Our plan is to arrive in Boulia about 9am, so I have time for clarinet practice after wash, dress and breakfast. We drive a little further south to see the Acacia Peuce sign and some more trees, then return to Boulia. It takes some time to establish that the person we need to talk to is Julie in the Library, by which time we have sold 2 books to other travellers. Julie tells us that she has already given instructions that some should be ordered, and she will follow up to see what’s happened. We return to the Min-Min Information Centre and sell 2 more while we are having a coffee. A bit of shopping, top up the fuel (selling 1 more copy in the servo), then we are off on the next leg.
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| The plains the Expedition crossed, viewed from Dave's "rocky knoll" |
After days of travelling across flat plains (or weeks for Burke and Wills), the terrain starts to change here. The Expedition crossed the De Little Range, then the Standish range. We travel up the Diamantina Development Road, to the west of the Expedition route, detouring briefly to see where the Expedition crossed the Bengeacca Creek and the De Little Range. Although the landscape is more interesting, with much more vegetation, the going would probably have been harder, and water still scarce.
Close to Dajarra we turn off towards the Phosphate mine, crossing the Standish Range and the path of the Expedition. This is a very rough road, which climbs hills and dips deeply across the Wills River. As we enter it we pass a big rig carrying explosives to the Phosphate Hill mine. When we see the state of the road we are reminded of the film “The Wages of Fear”. We stop at Wills River and let the explosives truck get ahead.
Near the mine we turn north up a sealed road and have a much more comfortable journey up toward Duchess. We stop about 5km before the ‘town’ (one pub, half a dozen houses), and camp by the Little Burke River, very close to the Expedition’s Camp 97.
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