Three Blonde Nomads: Hughenden, Porcupine Gorge, Pentland Hotel and Charters Towers

After Richmond we took the bouncy road back to Hughenden and discovered that being Sunday afternoon, absolutely EVERYTHING was closed. It was like a ghost town. We went to a free camp at the race track and played some cricket until another caravan arrived and Ben immediately ditched us for the 7 year old boy who climbed out.

Hello!! Anyone home?

Hughenden is the third town on the Dinosaur Trail and is home to the Muttaburrasaurus or “Mutta” as it is referred to by the locals. There is a giant “Mutta” statue on the median strip in town and an almost complete skeleton in the visitor centre museum. There are also loads of other fossils, ammonites, gemstones and a sheep shearing display.

'Mutta' in the centre of town.

'Mutta' in the museum.

Sheep...

On the way out of the visitor centre we booked a campsite at nearby Porcupine Gorge and picked up an info sheet on the fossicking site on the way out there. The site is on the roadside in an old creek bed and despite digging around for an hour we only found a couple of small broken Belemnites. It was super hot so we didn’t stay there long.

Fossicking

The road out to Porcupine Gorge is still ‘bouncy’ and is so bad at one point that they have actually had to put up traffic signs slowing everyone to 60 kmph to prevent vehicles bottoming out on a dip. We took it easy and arrived at a beautiful campground with only one other vehicle there, far off on the other side, barely visible through the trees. Ben and Jenny went for a bike ride to explore while Lou set up the van and we spent a lovely evening under clear skies with loads of stars sparkling above us.

The next morning we hiked down into the gorge, stopping at a lookout with views of Pyramid Rock. The trail down is steep steps and we had to be careful not to slip on the gravel. When we reached the bottom we found ourselves on a sandy beach-like section with a river running along in front of us.

Being Egyptians near Pyramid Rock

There was a reasonable amount of water in it but it was obviously nowhere near capacity. It wasn’t really flowing much and there were large pools that would usually be part of one big waterway. We walked along the bank and could see lots of little fish and some turtles swimming around. At the base of Pyramid Rock there is a swimming hole and we were keen to cool off after walking in the hot sun. The pool wasn’t too bad but there wasn’t much water flow so we didn’t put our heads under, much to Ben’s annoyance as he likes to explore underwater and jump off rocks into the deep.

Down the bottom of the gorge.

Nice little swimming hole.

Lou and Ben taking a dip.

Ben and Lou decided that it would be good exercise to jog back up the trail to the van but got about 100m and declared that it was far too hot and steep to do something so silly.

We drove back through Hughenden and headed towards Townsville, where we were eager to see the ocean after a long time inland.

We stopped overnight at the Pentland Hotel which has free camping out the back. We had a couple of drinks in the near empty bar, having a good chat with the girl working there. Ben was full of energy after a few hours stuck in the car and was jumping up and down the stairs and hanging off the rails. As we walked back to the van he found a big rock to leap onto but slipped and ended up doing the splits, with his front leg scraping along the top of it, grazing the back of his thigh pretty badly. He was a very unhappy boy and we had to break out the first aid kit because it was way too big a graze for a band aid. After sorting through the various dressings, pads and bandages we settled on this, which is overkill but made him feel much better….

The life threatening injury.

He was feeling better enough the following morning to don his armour and challenge Jenny to a dual so it must have been a good patch up job.

Construction credits to our friends Daniel and Barb.

Our next stop was Charters Towers. We only had an afternoon to pass through and wished we could have stayed overnight at least. It is much bigger than we anticipated and has some great things to see.

The highlight of the stopover (other than Ben agreeing to get a haircut) was visiting The Miner's Cottage - a mining museum where the owner taught us how to pan for gold. He said it would put us in good stead for our next visit to Sovereign Hill, if we pan there actually knowing what to do we should find enough to cover our admission price.