Maleny to Darwin Day 3 - Winton to Cloncurry

The day dawned as per usual - sunny and hot by 6:30.  Weather conditions - ie rain and flooding - are a continual concern on this trip, but so far I've been lucky.  The nice lady at the rather run down motel had assured me that the day before the road to Cloncurry had been open "with caution", and that a number of her guests had set off and none had come back.  Perhaps turned back would have been a more appropriate choice of words, but I got her drift.


So, off to the servo.  A rather confused stick insect wandered over and took a close interest in one of the wheels.  I think it's important to be aware of the finer details of the trip.










Water over the road?  What water over the road? 
I was looking forward to a dip.

Before leaving I had a final drive around Winton.  It's quite a big place - lots of back streets - but no big supermarket - a medium sized Foodworks was all I found, and several pubs. 


The bear seemed to be settling down and was getting somewhat blasé.  And yes, that is a concrete cow in the distance.





The streets are remarkably wide, the main street and several others being dual carriage way with centre parking, and this turned out to be typical of the towns I was now passing through.  To my eyes Winton was a rather tired looking place though undeniably clean and tidy.  The only café I found was closed until March or April, and is closed anyway on Mondays.


Smart bear, huh? 
Watch it, you might get that dip after all.

At last I got moving in the direction of Cloncurry and 5 or 6 km out of town I came across this.  Oh dear!  While I was pulled over a ute coming the other way stopped and confirmed the water was 600 mm over the road in places.  It had been ok the day before but had risen quickly overnight.  He'd passed parked vehicles which been waiting through the night.




What to do?  Well I knew that these floods can fall as quickly as they rise, so what else but to go back to town and try to find some coffee.

Yay!  The Winton Bakery does (good) coffee, and better still a really good sausage roll.  It was a surprisingly large, spacious shop, high ceilinged and echo-ey.  It was also fiercely air conditioned and was a welcome respite from the heat outside. 

Fortified, an hour or so later I tried again.  Still closed.  This time I had a conversation with a Maori chap on his way from the Gold Coast to Mount Isa.  He advised me to drop into the shire council offices - which I had seen - to get the most up to date information available.  This I did and the delightful lady there couldn't have been more helpful.  Yep, the road was closed.  Thanks very much!  However the road to Hughenden was open "with caution", and from there I could take the Flinders Highway to Cloncurry.  But, protested I, isn't the Kennedy Development Road (to Hughenden) a dirt road?  The poor lady was almost hurt, oh no, it's sealed all the way now.  Silly me!



I called the next shire council, which happened to be in Hughenden, and they confirmed the road to Cloncurry to be open, though the stretch between there and Julia Creek was "with caution".  What the hell!  It only meant a doubling of the distance.  What's a few more hours driving!

  

That's it on the left - the road - as seen through the windscreen.  You might make out a tiny speck in the distance.  I had deliberately pulled over to let a couple of designer 4WDs go past and lead the way.  If anything was on the road deserving of caution I'd like them to give me early warning.  In fact the road was perfectly ok, with a few puddles on some of the floodways.

 

 
Hughenden was a slightly more alive place than Winton, and it did have a couple of old windmills as street furniture or sculptures in the main street.  I didn’t linger, though, pressing on first to Richmond and then Julia Creek, both of which struck me as unremarkable. 

I was fixated on Cloncurry!  The road after Julia Creek was “with caution”, so on I sped.  The only danger on this section seemed to be that of driving off the road while distracted by the stunning scenery the closer I got to Cloncurry. 

 

I arrived shortly before 5pm whereas I had intended to be there by lunchtime, but hey, the 340 km journey had stretched to 620 km because of the road closure!

 

 

This is Jess's car pulled over on the road to Hughenden.  I show it partly because my editor back in Maleny insisted on more pictures of the scenery, and partly because I thought there should be evidence that the car was actually there!

 

 

 

Cloncurry was very ho-hum, big on fossils and dinosaurs.  It did have a Woolworths though.  The shelves were partly bare following a power cut the night before.  I did say ho-hum!