Day Four: Elphinstone Dam to Burdekin Dam.
Wow, wow and more wow. The sunrise over Elphinstone Dam was spectacular. It was not your complicated, full of cloud formations spectacular. Rather just nature in its purest form. A lake, the rising sun and a lonely old tree. And bloody cold.
Peter launched out of bed at rotten o’clock to head to the showers as he had tickets on hot water ahead of all other campers. Luckily, experience told him to turn the hot water on whilst still fully clothed. When that failed with not a drop coming from the shower head, he reasoned although it was a two tap set up, the left ap was indeed a mixer and the right only for show. Tap on, arm extended, hand out; nothing but cold. Wait five minutes, still nothing but cold. He skulked back to the van, colder than before and not one bit cleaner. The only saving grace was Julie later disclosed she did exactly the same thing, only for both of them to later find out the ‘parents room’ had piping hot liquid on tap. One had to wonder why the breeders get the preferential treatment!
We packed up slowly having a breakfast of left over last night’s dinner, bacon and eggs before hitting the road.
Knowing today was a fair bit of dirt road we enjoyed skipping along the first few kilometres on bitumen and it wound along beside a creek. First dirt was a bit of fun with a good surface save a few bits of skittish gravel atop hard packed clay that had G-String fighting for comfort.
We tumbled across some road works, pulling up just before a massive centre mound of gravel stretching as far as we could see. The radio came to life with the roller driver telling us to keep going and we may encounter a grader. We did. A big bugger coming right at us. A hurdle that would make an Olympic athlete proud, got us out of the dilemma and safely on the other side of the road without calamity.
Soon enough, if 90km is soon enough we happened upon the township of Mt Coolon. Consisting of a tumbled down hotel come shop and not much else Peter drove past a pristine little park for morning tea, choosing a crappy roadside nothing spot instead. A coffee, ginger nut biscuits and a phone call from work later we were on our way but not before Richard discovered a vent cover on their van had dropped off.
With only one hundred of so ks to go we encountered some surprises. The first included a fox. No not a fox, but a big feral cat the size of a fox. It was majestic in its own right, but what a killing machine it would be. We dodged roos, cattle in incredible condition, a few slow moving wedge tail eagles and council workers.
There may have been a sign, probably not. A left hand bend led to multiple piles of gravel tipped in the middle of the road with only a far left or father right option available. We chose left and soon found out the tip truck driver had an angle issue with the left track beside the piles diminishing rapidly. G-String hung on gamely as Panther jumped the gravel mounds and continued on.
But a few hundred metres further we encountered a chilled out road crew who helped us through the next obstacle without issue. We had to chuckle as this event would have all hell breaking loose if it happened on the Bruce Highway. We had to admire the ‘she’ll be right’ attitude if one is allowed to have that attitude these days.
From here on in the road was tighter, rougher and dippier. Every few hundred metres there was a dip. Some were just a jiggle, others were monsters that came up unexpectedly, dove deep into gullies and shook the car and van like a rag doll. We decided we couldn’t pay for fun like this at the Ekka!
Finally the magnificent Burdekin Dam popped up. Well, it didn’t pop up, it dominated the entire landscape. We slid down the steep access road, parked up and took a small walk towards the wall noting the sing that said we were not allowed within 100 metres of that structure. Both Richard and Peter looked around nervously just case the sign police from two days earlier had been following us ready to pounce.
A plan was set. Denise would jump in our car as we drove across the road directly beneath the dam wall. Once we reached the other side she would whip out her drone (called Hindenburg) and video Richard, Ron and Julie diving across in their respective rigs.
It had all the promise of a Logie winning docudrama until…..Where’s Hindenburg? It appeared in a fleeting second, the drone had escaped view and crash landed high on a cliff overlooking the dam spillway, to forever provide vigil over the Burdekin Dam access road. To add salt to the wound, Hindenburg was still relaying video to show us its exact location was ‘amongst sticks somewhere. Devastated, Denise and the rest of our crew headed up to the caravan park and settled in.
The afternoon became cold, the night filled with outstanding home-made pizza was colder and the loss to NSW was freezing.
We went to bed saying a prayer to the drone gods that through some miracle Hindenburg would come home.
RIP Hindenburg.