May 10, 2024
Day 7: Clarke creek to funnel creek
Having stayed dry in our luxurious undercover camp, we were able to pack up and be on the road in record time at 8:30, just as the school kids arrived at the Clarke creek school next door.
We made the first of two turns left onto the same Marlborough Sarina road under a cloudy sky.
The road was mostly a bit uphill for the first part and mostly open-ish plains country. It all looked much more friendly under a muted sky and it has rained a lot of summer so it was teeming with life including redwing parrots, rosellas, wedge tail eagles, emus, heaps of other birds I can’t identify, kangaroos, pigs and a guy on a horse.
We stopped at the Olympic torch memorial to commemorate the 1956 torch relay that passed down this road, it made no more sense for having read the sign.
By then, a coffee from the Lotus Creek roadhouse was calling me so we pushed on. It started to rain as we rolled in. That made the coffee, which was a bit average, taste much better. The cherry ripe brownie was delicious all round. We each got a fairly disgustingly large brownie which barely touched the sides. We also got toasted sandwiches for lunch and kept riding because we were only one third of the way through the day.
Some bright spark caravanner told us it flattened out after lotus creek which I guess it did, a bit, but was still undulating. We crossed the Connors River which was a nice flowing creek and saw emus on the floodplain.
Dave was leading, as usual, and picked a side of the road stop at around 70k to enjoy our toasted sandwiches in a patch of clear-ish ground under some nice smooth barked trees. as gabby said the only problem with the toasted sandwich was that there wasn’t two.
As we get heading north the hills on the eastern side got more spectacular and we got into more savannah like country. We also passed a dolomite distribution /earth works centre which explained the continuing b doubles, even though the wind farm Ute traffic had mostly died off.
I was flagging a bit on the final few ks to the turn off but eventually made it and ate one of the energy gels my warm showers guest gave me last year and it did seem to perk me up. We had originally planned to continue on the Marlborough sarina road to a free camp on funnel creek but decided to pick up the national trail alignment again. I called the station where the next campsite is and they said it’d be fine to camp on funnel creek on their property and the road had just been redone so should be alright.
So we turned left down an unmarked, but not gated, track, and came across our first other national trail trekkers, a young woman and her partner with horses and a horse float. I couldn’t quite work out the logistics but he seemed to be back up while she mostly rode one horse, and led the other. She said she’d got from Cooktown to Ravenswood last year and then her friends horse got injured so she’s started again two weeks ago in Ravenswood. She did say they had to make a big detour around the Burdekin falls dam spillway cause it was too wet so that’s something we need to check. They were camping up the road not at the creek cause the road was too boggy for the horse float. It was quite boggy and muddy but we made it down to a lovely swimming hole on funnel creek, where some station workers from Waitara were having a Friday afternoon beverage.
Luckily they left soon so we could have a dip/bath in the cold water before setting up camp back up the bank and enjoying a chickpea curry for dinner.
After dinner, Gabby found a small suspiciously black with a red belly snake near the tents but it slithered off and we never saw it again.
Today's ride: 104 km (65 miles)
Total: 525 km (326 miles)
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