe. Born and bred in Barcaldine, she returned having left for university and a teaching career elsewhere, to start up this venture as an inspiration and role model to other young indigenous children. It clearly is a very popular cafe with locals and visitors and the coffee was pretty good!

I loved the attention to detail particularly with the logo for the coffee.

Boomerang representing her return to country - Cheryl and her ancestors are the original inhabitants of the Desert Uplands and were part of the Inangai who lived along the nearby river.

Concentric Circles identify amongst meanings - a meeting place which is the Ridgy Didge Cafe.

The Five Circles represent the 5 essences of aboriginality that the story and taste of her coffee blend evoke.

Other community lead initiatives included the Radio Picture Theatre which first opened in 1926 and was family owned and operated until 1995. Instead of closing down the local arts council purchased it and it's now run by volunteers. We happened to be walking past as they were opening for a show (Mamma Mia) so they let us have a sneaky peek. It has the original canvas seating and huge air conditioning tubes everywhere. the guy we got chatting to said as it's essentially a tin shed it's bloody freezing in winter and an oven in the summer! They open every weekend and have all the up to the minute movies arriving...next one was Tenet.

Our highlight for Barcy though was undoubtedly the Tree of Knowledge which was absolutely stunning and born out of some decidedly suspicious antics. The actual tree, which had been a huge eucalyptus, was supposedly poisoned in 2006. It is quite an important symbol within Australian history as it is believed to be the first meeting place and formation of the Australian Labour Party movement. This was on the back of the famous Shearers Strike of 1891 when all the sheep shearers protested about conditions and treatment of the working classes.

So as to whether the tree was poisoned by some disgruntled politician or voter we'll never know, but it backfired given the huge art installation incorporating the now preserved dead tree in it's centre. Positioned on the main high street it is quite a monolith towering above all the other buildings in the street. I can only describe it as a huge wind chime as it has 3,449 pieces of wood hanging down from it's roof, which when the wind is blowing slowly collide with each other making a subtle clong (my word as it's not a clang!). 

It's quite beautiful and even more so at night when it is lit by green lighting.

An aside to this story is the people camped next to us in the campground told us later that her brother was one of the lighting designers!

Barcy is a Beauty.

At this point we made the decision to take a small diversion from the route...because we can. And we had seen that the two little towns on the diversion may provide much entertainment for us!

So off to Aramac we went, one of the oldest towns in the central west of Queensland and named after one of the first explorers Robert Ramsay Mackenzie......RRMac! Mmm seems a little tenuous and no idea why it had been called Marathon before that? Maybe because it was a long way away?

It became famous due to a cattle rustler, Harry Redford or Captain Starlight as was known (really). Clearly not blessed with intelligence, he stole a very large WHITE Bull which was VERY recognisable and therefore tracked easily.  Redford faced court and even when they produced the bull as evidence he was found not guilty!  This has now become the stuff of legend and as a result Aramac have gone WHITE Bull crazy. As well as the BIG White Bull, they have small ones outside each store...Shopabull, Postabull but we think they were missing a trick by not having one outside the Pub - Drinkabull or indeed, one outside thew Police Station - Arrestabull or Nickabull.....

But the main reason for heading in this general direction was Aramac is the start of the Lake Dunn Sculpture Trail. Some of our readers will have seen a number of the photos on Facebook but given limited internet speed I am only including a couple of our favourites on here.

The trail consists of 200kms of mainly unsealed road (68km of it was sealed). There are around 28 sculptures all made by the same woman, Milyanda Rogers. She needed a platform for her work and an ability to shift a whole lot of metal junk and hence the trail was born. It is truly a remarkable set of work, some must have taken months to make when you look at the detail.

So off we set in our off-roading 4 wheel drive......aaah not! Thankfully a) it had not rained for some time so the roads were very dry and b) we were in no rush as the corrugations (bumpy bits) meant we had to slow to around 30kph. We opted to do the two sides of the triangle, which were unsealed ,first and "get it out of the way"! Actually given we were hopping in and out of the van in order to look at the sculptures it wasn't too bad but we were very thankful to reach Lake Dunn where we were to overnight.

A little old lady in a golf buggy came to collect the money ($10). She had lived by the Lake for 60 years and has clearly seen changing water levels over that time. It was low but did have water so was quite a scenic pit stop.

The following day was much easier on the joints as we had 68km of bitumen, woohooo !

From the euphoria of the Sculptures could it get any better we said? Surely a small town like Muttaburra population 100 couldn't surpass it?

Well clearly they rose to the challenge.....helped in no small way by a local grazier who, in 1963, found the fossilised skeleton of a Dinosaur. This was the first of it's kind found in Australia back then. It was a land living plant eating dinosaur named after the town as Muttaburrasaurus Langdoni (Langdon is the surname of the grazier) and would have roamed the area over 100 million years ago.

This is celebrated in quite a state of the art exhibition centre housing a full size replica of the dinosaur. Completely incongruous to the rest of the town but a fitting tribute no less. So Muttaburra has gone dinosaur crazy and I am sure they're a bit miffed that more dinosaurs were discovered further up the road in Winton (future blog).

In a bid to out wit Winton they have a piece de resistance....they are the closest geographic town to the centre of Queensland and have erected quite a stunning monument to that effect. Take that you dinosaurs!! We stayed the night in Muttaburra in order to bag more corrugated iron dinosaurs and headed back down to the Capricorn way in order to complete in Longreach.

Longreach don't have Dinosaurs but it do have Quantas.....well the birthplace of Quantas. This is hotly disputed by Winton who appear to be bagging it too depending on which building they first had a meeting to form the Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Service.

We opted for the tourist park closest to the Quantas Museum which was large and dusty (given the drought hardly surprising). Nevertheless it was clean and had a pool...albeit we had forgotten it was the start of school holidays. We are now in avoidance protocol from germy covid kids.

It's quite fascinating how many Queenslanders are out and about in their (very obviously) new rigs and camper trailers etc. Good to see them exploring their own state but it has meant a lot of stuff is now booked up.

We opted for the cheapest experience we could find as a lot off the BIG ticket items are just that ....BIG Money! I would say that although it was the cheapest at $20 I think it was very worth it and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. Oh I better say what it was eh? A brand new experience at the Quantas museum called Luminescent which was a potted history of Quantas but all beamed onto the side of a 747. For those who've seen VIVID in Sydney, a lot like that.

It was excellent. We would've liked to have seen the Stockmans Hall of Fame however, the live shows were all cancelled due to Covid19. We felt we had read enough at the RM Williams Museum in Eidsvold to get the idea anyhoo.....

And so that brought us to the end of The Capricorn Way with its diversity and long straight sections of road. One of the things that has been appearing on the long stretches has been a road quiz. We're guessing they pick the bits where folk have nodded off and crashed as a start of the quiz. They give you a question....then a hint....then an answer all over about 10km. Clever and so I'll leave you with that.....(answer next blog).