OUTBACK QUEENSLAND: A Brief History of the Last 95 Million Years

 We have escaped from Carnarvon Gorge and are now driving toward the Gold Coast – a return to the “big smoke”. But, I must now take you back a week or so to our quick, but surprisingly interesting, look at Outback Queensland life – now and in ages past. Our travels took us from Mt Isa to Winton, Cloncurry, Longreach and Barcaldine. 

 Let’s start our story 95 million years ago, and go from there. I hope my nephews Nico and Lucas are reading this, because we’re going to talk about dinosaurs! About 100k south of Winton is Lark Quarry, which is the site of the only known remnants of a dinosaur stampede. One fine day 95million years ago, some Skartopus Australis (grass eating dinosaurs about the size of a chicken) came down to the waterhole to drink. They were joined by a number of Wintonopus Latomorum (meat eating dinosaurs the size of an emu). Everyone was quietly enjoying the day, having a good drink and a spot of grass or small lizard in the mud at the edge of the water. Meanwhile, in the background came lumbering past a Tyranosaurpus (a huge sucker, closely related to the famed T-Rex). He spots the herds down by the water and thinks “LUNCH”. His pace increases, as he reaches the mud the alarm goes up and the stampede is on. Not long after flooding and sediment cover up the site and the footprints of hundreds of dinosaurs are locked into the mud until they are uncovered by a station owner, dug up by paeliantologists and become the inspiration for the stampede scene in Stephen Spielberg’s Jurassic Park.

Moving forward 75 million years or so, we also visited the Riversleigh museum where many of the fossils found at Riversleigh, about 250k northwest of Mt Isa are displayed. The dinosaurs are gone, Gondwana has separated from the rest of the world and some weird and wonderful marsupials are developing – like the giant meat-eating kargaroo, mega-wombats and emus, marsupial lions and, of course, the cleaver-headed crocodile – just as deadly as our current species but even uglier. The Riversleigh site is extremely important to paleontologists. Something in the order of 50% of the known ancestral species in Australia has been discovered at this site and the digging continues. We met a paleontologist at the museum and his entire focus, for the last 28 years, has been studying the snake species dug up at Riversleigh. He spends hours and hours and hours uncovering snake vertebrae from solid rock and then painstakingly trying to piece them together. As careers go this is a bit too narrow for me, but it seemed to suit the man in question.

We skip forward another 20 million years – conveniently missing the entire period of aboriginal domination in Australia – to the last 2 centuries and the coming of the Europeans. Enter the cattlemen and sheep barons seeking wealth on the rich grasslands of central Queensland. Famous names such as Sydney Kidman and Patsy Durack made their millions in this part of the world – and it quickly became home to sheep shearers, stockmen and frontiersmen (and women, although they were fewer and further between). Much of modern-day Australia’s idea of itself seems to stem from these parts.

Take for example, Barcaldine, which we drove through on the way to Longreach. This was the site of the Great Shearers Strike in 1891, which – unbeknownst to me until 2 days ago – was to be the start of the current Australian Labour Party. The shearers held their strike meeting under the shade of an old gum tree that became known as the “Tree of Knowledge”. Unfortunately this tree died, and what you can see today is a rather shriveled looking clone – could this be the root of Julia’s current problems?

Or, consider the Waltzing Mathilda museum in Winton (where Banjo Patterson first performed his famous ballad). Not surprisingly this is the only museum in the world dedicated to a single song – which gives you some idea of the significance of this humble tune to the Australian psyche. Some enormous proportion of the population believes even now that Waltzing Mathilda should be our national anthem. But, let’s consider what this song is about: A hobo sits by a waterhole making tea when he sees a nice fat sheep, which he proceeds to steal, stuffing it into his knapsack. Suddenly the sheep’s owner, accompanied by the police, shows up and challenges the hobo. Rather than go to prison for theft the hobo drowns himself in the waterhole. What do you suppose the popularity of this song says about Australians? Dennis thinks that it speaks of the Australian love of freedom – they would rather die than be shackled or imprisoned. Of course it could also say something about the basic criminal nature of Australians, or perhaps their inbred aversion to authority figures. But personally, I think it simply says that most Australians don’t really understand what the song’s about!

Consider also the entrepreneurialism that sprouted from this area. Of course there were many who made their fortunes on the land – but it was not only the pastoralists that had the vision and fortitude to build great things. Qantas Airlines had its start here with the first flight being from Longreach to Winton in 1921 and the first board meeting held in the pub at Winton. Qantas was started by two ex-servicemen who saw the need for air service to open up the outback and to provide services to the existing pastoralists. From recognizing a need, to handling short hop outback flights and government mail contracts, Qantas grew to become our national carrier (and one of the last remaining profitable airlines in the world).

But the best entrepreneurial story by far is that of the Royal Flying Doctors Service, which was started in Cloncurry thanks entirely to the vision of Father John Flynn. A Presbyterian missionary, John Flynn recognized that people in remote parts of the outback were dying simply because they did not have fast enough access to medical help. Like many a good entrepreneur he had the vision, but not much else. He had no money, no plane had ever been built that was suitable to transport critically ill patients, no radio system was available that could affordably be installed and powered in remote communities, no way existed to safely administer medicines without a doctor at the scene. By sheer force of will and personality; John Flynn got the money, persuaded the young men at Qantas to donate a plane and modify it so it could safely transport a patient on a stretcher, inspired a young engineer to develop a radio system that would operate on pedal power and developed the idea of a standard issue medical chest with all instruments and medicines numbered, enabling doctors to give clear instructions to a lay person by radio. This service has saved so many lives and is still a very treasured part of the outback way of life. While the government now subsidises the Royal Flying Doctors, it took the efforts of one entrepreneur and not the federal government to make a truly meaningful change to the lives of regional Australians. Julia, are you listening?!

And that about brings us to today, when Outback Queensland is still cattle country, but also survives on mining and tourism. We skipped the mining tours, but it’s impossible to miss mining altogether if you visit Mt Isa because the mine is at the heart of the city. Tourism is really well done here I must say – I feel we’ve come away with a much better understanding of the history and culture of outback Queensland. And now our outback days are really over and the coast and a new life beckon.

Well done Stephanie, another great edition. Not much left for me only to add to the sports section, we visited Mt Isa, who should be born here, none other than Greg Norman and also the well know Tennis player Pat Rafter. This mining town produced many other sports stars including rugby players, so it says volumes for life growing up in the bush, I got the impression that Mt Isa is more than a huge copper mine it’s a huge way of life. We also visited 2 demonstrations by stockmen with working dogs on sheep and ducks, horses and bullock wagon, a snake handler and the whip cracking champion. I have included a photo of me and the whip cracker (glad he was the world champion).  (Note from Stephanie - sorry the photo is not that great, but I'm having trouble with adding photos for some reason.  But I can report that it was absolutely hilarious to watch Dennis standing in the middle of the ring with a stick of celery hanging out of his mouth while the whip cracker gradually whittled away the celery.)

We are on the way to the coast now and to start the process of finding a new home, we have drawn up our list of the 10 must haves and the 10 like to haves so it is going to be interesting to see where this takes us. Over the next month we will be joined by a number of family members and catch up with a few friends so the pace is likely to quicken a little.

PS/ We were given a real lesson in 4WD safety while at Carnarvon Gorge. While we were trapped inside the National Park, unbeknownst to us there were others stuck on the other side of the overflowing creeks trying to get in. One of those was a 20 year old Queensland cowboy with a white Hilux Ute, a pretty girlfriend and far more testosterone than brains. He decided to cross the road when the waters were over 1.2M and flowing very fast. Apparently it took a total of 30 seconds for the creek to pick up the ute, sweep it a few meters down stream then tip and sink. If the young man hadn’t had his window open they would have drowned as the doors seized up and they both needed to squeeze out the partially opened driver’s window. Very lucky that both came away with their lives – but the young man has yet to fully feel the financial suffering. First, it was his boss’s car. Second, he was driving on a closed road so he will be fined $1200 per wheel (ie/ $4,800 total) and the insurance won’t cover any of the repairs. Yikes! It doesn’t pay to be a cowboy. (Ricky and Yvonne, are you paying attention?)