Cameron Corner and Sturt National Park, NSW

While at Tibooburra we had to do 'The Must Do' drive out to Cameron Corner, the junction of South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland. It is a 141 km drive from Tibooburra, gravel road all the way. We left at 9:00 AM precisely and returned at 5:00 PM.  We drove out via Cameron Corner Road and returned through The Sturt National Park via Middle Road, 'Jump Up' Loop Road and the final 20 km on The Silver City Highway, 313 km for the round trip. We had a lunch break at The Cameron Corner Store while we were in Queensland. The scenery was arid, interesting and always changing.

Salt Pans.

Coolabah Trees.

Clay Pan.

Cameron Corner, Jude is standing in Queensland.

I have my right foot in Queensland and my left foot in South Australia.

Jude on the Queensland side of the Dingo Fence.

Parked out front of Cameron Corner Store.

We had to shut The Gate at the Dingo Fence after returning to NSW.

Ghost Trees. All these trees died due to prolonged inundation during the Big Wet of 1974.

Gibber and Salt Bush Plains.

Heading into Sand Dune Country.

Bottom Bore, and water tanks from a bygone era.

Old Windmill and water tank. This is a common sight along the route on abandoned stations.

One of the many dry creek beds we crossed.

Fairly recently abandoned Olive Homestead.

The Out Buildings at Olive Homestead.

The Jump Up on the left of us.

Mountain Range to the right of us.

Jude standing on the edge of the Mesa.

The view that Jude is looking at in the above photograph. You can make out the red soil track that we will be following out.

MT Carbine

A long time conundrum was resolved for me on booking into MT Carbine Caravan Park. The Proprietor there, Robert Waterhouse, routinely invites new visitors to a round table discussion on his patio. During this informal gathering he relates interesting facts about the MT Carbine area and Northern Queensland in general. Now to the answer of my conundrum, Towns like, MT Carbine, MT Surprise, MT Garnet and MT Isa have names beginning with MT. Have you ever looked up a postcode for these towns or tried entering an address on a GPS? "MT" is not recognised, you need to enter 'Mount' to achieve a result. In actual fact the "MT" is short for Mining Town and not Mount as there are no mountains in the areas surrounding these towns. The "Shiny Pants" bureaucrats in the Capital Cities have inflicted upon us their incorrect interpretation of the town names and we will suffer for ever more. MT Isa has made some effort to remedy this situation, informally it is now known as "The Isa"

Somewhere along the road from Irvinebank to Herberton we came across this windmill in the centre of the road! We stayed in Herberton for two days and it rained non stop for the two days. It was also quite cold, we had the heater ON in the van for the entire stay. Happy to leave actually. Restocked with fuel and food at Mareeba and headed for Cooktown.

The 'bush camp' setting at MT Carbine Caravan Park.

Another view of the CP.

There are plenty of "Mine Relics" scattered about.

Very interesting strolling around the CP.

Unusual 'Paint Job' on this old steam engine from the past mining era. The piston in the previous photograph is from this engine.