Townsville to Mackay

Halfway between Townsville and Mackay is the town of Bowen nestling prettily on the Coral Sea. Bowen was one of the first towns settled after Queensland became an independent colony in 1859 and was named for first governor Sir George Bowen.

Bowen’s fertile alluvial soil and warm, relatively dry climate makes it ideal for small market garden produce. This lookout near Queens Beach is north of the town looking west.

Cape Hillsborough is one of the hidden gems of the Mackay coastline, jutting out on a peninsula 40km north of the city.  Cook named it in his 1770 voyage for Wills Hill, Earl of Hillsborough who was secretary of state for the colonies at the time. The area was formed by volcanic activity 32 million years ago which resulted in lava seams interbedded with layers of volcanic ash. The sand remains studded in mica debris. The highest point Pinnacle Rock is a trachyte plug – the core of an extinct volcano. The isolated beaches have become internationally renowned for the kangaroos and wallabies that forage at sunrise for mangrove seed pods, seaweed and coral sand dollars (unfortunately non legal tender).

There are some great walks in the national park but I was frustrated in doing a complete loop which is only possible at low tide. This view looks south towards Mackay.

About an hour inland via a shortcut through the canefields of the town of Marian is another National Park at Eungella. I was drawn here by knowledge of the Eungella Chalet, which I’d heard had a hotel beer garden with some of the best views in Australia. Unfortunately as I carved a way through dancing fields of cane it started to rain and a glance up the mountain could only see clouds hovering above. I didn’t fancy my chances of scoring much of a view.

Despite the rain there was a clear view from the chalet beer garden in the Clarke Range down 680m into the Pioneer River valley. Opened by former PM James Scullion in 1934, it was licensed as a hotel in the 1950s, and ripped apart by cyclone Ului in March 2010, taking six months to rebuild.

Having checked into my accommodation in Mackay, I decided to do the long coastal walk. The Bluewater Trail links the city, the river and sea via a lovely walking track through marshy dunes and the Sandfly Creek environmental walkway, complete with quirky sculptures that looked like refugees from the War of the Worlds.Mackay was originally home of the Yuipera, Toolginburra and Goolburra peoples. In 1871 George Bridgman established an Aboriginal Reserve at Mackay in an attempt to stop clashes with the growing sugarcane industry. It didn’t work and the land was quickly claimed by white settlers. One settler named John Mackay quickly saw the value of a port at the entrance to the Pioneer River. The town was surveyed in 1863 – not long after Bowen. Today Mackay is the economic capital of the mineral rich Bowen Basin, which powered the Queensland economy until the Chinese need for Australian coal crashed in 2012. Mackay is trying to transform itself and could do worse than attract the tourist market to its many regional charms.

A day in Townsville

Townsville is the largest city in northern Queensland and although I’d passed through on a number of occasions, I’d never stayed overnight. The first time I was here was one Easter in the early 2000s when all accommodation was booked out (I can’t remember which year but the city was recovering from a cyclone). The next time I stayed on Magnetic Island and most recently I came driving through in the middle of the day and while I drove to the top of Castle Hill, I spent the night further up the coast. This time I was determined to walk up Castle Hill which was not too far from my motel.

Castle Hill is a stunning pink granite monolith that dominates the city and the shoreline below. There is a 2.6km road to the summit but I was determined to walk up via the goat track from the centre of town. The walk was tough but the view from the top was its own reward.

Below was the town squeezed between the rock, the river and the sea. Townsville was established as the need for a port north of the regularly flooding Burdekin River. Built on the traditional home of the Wulgurukaba people, the town was named in 1866 for merchant and entrepreneur Robert Towns.

Across Cleveland Bay is Magnetic Island, both of which were named by James Cook in his 1770 voyage up the coast of eastern Australia. Cook said the island affected the compass aboard the Endeavour (“the compass would not travis well when near it”, he claimed) but no navigator since has observed similar magnetic qualities of the island. It is magnetic to tourists who flock there by boat for its beauty and peacefulness. The walk across the top of the island is awe-inspiring too.

Once I was finished admiring the view I came back down to sea level and went for a walk along the Strand, beginning at the Breakwater Marina, a great sheltering spot for hundreds of boats.

Then it was a long walk north along the Strand and the beachfront. The cloudy and windy weather was unusual for May and it meant the beaches were deserted but the views out to Magnetic Island were still enchanting.

There was another reason no one was in the water. It’s bad enough with sharks and crocodiles waiting to kill you but November to May is marine stinger season. Stingers are box jellyfish found in Australian tropical waters which can cause potent toxic stings leading to serious illness and death. Most northern beaches have an emergency supply of vinegar nearby which kills the stinging cells. There is usually a small netted-area where you can swim free from threats of stingers.

Past the Strand is the hill which holds Kissing Point Fort. Constructed in 1889-91, it is one of the few remaining fixed coastal defences constructed in Australia in the 19th century. Kissing Point Fort is significant in the initial phase of Australia assuming responsibility for its own defence after British land forces left in 1870. The Fort was erected against perceived threats of 19th century foreign invasion but played a role in a real 20th century invasion when Japanese planes strafed Townsville in 1942. Lights flashing from the Fort disoriented the invaders enough for them to drop most of their payload in Cleveland Bay. The Fort decayed after the war until the Army and citizens carried out conservation works in 1979-80. From 1980 part of the Fort became the North Queensland Military Museum. The old Jezzine Barracks had a $40m facelift a couple of years ago.

Beyond the Fort is a clifftop boardwalk celebrating the Indigenous heritage of Kissing Point, or Garabarra. The traditional owners of Garabarra are the Wulgurukaba and the Bindal peoples, who retain an enduring ‘connection to country’ despite the impact of non-Aboriginal settlement in the area. For thousands of years Garabarra was the centre of a common food foraging area for local Aboriginal people – an area with immeasurable cultural and spiritual values, commemorated in thoughtful sculptures along the coast. The connection is still strong today and in 2012 the Wulgurukaba won native title rights to part of Magnetic Island (which was once linked to the mainland via a spit).

Mount Isa to Townsville

It’s 900km from Mount Isa to Townsville, a west-to-east stretch across northern Queensland along the Barkly and Flinders Highways. The roads are mostly long and straight (once you’ve passed the Selwyn Ranges between Isa and Cloncurry, photos of which can be found here). The photo below was taken on some lonely stretch between Julia Creek and Richmond.

Hughenden is the biggest town between Cloncurry and Charters Towers and roughly the half way mark of my journey. The rich Flinders grass in the region makes it an important pastoral centre.

Prairie is a tiny settlement 50km east of Hughenden, complete with a ghostly railway station now moved away from the track, a pub where you can tie your horse out the front and a racecourse that has an annual meet. The town gets its name from its prairie-like setting.

Half way between Hughenden and Charters Towers is the beautiful sandstone formations of White Mountains National Park. The Park is a rugged area of 108,000ha with some of the most diverse botany in Queensland. It also marks where the Great Dividing Range crosses the highway.

Charters Towers was the archetypal Australian wild west town founded on the wealth of gold and its stock exchange was so self-confident it was known as The World. There are many beautiful buildings from its 19th century heyday including the Australian Bank of Commerce built in 1891.

I was pleased to arrive in Townsville some 10 hours after leaving Mount Isa. Once settled in to my accommodation. I went in search of food and drink and stopped to check out the view of Castle Hill which dominates the town. I was determined to walk up to the top. But that was a story for another day.

Halfway between heaven and hell: the story of Kashmir

Kashmir is one of the most beautiful places on Earth and one of the most dangerous. Located in the shadows of Himalaya where three nuclear powers meet, parts of the ancient kingdom of Kashmir are claimed by all three – China, India and Pakistan. The provincial war of control between India and Pakistan erupted again this week. India has issued a new map of the region which shows all Kashmir as part of India and bans “wrong” information, including disputed international borders.

Disputes over Jammu and Kashmir are nothing new. Writing about Kashmir in 2002, Pakistani-born writer Tariq Ali describes the area as “trapped in [a] Neither-Nor predicament”. Home of the Nila Naga (the earliest Kashmiris) and ruled by Shahs, Moghuls, Afghan and Sikhs it was acquired by the British East India company and was sold profitably to corrupt local warlords. It was split between India and Pakistan in 1947 and remains an open sore for both countries. According to the Nilamata Purana, (the Nila Naga Myth of the Indigo Goddess) Kashmir is a corruption of words that mean “a land desiccated from water”. But Kashmir has been desiccated more by blood than water.

Islam arrived in Kashmir in the eighth century. The prophet’s armies that carried all before them for a hundred years but could not penetrate the great mountains’ southern slopes. It took 500 years to establish Muslim rule. It occurred fortuitously; a neighbouring Buddhist chief named Rinchana became influenced by a Sufi teacher and began to practice Islam. The Kashmir rulers’ Turkish missionary army switched sides to their new co-religionist and then took over when Rinchana died. Army leader Shah Mir established a dynasty lasting to the 20th century.

Though Shah Mir’s descendents did not entirely suppress Indian religions, they practiced forced conversions. Slowly the population embraced Islam. By the time Zain-al-Abidin was Sultan of Kashmir in the late 15th century the population ratio of Muslims to non-Muslims was 85:15. It remains roughly that today. Zain-al-Abidin ended forced conversions and rebuilt Hindu temples his father had destroyed. He visited Iran and Central Asia and brought back the arts of book-binding, wood-carving and the making of carpets and shawls. Shawl is a Persian word but the costume became the uniform of Kashmiri men.

Kashmiri fortunes declined after Zain-al-Abidin died. A succession of weak rulers hobbled by court intrigue left the kingdom ripe for conquest. In 1583 Moghul emperor Akbar dispatched his favourite general who took Kashmir without bloodshed. The Moghuls were greeted with relief by a suffering populace unhappy with weak and corrupt governments. The Kashmiri Shah struck a deal with them handing over effective power but retaining the monarchy and the symbolic right to strike coins in his own image.

Angered Kashmir nobles replaced the Shah with his son. Akbar sent a large expeditionary force to crush his rule and take direct control. The Moghuls were enchanted by the region’s beauty. Akbar’s son Jehangir wrote of Kashmir: “if on Earth there be a paradise of bliss, it is this”. The Moghul empire declined and Kashmir fell under Afghan rule in 1752. They stayed in power until Sikh hero Maharaja Ranjit Singh extended his military triumphs from the Punjab by capturing Kashmiri capital Srinagar.

Singh’s empire was secular and he abolished capital punishment. He is a rare figure revered in India and Pakistan but Kashmiri historians say his 27-year reign was disastrous. He closed the Srinagar mosques and imposed a hefty tax burden. Poverty led to mass emigration. A Kashmiri diaspora fled to Punjabi cities where they still live. Meanwhile new and stranger colonists came to claim Kashmir.

Britain followed the Dutch model and granted the East India Company semi-sovereign powers to look after imperial interests in the sub-continent. Based in Calcutta, they expanded rapidly and gained Bengal after the Battle of Plassey in 1757, generally regarded as the start of British rule in India. The Company wheedled and bribed their way through Indian rulers and rajahs. Singh’s death in 1839 plunged his kingdom into disorder. The Company increased its military strength and broke diplomatic relations with the Sikhs. In 1846, the first Anglo-Sikh war resulted in a decisive defeat for Singh’s descendents.

The resulting Treaty of Lahore gave Kashmir to the British company who immediately sold most of the land to Gulab Singh, Dogra ruler of neighbouring Jammu for 75 lakh rupees (lakh is an Indian word for a 100,000). The Dogras squeezed every rupee of tax out of Kashmir to recoup the money they gave the British. Company rule was ended by the Indian Mutiny of 1857. London did not directly interfere with Dogra rule of Kashmir and Jammu but a British Resident was the real power.

In the 1920s young Kashmiris educated abroad brought new ideas of nationalism, anti-colonialism and socialism. In 1924 Kashmir had its first strike; workers in a state-owned silk factory demanded a pay rise and the dismissal of a corrupt clerk. When union leaders were arrested, workers resisted and the Dogra Army put down the strike with British support. Sullen resistance continued through the decade. Police stirred up a hornet’s nest by stopping Friday prayers in a Jammu mosque claiming the imam was preaching sedition, triggering protests. A speaker described the Dogra as “a dynasty of blood-suckers” and was arrested. His trial attracted thousands demanding to attend proceedings. Police killed 21 people and arrested many leading Kashmiris including Sheik Abdullah.

This was the founding moment of Kashmiri nationalism. After Abdullah was released, he created a political movement. The All-Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference was founded in Srinagar in 1932. Despite the name, it was open to non-Muslims. Although the Hindus were a minority, Abdullah didn’t want to offend the Pandits, upper class Brahmins, which Britain used to administrate the province.

To demonstrate secular credentials, Abdullah invited nationalist Indian leader Nehru to Kashmir. Nehru brought an eloquent Muslim, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the man called “the Frontier Gandhi”. The three men formed a potent partnership. Abdullah promised liberation from the hated Dogra. Nehru preached struggle against the British Empire and Khan spoke of the need to throw fear to the wind. “You who live in the valley”, he said, “must learn to scale the highest peaks”.

The bond between Nehru and Abdullah proved crucial in the independence struggle. Few politicians in the 1930s believed the subcontinent would be divided along religious lines. Even the most ardent Muslim separatist would have been happy with regional autonomy in a federal state. But old certainties were shattered by World War II. The British Empire including India was suddenly at war with Germany. Nehru was furious he was not consulted in the decision. His Congress party split. Nehru and Gandhi reluctantly supported Britain while hardliner Subhas Chandra Bose argued for an alliance with Japan. The fall of Singapore in 1942 left Indians convinced the Japanese would take their country via Bengal. Congress threatened to switch sides.

A desperate Britain offered a “blank cheque” to Nehru to not desert the cause. Gandhi wondered “what is the point of a blank cheque from a bank that is already failing?” Congress launched the Quit India civil disobedience movement and Gandhi and Nehru were thrown in jail. Uneasy with Gandhi’s use of Hindu imagery, Mohammed Ali Jinnah left the Congress in the 1930s to set up the Muslim League which backed the war effort. Pakistan was his reward for war loyalty.

As the war ended in 1945, Nehru and Khan revisited Abdullah to find the Muslim-Hindu divide heating up in Kashmir. Just as in Punjab and Bengal, violence erupted between rival factions. In the North West Frontier Province, Muslim League forces defeated Khan’s anti-partition troops. Khan lived until the 1980s but spent most of his remaining days in a Pakistani prison. Khan’s defeat rocked Abdullah whose power in Kashmir grew as the British withdrew. The Dogra still held official power. In constitutional terms Kashmir was a “princely state” whose maharaja held the right to choose to confederate with India or Pakistan.

Other Muslim-ruled princely states such as Hyderabad and Junagadh chose India. But they had Hindu majority populations. Kashmir had not. Jinnah negotiated directly with the Dogra maharajah to join Pakistan. Abdullah was outraged he was not involved. The maharajah baulked and Kashmir’s status was unresolved when midnight struck on August 14, 1947 creating Pakistan and India. A line of control in Kashmir was established between the two countries. Both sides held armies commanded by British officers. Viceroy Mountbatten told Jinnah he would not tolerate a violent take-over of Kashmir.

Jinnah secretly plotted to take over the disputed province while Kashmir’s maharajah plotted with the Congress Party. Once the British found out about Pakistan’s plans they told Nehru who pressurised the maharajah to join India using the invasion as a pretext. Mountbatten ordered Indian army units to prepare to airlift Srinagar. Once Pakistan invaded, the maharajah’s regime quickly collapsed. The undisciplined Pakistani army raped, looted and pillaged assaulting Muslims and Hindus. Indian troops landed outside Srinagar and waited for reinforcements. The Pakistanis invaded the city but overlooked the airport which was occupied by the Indian Army. The exiled maharajah signed accession papers to India and demanded help to repel the invasion.

It was a stand-off dependent on which side Sheik Abdullah supported. He regarded Jinnah’s Muslim League as a reactionary organisation which would prevent social and political reforms in Kashmir. In 1947 he attended another rally with Nehru. Abdullah backed the Indian presence provided Kashmiris were allowed to determine their own future. Abdullah wanted an independent Kashmir but the 1947 wars ended that hope.

According to article 370 of the constitution, India recognised Kashmir’s “special status” but nothing more. In 1948 a realistic Abdullah backed “provisional accession” keeping Kashmir autonomous leaving India responsible for defence, foreign affairs and communications. Indian nationalists baulked at this special status. Nehru authorised a coup in 1953 to dismiss his old friend Abdullah. The following unrest made Kashmiris suspicious of Indian rule.

After release from prison, Abdullah flew to Pakistani controlled Kashmir where a large crowd cheered him. He was arrested again after meeting with Chinese Premier Zhou En Lai. China launched an assault on northern Kashmir resulting in a new administration of the region called Aksai Chin, which survives today. Encouraged by the disturbances Pakistan launched another assault on Kashmir in 1965 hoping to spark an uprising. India responded by attacking Lahore. Washington asked Moscow to put pressure on India to end the war.

Devastated by defeat in Bangladesh new Pakistani Prime Minister Ali Bhutto sued for peace with India. In 1972 he agreed to the status quo in Kashmir and got back 90,000 POWs captured after the fall of Dhaka in East Pakistan. Abdullah made peace with Delhi and was appointed Chief Minister of Kashmir by Indira Gandhi in 1977. When Bhutto was executed two years later, Pakistan’s last hope of peacefully taking Kashmir disappeared. Abdullah died in 1983, a tired and broken man resigned to Kashmir’s fate. The end of the cold war escalated the war between the two sides as the US and USSR lost interest in a Himalayan pawn.

The border and the Line of Control separating Indian and Pakistani Kashmir passes through difficult terrain. The low-level sniping between the two sides has led to a loss of human rights. A 2005 Medecins Sans Frontieres study found Kashmiri women are among the worst sufferers of sexual violence in the world. Since the violence escalated in 1989, sexual violence has been routinely perpetrated on Kashmiri women, with one in ten respondents saying they were victims of sexual abuse.

Many see independence as the way out of Kashmir’s nightmare. In 2001 former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court Justice Rajinder Sachar said restoring pre-1953 special status to Jammu and Kashmir was the only solution. Sachar called Indian and Pakistani governments hypocrites and said only political dialogue not armed conflicts could solve this complex issue. “When France and Germany which have a bitter history of conflicts can become good friends and work towards better future,” he said, “then the same is possible in case of India and Pakistan.”

Cyrus Field and the Transatlantic Cable

Cyrus Field (Photo: atlantic-cable.com)

This year marks the 150th anniversary of when Britain and America were permanently connected by the transatlantic cable and should be the occasion to remember its forgotten architect. Cyrus West Field deserves to be better remembered as a giant figure in the history of international communications. In 1844 Samuel Morse said a telegraph line would be established across the Atlantic linking Britain and the US in real time. It would be 20 years before Cyrus Field could prove him right.

Ten years before Morse’s prediction, the 15-year-old Field was starting working life as an office boy in New York’s first department store, A. T. Stewart Co. Cyrus was smart and his salary was doubled each year until he left to join a paper manufacturing company. By 1839, aged 20, he was a partner in the paper wholesaler E. Root and Company. He proved an extremely savvy paper merchant. Profits from business ventures allowed him to retire at 33 with a quarter of a million dollars. His wealth allowed him to concentrate on a sudden burning passion: laying the first telegraphic cable across the Atlantic Ocean.

In 1854, he was approached by Frederick Gisborne, developer of the cross-Newfoundland telegraph line. Gisborne was in financial strife and tried to persuade Field to invest in his company. Field was not keen but the meeting produced an epiphany. As his brother Henry Field reported after Gisborne left the meeting, “Mr Field took the globe which was standing in the library and began to turn it over. It was while studying the globe that the idea first occurred to him, that the telegraph might be carried further still, and be made to span the Atlantic Ocean.”

The globe showed Field that it might be possible to link Europe and North America via the two nearest land points: Newfoundland and the west of Ireland. It would shorten the time for messages to cross the ocean by two weeks.

Any cable on the bottom of the ocean would need good waterproofing and electrical insulation. Samuel Canning identified Gutta-percha, a resin from the Isonandra Gutta tree in Malaya, as a suitable insulating material. Field also knew the transatlantic project would require an enormous amount of capital. From his home in Gramercy Park, Manhattan, he galvanised wealthy neighbours into what he called a “castle cabinet”. His first partner was industrialist, and inventor of jello, Peter Cooper. Cooper was intrigued by the project and said it offered the possibility of “a mighty power for the good of the world”.

Field obtained other crucial backers in Gisborne, banker Moses Taylor, shipowner Marshall Roberts and his long-term ally from the paper business Chandler White. These were powerful men who saw the financial value in urgent cross-Atlantic communication. The final member of his castle cabinet was Samuel Morse, whom the US Supreme Court had just confirmed as sole patent of the electric telegraph.

On March 10, 1854, the cabinet agreed to take over Gisborne’s company. They formed a new company called the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company (N.Y.N.L.T.C., or given the difficult initials, called simply “the Company”). They raised $1.5 million in private funding for the project, an amount 2.5 percent of the total expenditure of the US government. Yet it wasn’t enough and Field had to travel many times to Britain to drum up support.

By July 1857, all 2500 nautical miles of the first transatlantic cable was manufactured and ready to load. No ship could shoulder the entire load so the British and American navies provided one each carrying half a cable. They went to the middle of the Atlantic where their cables were spliced and set off in opposite directions. The USS Niagara was a modern ship and much faster than the ancient hulk of HMS Agamemnon. But it was the Niagara that hit trouble. It had laid 400 miles of cable when a huge wave struck and snapped the cable.

Field took this defeat in his stride and tried again twice in 1858. The second voyage failed again with a snapped cable. But the third time they got lucky. Once again the Niagara and the Agamemnon faced off across the Atlantic. This time the cable held and the two ships successfully made shore. North America and Europe were linked.

This was an occasion of great, if shortlived, joy. In August 1858 Field arranged for Queen Victoria to send the first transatlantic message to President James Buchanan. The Queen’s 99 word message to Washington took almost 18 hours to transmit. Despite the slowness, New York erupted in celebrations, lauding Field, Morse, modern technology and American ingenuity in general.

Compared to two weeks, 18 hours was a vast improvement. But it was still a work in progress. Field posed for Mathew Brady, who would soon achieve his greatest success for his realistic Civil War photography. Brady added two props for his portrait of Field – a length of wire cable and a globe.

But the cable was Field’s undoing again. Messages took too long to transmit and it was getting worse. The cable finally broke after three weeks. Celebration turned to anger. The Boston Courier newspaper suggested that the project had been part of an elaborate stock fraud and the cable had never worked. Their front page screamed a conspiracy theory headline: “Was the Atlantic cable a humbug?”

When the British cable in the Red Sea failed a year later, a committee of enquiry was asked to find out why underwater cables were humbug. Field and his electrician Dr Edward Whitehouse gave evidence. Serious problems emerged from the design of the cable. The cause was twofold. The first was the hastiness of the project due to Field’s relentless monomania, a plus and a minus to the project. The second was Whitehouse’s excessive voltage to the cable. Whitehouse was trying to overcome the problem of low current which slowed down the operation.

Scottish physicist William Thomson solved that problem with his mirror galvanometer. The mirror galvanometer was a long distance receiver which could detect signals a thousand times fainter than other receivers.

But the cable project was put on hold for five years by the Civil War. A new attempt was undertaken in 1865 with much-improved material. This time just one ship was used to lay the cable, the massive SS Great Eastern designed by Brunel. Built since Field last laid the cable, it was the largest steamship in the world and completed the job in July 1866. The new connection was successful, more durable than before and many times faster. More public confidence resulted when a second cable was established shortly afterwards. The modern age had safely begun.

Field’s finest hour heralded a downfall in his fortunes. With the profits from the Atlantic Cable company, Cyrus Field invested in New York’s elevated railroad. The railroads were successful, but Field was double-crossed by business partners, Jay Gould and his friend Russell Sage, who had well earned their nicknames of “robber barons”. Field suffered the ultimate indignity when his remaining wealth was stolen by his son. Field died in 1892, almost penniless.

But his cable had profound impact. It brought London and Wall St into each other’s sphere of instantaneous communication and influence. News and information spread quickly across the world from San Francisco to Singapore. Field remains relatively unknown but his transatlantic cable was one of the major birth pangs of the global village.

A visit to Gregory Downs

This weekend was my first trip to the Gulf of Carpentaria with two events in the tiny town of Gregory demanding my attention, the Gregory Downs Jockey Club’s annual meet on Saturday and the Gregory Canoe Challenge on Sunday. Together the two events make up Gregory’s “saddle and paddle” weekend.

There’s two ways of getting there, the “short” way about 307km with 200km of dirt road, or the long way by bitumen via Cloncurry, about 450km, which was the way I took. This photo was taken on the highway to Cloncurry early Saturday morning. I had a quick job to do in Cloncurry where the Queensland Country Women’s Association were meeting.

Once finished in Cloncurry it was up north to the Gulf via the Burke Development Road which ends up in Normanton and Karumba. I’d never been up this way before. About 60km north of Cloncurry is the ghost settlement of Quamby. They still have a rodeo here but “the pub in the scrub” is derelict.

About 100km north of Cloncurry is Dismal Creek, which is not as bad as it sounds. I’ve been unable to find out how it got its name. My initial feeling was that it was named by Burke and Wills on their trek north (or perhaps south when despondency really started to kick in) but I can find no evidence to back that up. The Queensland Place Names Register was no help.

About 180km north of Cloncurry is the Four Ways junction which links Julia Creek, Cloncurry, Normanton and Burketown (via Gregory). At the Four Ways is one of the few roadhouses that makes the map of Australia, the Burke and Wills Roadhouse, a memorable name I was been familiar with as a child looking at the world atlas.

The attached licenced Bull Bar “dedicated to riding bulls, throwing bulls, catching bulls and talking bull shit” (as a wall sign says) has these two blasts from the past. But payphones are not just historic antiquities here, they are necessities with no mobile coverage north of Cloncurry.

The country becomes scrubbier as we head west on the Wills Development Road to Gregory, about 150km from Four Ways.

When John Lort Stokes came exploring in these parts in 1841, he got excited about the prospect of civilisation in what he called the Plains of Promise whose “whose pleasing appearance prompted him to foretell the spread of ‘many christian hamlets’ throughout the area.” They are still waiting for the hamlets, christian or otherwise.

Finally on to Gregory, which used to be called Gregory Downs until 2013. I don’t know about the turtles but the flowing water is the main reason to visit here. There’s not much else except a pub, general store and a racecourse. There was a school which closed down some years ago.

First stop was the annual Gregory Downs Jockey Club races. Despite the remoteness of the location there was a big crowd present, people up for the canoe races, weekenders from Mount Isa, everyone from Burketown and Doomadgee and all the surrounding stations.

The six races on the sand were enjoyed by all with many close finishes.

Everyone dressed up for the occasion and the fashions on the field gave the judges a hard time.

Some enjoyed the day more than others, but pretty much everyone had a good time at Gregory Downs.

When the races finished it was time for a quick libation at the Gregory Downs Hotel Motel.

The pub was quiet thanks to the races taking all their custom.

There was time for a quick visit to the Gregory river where the 43km marathon canoe race was due to finish on Sunday. The Gregory Canoe Classic attracts long distance paddlers from across Australia to its dangerous rapids.

The Gregory Downs sunset in the clouds was impressive. Then it was time to head back to the track to get a feed from the race club before dragging out the swag for a warm night’s sleep.

Early in the morning, I drove 43km down the Camooweal road to The Knobbies where the canoe race starts.

Near the start is Carnage Leap, the first of many rapids expected to make inroads on the field.

But most of the excellent competitors I saw handled Carnage Leap in their stride. That was the point I had to leave the Canoe Classic, worried as I was about running out of petrol in a remote area. I said goodbye to the Gregory and set off back to Mount Isa.

It was time for the long road home via the so-called short cut. This is the “main road” between Camooweal and Burketown. Not exactly a highway and about 150km of bone-jarring dirt before you get to the main road to Mount Isa. But that’s where the adventure ends.