Birdsville to Bedourie to Winton (and our favourite Artesian spring so far)

Our next major planned destination was an area of Queensland known as Dinosaur Country, and to get there we had a bit of driving to do and, you know us, a few things to see along the way. None of the places in this post are destinations in and of themselves, but all are interesting places to stop and have a look.

First up, just north of Birdsville are these unique trees called Waddi trees. There are only three stands of Waddis in Australia, and the species is thought to herald from the last ice age. The wood doesn’t burn well in fire, and is so hard that it can even withstand most axe blades and hand saws(!) These particular trees we saw just outside Birdsville are ranging from 500 to 1000 years old.

As a sidenote, while at the Waddi trees we ran into two friendly gentlemen, who were having a tasty outback lunch of tuna and ketchup (tomato sauce here in Oz) on crackers. You definitely have to get creative with groceries out here sometimes!

Next up were some ruins from a homestead that used to belong to Sidney Kidman called ‘Cacoory’. Sidney Kidman is an Australian legend – he was a landowner and pastoralist who worked his way up from nothing to eventually owning between 85,000 and 107,000 square miles (depending on who you ask), assets of over a million dollars, and owning about 3% of all of Australia. His genius move was to buy up properties in both the North and the South, because he noticed that water from the North moved South throughout the year, and he could graze cattle year round by moving them from North to South and back again. He was the first person to notice this and capitalise upon it. He also just seemed like a genuinely decent bloke, my favourite story about him is that he guaranteed the jobs of the men working for him who had to go away and fight in WWI, and he also provided aid for any widows of his employees who didn’t return from the war.

We often see ruins like this one, all over the place in the Outback (and sometimes entire villages of them, like Farina), and they all have an interesting story or two, and maybe even a couple of skeletons in the closet to discover.

Along the road it’s also fascinating how much the landscape changes within the span of a couple hours or even less, from stony desert to gray sand, yellow sand, rich red sand, plants growing in some areas but not others, solitary trees here and there and clumps of trees in other areas, and when there’s a waterhole nearby or a flooded creek, amazing green lush plant life all clustered around it. Some would use the word “desolate” to describe the Outback, but Nick and I find it so interesting and entertaining as it rolls by.

We’d now made it to Bedourie and it was time for a brief stopover and of course a visit to the local pub, the Royal Hotel, a mud hut built in 1886 out of adobe bricks, and which hasn’t changed its appearance at all except to replace the original thatched roof with iron. She’s still serving cold beverages (“coldies”) to weary dusty travellers today.

Also on offer to us weary and dusty travellers in Bedourie is something really incredible – or at least we thought so – for a refundable deposit of $20 you get a key to their take on an Artesian spring – remember the last one we visited in Muloorina that was a bit green and just looked like a pond in the middle of the desert? Well, Bedourie has done theirs up with a liiiiittle more flash:

That’s a lap pool AND a hot tub, both filled with and naturally heated by the hot Artesian spring water. All paid for by the local council, for both locals and tourists alike. Pretty amazing if you ask us – thanks Bedourie!!

After a refreshing dip and relaxing hot tub, we set off north again towards Boulia, where they were about to hold the annual camel races, the “Melbourne Cup of the Outback” (for non-Aussies, the entire country shuts down for the Melbourne Cup horse race – and it’s even a public holiday in Melbourne itself – these camel races aren’t quite the same scale).

We weren’t planning to stay for the camel races, but as we rolled into town, we quickly discovered that about FIVE THOUSAND CARAVANS were, and the local campgrounds were all jammed with caravans packed in like sardines. We quickly decided that with about an hour of daylight, we’d skip Boulia and move on, heading east, as far as we could get before the sun set (it can be dangerous to drive after dark in rural Australia, mainly because of the increased chance of hitting kangaroos or roaming cattle).

This was a wise decision…the free roadside campground/rest area we found was much more peaceful than being crammed into caravan city in Boulia. These rest areas are often provided by local councils or state governments in order to encourage drivers to stop and take a break or camp for the night.

I mentioned the changing desert landscape, well now we were really starting to see it shift as we drove closer and closer to the coast (although we’re still hundreds of kilometres away from the ocean, mind you) – in just this one day we drove through an area of mesas or jump-ups as the Aussies call them, then grassland, and finally even saw CLOUDS – clouds are a very welcome sight as clouds mean humidity which means no more freezing cold nights – yahoo!

Finally, we arrived in Winton, right in the heart of Dinosaur Country, and stopped to enjoy a nice lunch at the pub, soaking in the warmth and humidity and excited for the next phase of our trip to begin!

MVP: local councils and state tourism agencies are seriously THE BEST. Free campgrounds and rest areas, information centres with tons of advice and even free self-guided driving and walking tours, free pools like at Bedourie…pretty awesome.

So, Where Exactly Is This?
Here’s a screenshot of this leg of the journey from WikiCamps! The red is what we’ve already covered, and the green is what was featured in the post you just read. You can also follow us live at this link – our satellite device pings our shared map frequently.