Feb 2: The Outback. Menindee Lakes & Kinchega NP
This morning Irving of Tri-State Safaris picked us up, and
as we were the only couple on the tour, we received a personalized experience. After we drove about 75 minutes we stopped
alongside the tracks of the Indian Pacific Railway, the only railroad across
Australia. It is single track except for siding across the continent.
Next we reached the Lakes, formed when Australia’s longest
river, the Darling floods, which it does every few years, and last did so in
each of 2010, 2011, and 2012. The flood
plains are enormous and it is hard to believe the extent of flooding that does
occur.
The Darling starts in Queensland and makes a long, slow, sluggish
journey with a very shallow grade.
Monsoons in tropical Queensland cause flooding in the Darling 4 to 5 months later. Yes, everything about
Australia is a superlative, and this is one of them. And last month there
were heavy rains in Queensland, and so
the Darling will flood in June!!!!
At Copi Lake we saw the large Australian pelicans and many
squawking "red-tailed black cockatoos". This being a civilized outback, our guide
then prepared morning tea and served it with scrumptious fruit cake (not the
kind your grandma made at Christmas….this one was delicious).
Next we visited a man in his forties named Gil, and his
girlfriend. They live in the Outback and
rescue, manage and raise injured animals: camels, kangaroos, wallabies, emus,
parrots, wedge tailed hawks, goats and sheep.
In a comfortable but primitive environment they are doing amazing rescue
work.
Some of the kangaroos are joeys rescued by passerbys from
the pouches of mothers killed by cars and then brought here. They place the joeys I makeshift pouches ,
bottle feed them, and give them pacifiers (“dummies”). We petted the kangaroos,
and Linda and I both agreed it was by far the softest fur we had EVER
felt. It has very short nap but is very
very soft.
The most interesting animal we saw there was not a formal
resident, but an interloper: a highly poisonous brown snake. The snake was seen in the bushes just outside
their wide open front door. When asked
why the snake isn’t removed, Gil said “Well, we always had poisonous snakes
around. We would remove one and another one would move in. Finally we got tired of removing them so we
let this one stay, He has kept the other
poisonous snakes away and does a good job managing the mice problem.” So there you have it: a bit of seemingly
illogical but in fact quite logical outback thinking.
We then drove on “tracks”, the dirt roads of the outback,
along the winding Darling. We stopped
for lunch near where Burke and Wills had camped in 1860 during their
exploratory treks through the center of Australia. The lunch consisted of excellent
sandwiches and local seedless table grapes.
We then entered Kinchega National Park and visited one of
the large sheep shearing stations in historical Australia.
http://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/Kinchega-National-Park/Kinchega-Woolshed/historic-site
http://www.thehomesteadgallery.com.au
More than 1 million head of sheep were raised and sheared
here at a time, and the station operated from the 1880’s to the 1960’s. Until the 1920’s, the wool (6 lbs. per sheep
per shearing), was loaded onto paddle wheeler steamers and sent down the
Darling to the Murray River and then to sea to be processed elsewhere in
Australia or abroad.
Irving’s wife is a local artist and upon return we visited
her studio. She is quite talented and
many of her flowers reminded us of Georgia O’Keefe.
http://www.thehomesteadgallery.com.au
No comments:
Post a Comment