Thursday, 18 April 2024
Sitting in the vast dining room of the Innamincka Hotel, Simon updates us:
I clung on to sporadic internet and enjoyed some retrospective contemplation. The Innamincka projection set up was now running on auto and it’s grand to watch with the stunning desert sunsets while counting the crickets and locusts.
Slowly the amount of people coming through has been on the increase as the roads open up and people start to feel confident they can actually make it through!
Time for me to pack up my gear and head off on the road to Cunnamulla.
Bitumen all the way but they forgot to mention only one lane of bitumen! If a truck comes the other way, it’s slow down big time and move off the road onto the gravel. If it’s another car, then it’s almost like a game of chicken to see who will get off the road first! Most people were extremely polite and made a move to the side way before the last minute.
The wildlife I saw on the way was too fast to get a photo of. I counted one wild dingo, two bearded dragons (lizards), one large goanna, about 25 emus and lots of other birds.
A few cattle lazily walked across the road in front of me too… The car was a lot better on fuel with a bit of weight gone, and with only one shallow river crossing, I’d made it to Cunnamulla.
After meeting Marty, who had flown in via Brisbane, I found out the river had flooded quite high in Cunnamulla and a lot of roads were still cut in Queensland. The floodwaters receded a bit, but what it revealed was a brown, silty sludge over the ground. And the points where we were to install the projectors were still underwater!
Lots of phone calls and rearranged timetables with Paroo Shire Council and we decided to implemented Plan B. Waiting for Cindi’s arrival and putting the Holomaze together.
Meanwhile, all of us illuminarti’s joked for a minute that we would have to find a helicopter for Cindi. In the end she was able to drive the whole way to Cunnamulla from the Blue Mountains, with a large vehicle to do the pickups of everything needed back in NSW. This would also relieve Simon of all the weight in the trailer on his return trip. The road just south of Cunnamulla was still cut by floodwater at that point so it was a wing and a prayer that it would go down by the time Cindi headed through….
All aboard!
How are your travels going? Let us know on our Facebook page.
Find out more about the Kinipapa remount and Paroo’s Outback River Lights Festival.
#flooding #outbackaustralia
