Mary Kathleen Mine Site

Date of Adventure 19 to 24 November 2024

It doesn’t matter if you guys are particularly interested in abandoned mines but I found this one pretty interesting. I’ve been to lots of abandoned mines but most of them were underground mines or just surface fossicking as they say here in Australia. There’s an abandoned gold mine, not far off the Mojave Road, that I visited where the open pit is still there. This one was uranium with a nearby processing plant.

As you drive up, it’s pretty clearly a mine with shitloads of tailings.

There are roads and access all the way from the approach to the mine pit.

Now you’ll just have to put up with my learning how to use a drone to look at interesting places and my poor video editing skills. Hopefully as time goes on I’ll get better at both of these but the videos are a little jerky. But you can see the approach road to the main pit. They must have had some pretty big equipment to cut into the rock like that.

As you can see, the pit is now relatively full of water. I suppose this is just from the rainfall in the area.

Even though this seems like a relatively arid part of Australia there is a significant rainfall during the summer months. See what the general area looks like? I found it to be a really nice area.

At the bottom of the hill where the mine pit is located are a bunch of really significant remaining concrete structures.

Here’s what the overview looks like

If you look at these you can see that the road that comes down from the mine runs right behind these with a flat area at the side of the road. I assume that this was the place where the ore processing was done. They’ve removed so much that it’s hard to tell much about it. At the beginning of the processing area where the ore was brought in the radioactive level would have been relatively low. About like some of the countryside in New Mexico. But at the end of the process they would have material that had a significant level of radioactivity. High enough that I’d have had to account for it when I worked at Los Alamos. But since this place closed down in 1988 they probably didn’t have any excessive protections in place.

But someone who came up here had a happy view of the world!

Mary Kathleen Abandoned Townsite

Date of Adventure 19 to 24 November 2024

This is one of the strangest “ghost towns” I’ve seen. It was a mining town for a uranium mine. The mine ran until 1988 and produced a significant quantity of uranium. They had a processing facility onsite to extract the uranium from the crude ore. Producing “yellowcake”. The uranium was mostly shipped to England to their Atomic Energy Authority. At the center of the townsite is a large sign that explains everything.

I hope that you can read the text. If not, try looking it up online or put a comment below and I’ll try to add to this post. The mine is located about 6 km from the townsite.

First the townsite. There’s enough stuff here for two separate blogs so I’ll do one on the town and town square and a separate one on the mine and environs. It’s pretty weird because most mining ghost towns are just left. People seemed to walk away from the buildings when the mine petered out. But here they removed all of the buildings. It’s totally understandable why they’d remove all of the processing facility. But removing all of the dormitories and buildings is another story. They left behind all of the concrete pads that the buildings were on, sidewalks, and tarmac roads. So there’s a really large, flat area with a few walls and lots of concrete pads. The property is privately owned and is now part of a cattle station (I think). But they allow camping and exploration of the mine. Campers seem to be pretty responsible here because there’s almost no trash. In the 5 days that I stayed here maybe 10 other campers came to this part of the townsite and there’s plenty of room so they were always 300 meters or more distant. As you drive into the center of the site there are a few smaller areas that seemed to have several campers. I didn’t check them out but I can’t believe that they are flatter and easier campsites than where I camped, right at the town square.

The day I drove in it was raining a little bit so everything was wet. Kind of a nice respite from the hot and dry that I’ve been seeing.

On the road in, there’s a fork and if you go the wrong way the bridge is washed out.

So, it’s obvious that no one is maintaining the place. This is private property, part of a cattle station, but they allow camping with a few reasonable rules. There’s no water and no toilets but it’s free and really quiet and peaceful. So I stayed a long time. I wanted to spend some time writing up travels that I haven’t written about. Well, there’s a shitload of them but at least I’ll get a couple of the more recent ones down and posted here. It takes more time and effort than I’d thought when I started this.

OK When you get on the right road and into the main square for the townsite it’s clear that this was a well developed town. A lot more developed than many of the other towns I’ve been in; here in Oz and back in the States. Look at how well done the roads are. And there are lots of well spaced trees. It’s just well laid out.

OK When you get on the right road and into the main square for the townsite it’s clear that this was a well developed town. A lot more developed than many of the other towns I’ve been in; here in Oz and back in the States. Look at how well done the roads are. And there are lots of well spaced trees. It’s just well laid out.

But, as I said, the buildings have all been removed. In the general area where I camped, I think that a lot of the buildings were public buildings like the library, store, etc. But all the same, here are some pictures of the concrete pads that are left. Some of the floors were tiled and the tiles have come apart over the years.

This is still part of a cattle station and it has more grass than most places I’ve seen lately. So there were cows hanging about. In fact one day one of them got interested in my Starlink antenna so I ended up with a little cow slobber on it before I chased her away. They were totally docile. With all of the grass, I thought I’d see a lot of kangaroos. Kangaroos hang out and eat grass. I’ve seen thousands of them in the last couple of months, usually in the evening chowing down in some grassy area. But in the 5 days I was here I only saw one kangaroo in the morning one day. But there were a few other visitors. One afternoon a horse and a pony were eating there way through. They are clearly used to people because they came right up close to my campsite.

The most interesting visitors were four feral camels that were roaming through and eating on some of the trees. They weren’t too far from where I was camped but I decided to give them a bit of room. Camels can be touchy and the bulls will attack, if provoked. These guys seemed relatively docile. At least 2 of them were juveniles. Feral camels are relatively common in the center of Australia. They were used to transport good in the center of Australia before the railroads. After the railroads were finished many of their owners just released them to the wild. So now there are quite a few roaming the center of Australia. If you want an interesting story about them read “Tracks” by Robyn Davidson.

That’s the story about the Mary Katherine townsite. I’ve got a bunch of photos of the mine itself (not as much of a story) and I’ll post those in my next blog post.

The Famous Walkabout Creek Hotel

Date of Adventure 21 November 2024

I want to write up this side trip before I forget some of the details and things that impressed me. One of my interests as I drive around is visiting some of the small hotels and pubs that still survive in small towns in the general outback. This one was a special side trip to the Walkabout Creek Hotel. It’s the hotel that was used in the first Crocodile Dundee movie. So I thought it was worth driving 60 or 70 km out of my way to see it. When I got there, at about 5 minutes to 1:00 PM there was a sign that said it was open from 10 to 1. I was thinking that they would close it up on me. But, two young guys in another Troopy arrived at the same time and when we went in there was only one guy at the bar and the proprietors. They were unbelievably friendly and helpful. They kept the place open for us and told us stories about its history and while we were there another 5 or 6 people joined us and came and left. I suppose that I spent more than an hour there and had a couple of beers. Unfortunately, they weren’t cooking so no lunch that day.

The hotel is in McKinlay, Queensland, about 100 km from Cloncurry. Its history goes back to around 1900 when it was first licensed. It was a hotel/pub that served the farming and ranching community. It was named the Federal McKinlay hotel until 1988. Then it was used as the setting for the pub in the first Crocodile Dundee movie. The bar in the movie was actually a movie set somewhere near Brisbane, not the actual bar in the hotel. After the movie, the hotel was purchased and then moved about a half kilometer. The pilings that held it up were getting rotten and the hotel was located off the main highway through town. So they moved it to where it now stands, somewhat reconstructed and set up as a tourist location.

The town of McKinlay isn’t much. Aside from tourists, it serves for the local agriculture and there are a couple of mines nearby. I think that they are copper and other non-precious metals.

The hotel itself looks pretty authentic from the outside.

And inside it’s full of memorabilia and photos.

The sign behind me in the second photo is the actual sign that was posted on the building when the movie was made. Although done up for tourists, it’s really well done and just feels kind of like an honest bush pub. The “proprietors” that day were a woman who is the sister of the owner and her husband. They were more than happy to stay open and talk to all of us about the history and details of the hotel. There are lots of old photos of the movie days.

One of the things that I found really cool is the radiator on the wall. They shot out the radiator and windshield on the International Truck in the movie and then had to replace them overnight so they could reshoot scenes the next day. I guess that they went through a few radiators. This is one of the ones from the movie days.

It’s a kind of crazy history of how the bits and pieces got brought to the hotel over the years. The original producers brought the movie scene bar from wherever it was on a movie lot all the way to McKinlay and gave it to the owners. That movie set is behind the original hotel building and they took us out and let us take photos and talked about the process of moving it.

Towards the end of the time I was there a young couple came in and we started talking. They have travelled a bit of Australia, pulling a small trailer. They were leaving their “corporate” jobs in Brisbane and moving to a small town west of Alice Springs. We had a long conversation about places to visit, roads to travel, etc. I’d been debating the drive from Boulia to Alice Springs along Donohue and the Plenty highway. They told me that it’s well worth driving. The only thing to think about is weather.

In the end the drive to McKinlay was well worth it. Lots of interesting folks, some great discussion, and a tourist site that’s worth a visit.

Camping #1

Date of Adventure Most of the time since 26 August 20244 but really 12-18 November 2024

I’ll write more blogs about my camping experiences since traveling Australia. Some comments are more relevant than this blog but they’ll just have to wait until some later date. It’s taken a while for me to really learn how and where to camp in Australia. I should have learned it when I was here in February but I guess it didn’t sink in. At that time I was concerned about learning the systems in the Troopy and so I spent way too many nights in Caravan Parks. They usually had wifi so I could look things up online. In retrospect, the wifi wasn’t that critical because I was in fairly populated areas and my cell phone had plenty of signal most of the time. There’s a whole set of comments to make about WiFi in campgrounds, Telstra reception, and use of Starlink.

Usually I’d prefer to boondock or camp in pretty isolated places but Australia doesn’t have anything like the National Forests and BLM land that I’m used to in the States. The way to find campsites and places to stay is to use an app called WikiCamps. It’s a paid app but I think it only cost me a few bucks (9.99 AUD, one time cost). I’m not 100 % sure of the ownership or how the whole thing works but it is kind of crowdsourced. It’s a sort of gis app that has huge amounts of information. I’ve got to use filters or there’s so much shit on the screen that I can’t find anything. The bottom line is that it has lots of places to camp. I think that I’ve tried almost all of the varieties. This is going to be about the last few and I’ll follow up at some later time.

There are quite a few National Park campsites. These tend to be a bit more like National Forest campsites in the US than like our National Parks. Most have some kind of toilet and a few have showers. While in the town of Winton, to see some of the dinosaur sights, I stayed at the hotel in town. I’ll write more in a later blog about hotels, farm stays, etc. This one is just about a few or the recent campsites. So, National Parks require permits and they have to be obtained online. There’s no kiosk at the campground. In Queensland the permits cost 7.50 AUD, not too bad. After Winton I went to a National Park for the night. There was only one other guy camped there and probably places for 15 to 20 so we were well separated. The toilet, a pretty good chemical toilet, was guarded by a couple of kangaroos when I drove in. I suspect they were trying to get out of the heat.

And this was a relatively undeveloped campground with pullouts and a few crude fire rings. Some others have had really well defined and numbered camp locations.

After the one night in that campground I went to a dinosaur museum and then drove to the “town” of Opalton. This is a community of opal miners. The opal fields have been active since the 1880’s. In 1896 the largest opal ever found was discovered in the area. It was a meter long opalized tree trunk. The opals in this area are called boulder opals. They are opal veins in ironstone or sandstone. Anyway, there is a Boulder Opal Association (of miners) that maintains a bush camp in Opalton. Bush camps are generally fairly primitive with sort of random places for people to camp. It’s way off season so when I got to the camp there were no other campers, just the caretaker. He told me to camp wherever I wanted and later told me lots of stories about the area and opal mining in the area. This camp has several huts that can be rented, a very small bathroom area with toilets and showers, and several shade roof areas. They have an honor system with a box to pay, 2.50 AUD per person per night. They collect rain water in large tanks. It can be used for drinking and cooking. There is also a dam and reservoir nearby that the miners use for water for their mining operations. Here are some typical kinds of photos of what bush camps are like.

And this is a pretty crude overview from my drone.

After camping for a couple of weeks with no laundry, I decided that a caravan park with a laundry would be fine. In any case I’m in a place that is waaaay out of season so there won’t be too many people there. So I made reservations for a couple of nights in the caravan park in Richmond, Lakeview Caravan Park. It is 25 AUD per night, no electrical hookup, and laundry was $4 per load. Not too bad. As predicted, there was hardly anyone in the park and the woman running it let me pick a site wherever I wanted. I got a campsite pretty close to the “amenities” so I could do my laundry and take some time in a long shower. There were showers in Opalton so it wasn’t as big of a deal to get a shower as it has been at other times.

So, you can see that the park is pretty deserted. There were about 4 or 5 other campers when I arrived and they left the next day and maybe 4 more came in and left. This is the best of caravan park camping. First, it is a pretty nice park with trees and some space. And it was empty.

I’ll write a few more camping blogs in the next few weeks. There are lots of options and each has advantages and disadvantages. But when I’m in populated areas and during holiday times, I’ll avoid caravan parks in favor of other options. Some strange places have good showers and even have laundry facilities.

The Dinosaur Stampede

Date of Adventure 14 November 2024

Getting here takes a little perseverance. It’s not really difficult just about 110 km from Winton, the nearest town. I’d camped in a National Park that’s a little closer but requires some gravel driving to get to. So I doubt if it saved me any time in travel. This is a really interesting tour just because of the nature of the site and how far it is out of town. In my case, I picked the 11:00 tour because I wasn’t sure how long it would take to drive and didn’t want to risk the 9:00 one. Well, there were only 3 of us in the tour, which is really nice!!

The drive: It’s about 110 kms from Winton and about half of the trip is sealed and the other half well graded gravel. It’s easy to make it in virtually any car just a little slower on the gravel part. Some corrugations but nothing to worry about.

I’m going to make this a fairly quick write and show the pictures. This is the kind of tour that doesn’t work well in a description. It was a really good 1 ½ hour tour and the footprints are well worth the drive to get here.

This is a pretty large area of dinosaur tracks that have been fossilized. According to the story, it was first discovered in the 1960’s. It took many years for the site to become known to paleontologists and then to get uncovered and made into a museum. There were a number of small but not inconsequential mistakes before they built up the building that now encloses the entire area that’s been “excavated”.

It’s a pretty simple building that covers something over 50 meters of the stampede footprints. The tour is a combination of a few short videos followed by about 45 minutes inside the main room where the tour guide explains the footprints and tells the story. The majority of the footprints are from some pretty small meat eating dinosaurs. There are a few prints from larger dinosaurs and one set from a pretty big one. The guess is that the big one was a dinosaur very similar to “Banjo”, the important carnivorous dinosaur at the Age of Dinosaurs Museum.

The first picture below shows the prints and direction of travel of the large carnivore. There’s lots of speculation about whether this was the reason the smaller ones took off running or whether it was some other event that spooked them.

I’m not going to say much about this whole display except to note that these footprints are pretty clear. If you want to see more, well you’re just going to have to make the drive from Winton. It’s well worth it. It’s a little hard for me to tell the story. It’s one of those things that you have to see for yourself to truly appreciate it.

That’s it!! After this I was off to camp in the opal fields near Opalton. Hotter than hell but a good place for me to camp and spend some time.