Cattle and camels

The public loos at Dajarra were filthy. A first, enroute.  So far the small communities we’ve passed through have had reasonably well-maintained loos. Most are of concrete block construction, basic, and instead of windows, have a high open breezeway letting in insects and breezes, piped with water and plenty of free toilet paper. Some deserve a star rating.   But not Dajarra.  Dajarra looks as though it has had its day.

Yucht!

Once Dajarra was one of the largest cattle-trucking stops, not only in Queensland, but the world. Bigger even than Texas. Thousands upon thousands of cattle were herded from the Kimberleys, across country, right down to the Dajarra cattle yards where they were marshalled into cattle cars and carried east on the rail line from Dajarra heading for Townsville and the port. 

Today the rail lines are barely scars on the landscape. There is a small ramp that may have carried cattle on to those early cattle cars. There is no one around to tell. The last train ran in 1988. These days, what cattle end up here go by road train.

Dajarra needs to find another reason for being.

In the back blocks of town we find a large broken branch shaded on one side to sit while we have a picnic morning tea. Country music blares from a house next door.

We are on the Diamantina Developmental Road heading for Mt Isa, this morning. Water seems to have been sucked out of the earth out here. Even the trees are stunted and the hills rock-strewn, red and crumbly dry.

We slow down on the thin long road, thinly coated with bitumen to allow four large camels to sway slowly across, grinning at us, as we grin back at them. Further on, five more camels amble by. Lazy-moving yet inquisitive beasts -- just nine of the reputed one hundred thousand single-humped wild dromedaries now roaming the Outback, offspring of the Afghan stock brought to Australia as beasts of burden for explorers and settlers way back in the 1860s.

Pure in blood line

Pure in blood line still. So pure that Australia now exports camel stock back to the Middle East for racing and breeding.

We skirt the outer edges of Mt Isa with its blackened chimney stacks and tired featureless buildings. A drop of soapy water and a white-wash face-lift on most of these buildings might make this town look less transient, less debilitated, less dreary. But, while the mines rule Mt Isa will likely to continue sucking money out of the earth, and banking it.

We travel the Barkley Highway towards Camooweal: a wide straight road, upgraded from a bush track during the war.  At that time 80,000 American troops were in Australia’s top end and this route needed to be in prime condition to keep supplies moving through and from Darwin. Then, long tails of military convoys rolled along this route driving 12 day round trips back and forth to the Isa. 

Now, the road mostly carries grey nomads -- and me, with my ipod blaring forth podcasts and audiobooks from the car speakers via a snazzy FM transmitter, while my laptop is hooked up for juice to the cigarette lighter car charger -- along with the sat nav.  Even my broadband internet dongle is working this far out thanks to Telstra’s mobile phone network. And Bec’s DS Lite is glowing in the back seat.

We currently have all the media mod cons of the city functioning in the bush when needed.

oooOOOooo