We are certainly not the speediest of travellers but I think that sometimes it’s nice to stop and smell the roses and appreciate what you are experiencing so with that thought in mind we stopped our mad dash west and decided to have a look at the small town of Cloncurry for a couple of days.
Cloncurry is predominantly a mining town and its main claim to fame is that it is where John Flynn established the Royal Flying Doctor Service in 1928. There was a small but informative museum which we enjoyed visiting and the ladies at the front desk cajoled us into buying a package deal for the town’s second museum which once again was small but not necessarily as informative.
Still it was nice to relax in the warmth (although the nights were still getting down to single digits) and we enjoyed riding our bikes around the town and were very surprised to enjoy a 5km ride out of town along bike and walking tracks to a dam which was full and very much an oasis in the surrounding desert.
We had planned to play another game of golf in Cloncurry but unfortunately although the map suggested that there was a course we drove all around town and als couldn’t find it. Where it was meant to be was instead a rather overgrown paddock with some horses grazing. I am guessing the Cloncurry Golf and Sports Club no longer exists…boo.
It was a nice stop and even if there isn’t a whole lot going on sometimes that’s the attraction to a place especially when it is just about in the middle of nowhere!
Before our stop here we had been lucky with our campsites but it has to be said that the first campground we tried in Cloncurry The Cloncurry Caravan Oasis the manager insisted on choosing us a site and he selected one just slightly smaller that the size of our camper trailer next to someone who was also just managing to squeeze into the tight space he was occupying. I gazed around at the abundance of empty (larger) spaces and asked if we could take one of those but alas apparently not…so we left.
The second campground was marginally more generous with its site offerings but it does amaze me that while you look around at so much empty space and having driven through so much empty space you end up camped so close to each other that you can hear just about every whisper not to mention belching of your neighbours. It is something that we usually try to avoid but here it was not possible.
The other interesting thing was the popularity of the stop. Each night the campground was just about full with people arriving just before dusk and then sitting in their vans watching tv before setting off again the next day just after dawn broke because they were trying to do “the lap” and see the whole of Australia in a couple of months. When chatting to people we realise that actually they don’t really get to experience anything much of the outback. Rushing around is certainly not part of it and I can’t help but feel that a lot more would be gained by trying to do less and therefore experiencing more.
But anyway there are plenty of others enjoying the slow experience of the outback and hopefully we will enjoy spending some time swapping experiences with them as we head towards Alice Springs. T