Day 459 | Miyumba Bush Camp: down near the Gregory River
35 km | zzOz total: 14,254 km
I sense the blog is losing some zing, but in fact it might just be because I’m losing mine.
I have been predominantly riding on dirt since leaving Chillagoe, make that Cooktown as I pedalled north to Cape York, in fact all the way from Alice and it must be zapping my energy, mental as much as physical. There’s not so much possibility for just fazing out on these bumpy roads: you have to concentrate on what track across the the road to negotiate, looking in the mirror twice a minute to avoid some 4WD sneaking up while you are on the wrong side of the road, although with the standard dust plume you do get a fair amount of warning.
I’m supposed to be the dirt road king but on a day when a massive high is stationed south of The Bight, 1033, you can guarantee big winds here on the opposite side of the continent, in fact it was the full Trifecta: big headwind; steady uphill, never steep except the occasional few metres getting out of the occasional dry creek bed; and the bumpy old dirt road. It’s limestone country here which means plenty solid for the main part, if chunky, so finding the smoother track takes some effort of concentration.
End result: 12 km/hour, ie, slow, despite the slow evacuation of food from my trailer bag.
Two things on today’s agenda: visit the Riversleigh World Heritage Fossil site, and the Gregory River to load up with water for tomorrow.
Riversleigh is one of the bigtime fossil deposits around the world, things are well preserved due to the soft freshwater limestone substrate not having been super compacted, the fossils are incredibly well preserved and easy to extract. There’s all sorts of strange extinct mammals found here: carnivorous kangaroos, lucky they are no longer around, marsupial lions, huge, ie, 2.5 m high flightless birds that are surprisingly unrelated to the current, ie, non-extinct, large Australian birds, emus and cassowaries, instead akin to ducks, (huh? ducks? that surely can’t be right), giant 3 tonne wombats, 8 m pythons, 9 species of freshwater crocs, one 5 m long, another tree climbing.
In fact the site is Australia’s most prolific fossil site, more than 40 extinct species extracted from the rock to date and 1000 years of work to go but when I get there the public area only has a few specimens au naturale, I guess they are too precious to just leave out in some barren landscape.
I’ll have to drop into the Mt Isa section of the museum where more exciting fossils can be seen.
I’d love to see that 5 m croc, or a lion.