Day 10, 11 & 12 Tibooburra

Day 10, Innaminck to Tibooburra,Via the Dig Tree

We left Innamincka at around 1000 hrs, first stop fuel then the rubbish tip which is just near the Telstra tower eastward on the way out of town, there are no bins in the camping area so you have to take all your rubbish with you when you leave.

The Cooper Creek at Burkes Grave

On the way to the Dig Tree we stopped at Burkes Grave, its only a short detour off the main road and well worth a visit, its on a particularly beautiful part of the river.

Coming out of Burkes Grave we had our second breakage for the trip, this time the UHF aerial came flying of, were were lucky enough to find it though, that will be my next repair job.

Burkes Grave

The Kids at the Dig Tree

The 70 odd kilometer drive to the Dig Tree is pretty easy but the signage on the main road is not very good,very easy to miss.

The Dig tree was ok, the tree itself is not that impressive but the history is very interesting, the part that I liked the most was the Face Tree, its awesome.

The Face Tree

After our visit to the Dig Tree we headed of to Tibooburra, or so we thought, we had turned the wrong way and had gone 30 kilometers before realising, we turned around and found the turn off not far from the dig tree.

The road to Tibbooburra was about 150 kilometers, when we turned onto it we got a bit of a shock, it was the rockiest road i have seen for a long time, it looked like it was going to be a slow drive.

We had only traveled up the track a few kilometers when the Tyre Pressure monitor stared alarming, I pulled over and sure enough the right hand side tyre on the trailer was hissing away and going down fast.
I was annoyed that we had gotten a puncture but was pleased that the monitor had done its job and most likely saved us from shredding the tyre.
Because we had no aerial I couldn't contact our new friends to let them know we had to stop.

Anyway while I was changing the tyre a bloke in mines ute pulled up to see if we were OK, he told us that the road was only bad for a few more kilometers then it was good all the way to Tibooburra, lucky for that because if it was going to be this bad all the way we may have looked for another route.

After the tyre change we headed off again and sure enough the road had improved and was pretty easy going all the way to Tibooburra, because of the delays we didn't get into the park till 1800 hrs, the latest we have ever pulled into a site.

We booked in and set up in the near dark, the first beer went down very well indeed after that.
Easy dinner of canned soup tonight.

The kids enjoyed a movie together and us adults enjoyed a few more drinks before bed.


First impressions of the park are good, its pretty busy but it was quiet in the evening.
Tomorrow we will see what Tibooburra has to offer.

Day 11 & 12, Tibooburra

We spent the first morning at Tibooburra looking around the town, its a nice little town and has pretty good facilities, there are two places to get supplies, and two pubs to choose from to get grog and a meal.

Our first stop was the cafe, where we had morning tea, the coffee was good as was the food, after a feed we headed up the street a little to see a mans private memorabilia collection, it was was a pretty impressive collection of all sorts of stuff/junk, the bloke there was very nice and great with the kids, the kids loved it, and Sam was very happy because he was give a supposedly "rare" bottle for his collection.

Other sites in town include a very impressive Tea Pot collection, a Drive In theater, and a small park with various old artifacts and a long boat suspended upside down.

The town also has the best book exchange I have ever seen, its very well stocked and well kept.

After a bit of we said goodbye to our new friends who we will hopefully see again in Melbourne in a few months.

Returning to the CP  I got down to repairing a few things, first on the list the water tank inlet, I managed to fix it for now at least with super glue and a new batch of epoxy putty, it seems to be holding water so fingers crossed.
While I was under there I knocked up a stone shield out of some tin I found lying around, it should  protect my handy work.
Second was the aerial, I had a soldering iron so I pulled up to power point in the CP and plugged in, that was pretty easy to repair,
The third thing was the puncture, the plug kit I had didn't work as was in the side wall and was a slash rather than a hole, I went to the Bridgstone dealer in town only to find that they only open for two weeks then are away for two weeks, guess what, AWAY !
Off to the roadhouse where a nice bloke who does repairs fixed it as best he could, it stayed up and should do as a second spare for the trailer.

We discussed tyre pressures for driving on outback roads, he maintains that too low a pressure leaves you open to side wall damage, which is exactly what happened to us,

Tomorrow we are heading to Cameron Corner and then onto The Strezlecki track, there are two ways to Cameron Corner from here, the short way which is 140 kl and the longer more scenic way through the Sturt NP, we will take the scenic route so have packed up most of our stuff tonight for a quick getaway in the morning.

Our site at the Granites CP

The Granite boulder backdrop.

Tibooburra was a nice stopover, the caravan park was pretty good except for the toilets/showers which were a bit dilapidated, and they smelled pretty bad most of the time,there is another camp ground in town which we did not know about, its run by the Aboriginal Lands,and is supposed to be pretty good.