Little Burke River to China Wall, Selwyn Ranges

After another lovely clear starry night, we get up after sunrise and are ready to head off at 8:30. The road through Duchess is probably the least comfortable so far, corrugations and cattle preventing one from travelling fast enough to skim over the corrugations. When we turn north there is a welcome relief of a stretch of sealed road, and beyond that the gravel road is much better. We are in Mt Isa shortly after 10:30, where we deliver 20 books to Outback at Isa. We would have lingered there except that the café had a sign saying that owing to a delivery failure, they could only serve instant coffee…

We head into the main shopping centre (experiencing our first traffic lights since Broken Hill), find a good coffee, have lunch, stock up with food at the supermarket, check out our emails and generally make contact with the world. We top up fuel and water, then head east on the Barkly Highway toward Cloncurry.

China Wall

We take the detour into the Selwyn Range – much more serious mountains – easy to see why the Expedition had so much trouble finding a way across. We start off down the Spring Creek 4WD track, then decide it’s not really a sensible move when you are in a hired vehicle with only one spare tyre, no winch and only limited tools. We turn back and continue down the Fountain Springs road, then the track down to China Wall, which is a spectacular rocky escarpment. We camp nearby, with plenty of time for G&T, clarinet practice, and a bit of a walk before dinner. Once again we are camped close to the Expedition’s track, although they were a little further east and didn’t see the China Wall.

Camped at China Wall