Walkers Crossing to Innamincka and the Adventure Way to Thargomindah

September 18^th

Lovely morning yet again. Enjoy breaky at our Walkers Crossing campsite then on the road again heading towards Innamincka. The road was pretty good and we moved fairly quickly into the flood plain country of the northern overflow of the Cooper Creek. Our drive took us around the outskirts of the Malkumba-Coongie Lakes National Park however, it was still pretty dirty and dusty where we were.

We arrived in Innamincka before we knew it and had a bit of a wander around town. This tiny settlement is built around a hotel and trading post on Cooper Creek. It is the traditional home of the Yandrumandha, Dieri and Yarrawarrka Aborigines. The first European explorer to visit the area was Charles Sturt, who discovered the Cooper in 1846 while vainly searching for an inland sea. It was also the final destination of the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition. In 1860 all but one of Burke and Wills' party perished near the creek. There is a commemorative monument in Innamincka to Burke and Wills which was erected in 1944. Innamincka was proclaimed a township in 1890.

It didn't take long to see the ‘sights’ of the town which included a visit to and a drink in the pub, where we could have played mini golf if we were that way inclined, and an ice-cream from the Trading Post.

It was really hot and lots of flies so the appeal to stay wasn't great. We could have driven 100km to the Coongie Lakes and stayed there overnight but we decided to press on to hopefully get to something a bit greener and cooler. Besides, the call of the “Adventure Way” seemed appealing.

The Adventure Way is a road that heads absolute east in a straight line starting in Innamincka. It retraces the tracks of the Cobb & Co and takes you from outback plains and gibber country, through some of Queensland’s richest grain and cotton producing areas all the way to the coast. It is interesting that you start in South Australia go straight but end up in Queensland.

It was really fascinating that not long after leaving Innamincka, the flat, dry desert like areas started to give way to more mulga bushes and eventually we started to see greenery and larger bushes. Having said that, our stop for the evening was at Thargomindah (pop. 240) which is an Aboriginal word meaning "Cloud of Dust”. The town is on the banks of the Bulloo River but no water to be seen while we were there.

An interesting fact about Thargomindah is that it produced Australia's first electric street lights in 1893. First in the world to have hydroelectric street lighting was London, followed by Paris. Just a day later, 'Thargo' illuminated its isolation with power generated by water pressure from the Great Artesian Basin and continued to do so until 1951.

We stayed the night in a lovely cabin in the Oasis Motel where we also got a great meal in their dining room (had a drink in the pub across the road first – interesting experience).