Our reason for coming to Tibooburra was to go out to Cameron's Corner, where the 3 States meet - South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales. We called in to the National Parks Office as you need to travel through the Sturt National Park to get there and there is a $7 fee. They give you an information sheet for the road we would be travelling on, explaining everything you would be seeing. It was great. You can go out on the main road, or else on a 4WD track through the Park. We drove out on the 4WD track and back on the main road, although the term main road was a misnomer in this case! The 4WD track was better. It was 170km on the 4WD track and 140km back on the main road. We left the van at the caravan park here in Tibooburra thank heavens. The speed limit for the road through the National Park is 40 kph.
It was a great drive through the National Park. We had been told by someone we had met on this trip, that it was worth doing.
Mt King Station was the first Station bought up to be part of the National Park around 1972. There is not much left of it now as it was dismantled at the time and the timber, etc. used elsewhere. There are a few Stations that became the Sturt National Park. Olive Downs was another and it is now a camping ground. The dams (or tanks as they are called here) still had water in them. They are very deep.
There must have been a shower of rain earlier this morning as the road was a little bit wet in patches. Luckily it wasn't too bad or we wouldn't have been able to come.
Something that surprised me is that there are mountains/hills out here. I expected it to be dead flat and nothing growing. I was wrong on both counts. One of the ranges is called the Grey Mountains and they are called jump ups as they just spring up in front of you. We drove up to the Lookout on top and had morning tea. In no time we were joined by 2 other cars. After they left we didn't see another car till we got to the Corner. The view from the Lookout was very impressive.
We passed through gibber plains, which I remember learning about at school. We passed Lignum Swamp, which only floods during rain and then we came to sand dunes, before coming to Lake Pinaroo, which has no water in it but is a vibrant green. Once it is filled with water, it can take up to 7 years to become dry.
We saw heaps of Big Red Kangaroos and managed to get a great picture for Don, our neighbour.
We arrived at the Dingo Fence (or Wild Dog Fence as it is now called). It was originally built in 1887 as a rabbit fence to keep rabbits out of South Australia, but that didn't work so they built it higher in 1914 to keep the dingoes out of sheep grazing area. It is the longest fence in the world at 5,614 km (longer than the Great Wall of China) and extends from Jimbour in Queensland to the coast of South Australia.
We had to open a gate to get through the Dingo Fence and on to Cameron's Corner, which is just over the hill you can see in the photo.
Cameron's Corner is marked with a white cement post with a plaque on it and on the top of the post a plaque indicating where the different States are that meet at that point. You can see the fence in the background in the photo below as well as the post.
At Cameron's Corner is a general store, which sells fuel for $2.00/litre for diesel. There is also accommodation - units, powered sites and camping sites. The general store sells meals and they were quite reasonable considering where you are. We had a steak sandwich and had a good look around. There are caps nailed to the walls inside and they have started nailing money to the ceiling as they have run out of room for caps. There are also a couple of fairways so you can play golf in 3 States, but no one was playing today.
We headed back to Tibooburra, as I mentioned earlier, along the main road. Along this road there is a marker indicating that this area flooded in the 1974 flood. A fair bit of this drive was very flat, but offered a good contrast to what we had seen on the way out. We did pass Black Stump Creek so we have now been out beyond the black stump!
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