Opalton to Winton (Bladensburg NP)

Thanks to those of you who left comments or emailed us about the Ant-lions & wood borers. Mysteries solved. (Click on the previous post heading if you want to read the comments & haven’t yet).

Continuing north from Opalton toward Winton our route took us through the Bladensburg NP. Only just into the park we saw the first snake of our trip. A black headed python laying in the road. It didn’t appear to be injured, but may have been dead. Either that or it was exceptionally relaxed. I rolled a rock close to it & it didn’t move, so we left it there & carried on our way.

A short time later we saw our second snake, this very much alive & well, & obviously taking notice of us. Only the thickness of a finger & around 400mm long. No idea what sort, but wonder if it may have been a small/young Inland Taipan, or perhaps one with anorexia? 🙂 We kept our distance as Taipan’s are one of the worlds most venomous snakes & a bite more than a tad inconvenient … given our location, probably deadly! Every so often it’d raise it’s head to look at us. Then again it could have been harmless. Can anyone identify it from the following photos?

Like many of the National Parks in the outback, Bladensburg is named after the Station it once was before the government purchased it to preserve as a park. The following photos hopefully give a ’snapshot’ of how we found it. As in previous parks we took the opportunity to drive the park’s tracks, taking us through a variety of landscapes. The 4wd tracks vary, none would satisfy the hard core 4wd lovers who lust after the challenge of ‘conquering’, but having sufficient ground clearance was certainly needed in a few places, & low ratio helped us climb a couple of jump ups. 4wd was reassuring in sections of soft sand, but mainly the tracks were corrugated dirt or bumpy rock. We are finding that we enjoy seeing the country ‘close-up’ on these slow park drives, & have come to realise that the ‘attractions’ that the tracks take us to are often little more than markers along the way. As often as not it’s the wildlife we see & the ‘immersing ourselves’ in the country which create the ‘Wow factor’. That’s not to say that the waterholes, claypans, forests etc are ‘ho-hum’ ….far from it.

For my friends, family & other readers from outside of Australia, the term station is the outback Aussie equivalent to ‘farm’. Stations generally run cattle or sheep, but there the similarity with farm ends. Not only are most stations very remote, but also cover huge areas. The size of an English county would not be unusual, often much bigger. The drive around Bladensburg covered only a small section of the park & was 40kms (24 miles). Quite modest compared to many. 100km (60 miles) tracks around parks are not unusual, commonly taking 5 hours+. ‘Farming practice’ on stations like Bladensburg & most current stations is very different. The land is not ‘worked’ other than to create water storages etc. Stocking rates are very low, (measured in hectares per head not head per hectare) but in country where the inevitable question “What on earth can the livestock eat?” is posed by the ignorant like me, the immediate answer to oneself is “plenty” given the generally fine condition of the stock we see. Most of the station work revolves around ensuring water supply & mustering/shearing etc. Most of their lives the stock have minimal interaction with humans.

The old shearing shed at Bladensburg struck me as more modern in it’s design than we would have expected from what we believe to have been a 1950’s or 60’s built structure. Lots of light & very airy. Despite being just a tin shed the interior, rather than oven-like was a refreshing santuary from the heat outside. I guess it would have been different when full of sheep, men & a pounding stationary motor to power the shearers blades. Nevertheless I couldn’t help but wonder why the many shed builders across this land today have failed to appreciate such effective design.

A note on camping fees in Western Queensland National Parks. Fees are not being collected. The Rangers recognise the ‘difficulties’ imposed by the expectation that visitors will pre-book online. This was commenced around 12 months ago in W. Qld, & is totally inappropriate. In some places a ranger has verbally told us ‘not to worry about it’, & in others notices like the following have been put up for campers to read. Given that the same system was introduced in other parts of Queensland prior to W.Qld, one wonders how long it will be before the desk jockeys recognise they’ve stuffed up big time!

Winton, although a small outback town felt like a return to a metropolis. Here we had to drive on the correct side of the road , obey road signs, notice other vehicles (instead of their dust clouds) & navigate things like roundabouts! The town was very busy with us arriving at the same time as many of the revellers on their way home from the Birdsville races. The often lauded free camp just out of town at ‘Long Waterhole’ was a dust bowl, complete with a waterhole more akin to a manky puddle, & screaming kids on mini bikes. We didn’t stay. Instead we found an equally manky stretch of water in the corner of a dusty paddock, shared with a mob of cattle but no kids on mini bikes, a couple of kms further out of town at Surprise Creek. This was home for 3 days, not the most salubrious surroundings we have called home, but it’s what there was, it had an internet signal for my previous posts. Our primary reason for staying was to ‘blog’ & to restock. Restocking was significantly more expensive than any previous. You may be thinking that we didn’t rate Winton very highly, but you would be wrong. It wasn’t the best ’stay’, but it also is not our first visit to the town. We were here a few years ago & enjoyed all it had to offer, & were pleasantly struck by the ‘go-ahead’ nature of the town. It is still the same town, albeit without it’s primary ( & top notch) attraction – the Waltzing Matilda Centre which burned down about 3 years ago. They are however rebuilding & expecting to re-open next year. Winton remains a go-ahead little town, we just didn’t get them on their best day.