INNAMINCKA AND THE DIG TREE

What a wonderful thing a bitumen road is!  After the bone jarring road between Innamincka and just past the Queensland border, not to mention the roads around Innamincka, it was a relief to hit the bitumen again. 

Queensland Roads is to be congratulated for providing a sealed road almost all the way to the border.  Towards the SA border wooded areas give way to open plains, dotted with oil and gas fields. 

The Dig Tree is on the Queensland side of the border on Nappa Merrie station (owned by Santos and leased back by S. Kidman Ltd).  Nothing like the creek that Sturt saw when he named it in 1845 , the Cooper is presently a swiftly flowing river. 

The road out to the Coongie Lakes was cut:

but a tour up and down the river took us to the sites where Wills died, where Burke died, and where King was finally found by the rescue party.

We spent two nights at the Innamincka Hotel:

in relative luxury, so we didn’t have to use the Public Amenities Block:

though the camp sites by the river looked very appealing.  If the weather had been warmer we'd have been happy to camp there.

Innamincka is a dry and dusty place:

but then you come to the Cooper lined with grasses, bushes, splendid trees - many of them very old - and teeming with birdlife.

On the way to the site of Burke’s death, we visited the picturesque Cullyamara waterhole:

It was great to see all these places associated with the Burke & Wills expedition which we'd read about in Sarah Murgatroyd's excellent book The Dig Tree.  We looked for, but didn't find, the nardoo plant that aborigines washed and ground and fed to the explorers.  In their efforts to survive, Burke & Wills ate this plant, but as they didn't prepare it properly, they slowly poisoned themselves.  Evidently King's relationship with the locals was better, so they looked after him and he survived.

Returning to Thargomindah we took a 20k detour to have a look at the old Noccundra pub and waterhole.  There’s nothing else left at Noccundra, but some campers had set up in a pretty nice spot by the waterhole.

Map of the journey so far:    https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=211394669885264885920.0004c1668325db86f8305&msa=0