Kakadu and The Lost City 2005 Part3

Day 7 66km

Below Camp at Butterfly Springs.
We left the tent still pitched and set out to look around. Just a few kilometres down the road is now the park headquarters but until recently it was the Nathan River Station then it was sold to the government. As it is cut off for around 4 months of the year due to the rivers flooding, there is a reasonable size airstrip here. Just beyond the rangers station was Butterfly Springs which is the main camp ground and it is situated at the base of a cliff and alongside a waterfall with a nice pool at the bottom. It was named after the large numbers of butterflies that can be found here enjoying the dampness of the rocks surrounding the falls. There are also plenty of good camp sites and trees, mainly Grevilleas which were in flower, for shade so we went back and moved camp to here. After packing then unpacking the tent again, the afternoon was spent in the shade of the trees and the pool. As the cliff walls protect it from the heat of the sun, the water is quite cool and deep enough in parts to swim in along with many small fishes. During the day only one other car turned up but they rushed on soon after to the next place.

Day 8 148.5 kms.

Below Crossing the Limen Bight on way to Lost City. Further below Rock formations Lost City.
Today we went back to the Rangers station and obtained the key so we could go into what is called the Western Lost City. As it is such a unique area, access to it is controlled and it is not advertised yet. The track in requires four wheel drive for most of the way and it winds its way in a south westerly direction. There was a long sandy crossing of the Limen Bight River but at this far upstream it did not have much water in it. At one creek crossing there were several large rocks which were fossilised trilobites. There was some wild life around and by one large waterhole there was a very large black boar.

Eventually we arrived at the Western Lost City which is an astonishing geological formation that stretches for 15 kilometres. Huge and graceful sandstone pillars, some having almost cylindrical rocks balancing on their top while others had holes or windows eroded in them. It was quite an experience walking around some of these pillars with al their different shapes and there is not a transition zone, the flat plains stop right at their base. Only a few kilometres are accessible by car, to see the remainder involves a long walk.



After the drive back we continued down the road to the Southern Lost City which is quite close to the road and conventional cars can easily make the trip in. This rock formation is only a few kilometres in area and it is only about one quarter as high as the other Lost City. It has eroded to form different patterns, mostly beehive shape.

That evening back at the camp there were another two campers staying in the camping area, one heading north, the other, a school teacher on long leave, heading south to Calvert Hills station for a stay. All parties left in the next morning and we drove south towards Cape Crawford which is no where near the sea, The



road was corrugated with quite a few creek crossings until we reached the turnoff to Lorella Springs which is a large cattle station but a large part is opened up to visitors who want to stay on a working cattle station or stay by the river and go fishing. There are also some hot thermal springs here. The next section of the road was reasonable graded gravel down to the Carpentaria Highway and to Cape Crawford which consists of the Heartbreak Hotel, some petrol pumps and a camping ground. It is situated at the junction of the Carpenteria Highway which goes from Daly Waters to Borroloola and the Tablelands Highway which joins the Barkly Highway some 600 kms south, As it is sealed, though only single lane, it is used by travellers who want to go to the Gulf country but want to miss the rougher way through Burketown or they just want to visit Borroloola to say they have been there. So at this time of the year there was some traffic passing through including some double decked, triple trailers road train hauling cattle to market. You do not park alongside them because they can carry nearly 200 live cattle.

The hotel got its name from the original owner of the hotel and all the heartbreak he had in trying to build it, trucks delivering the goods were bogged, orders would take a long time to fill because it was so remote, hard to find good contractors, and from memory Mother Nature also played havoc with the job.

The hamburgers here were quite filling with plenty of extras and after a good lunch we continued on to Borroloola or the ‘Loo as it is also known as. About 60 kilometres past Cape Crawford is the turnoff to the large McArthur River silver, lead zinc mine which was only opened during the 1990s when it became economical to mine the ore due to its fine grain which could not be processed by the standard methods. From here to Bin Bong on the coast where the ore is transhipped into lighters which take the ore out to the bulk carriers, the road is wide with easy grades due to the large multi trailer trucks transporting the ore. Up to 6 trailers were used but the long length was found to be a problem causing them to tip over on occasions so they were reduced to three trailers. Near Borroloola the better road continues to the coast a short distance away while the highway turns right and becomes unsealed again and goes towards eventually Burketown and Normanton. Borroloola is settlement with an interesting history and as it was last century as far one could get from authority, it attracted many citizens who could be best described as ‘being people of considerable interest to the police’.


There is some dispute as to just exactly what the word 'Borroloola' means. Some sources have suggested that it means 'tea-tree', others suggest that it translates as 'place of the paperbarks', still others think it means 'fresh or running water' and others simply say that it is the Aboriginal name for the area and means nothing. With a population of nearly 800 (about 200 whites and 600 Kooris) it is a thriving community which is largely based around tourism (particularly fishing) and the needs of the surrounding cattle stations and the local people.
The local Aborigines live in camps around the town. Borroloola is unusual in that it the home of a number of very different Aboriginal cultures. The Yanyuwa, Mara, Karawa and Kurdanji people all live around the town. The Yanyuwa and Mara are referred to as 'saltwater people' and are associated with the Sir Edward Pellew Islands and the lower reaches of the McArthur and Wearyan Rivers. The Kurdanji and Karawa people are classed as 'mainland people' and are associated with land to the south and east of the present township.
The present site of the town was first sighted by Ludwig Leichhardt who passed through the area in 1845 on his way from the Darling Downs, in Queensland, to Port Essington on Cobourg Peninsula. Leichhardt named the McArthur River although it is unclear whom he was honouring. Some sources suggest that the river was named after the Macarthurs of Camden in New South Wales, although there was a man named McArthur in Leichhardt's party and it is possible that the river was named after him.
In 1856, Augustus Gregory explored the Victoria River district and the area south-west of present-day Borroloola. Pastoralists followed in his wake and the construction of the Overland Telegraph Line (completed in 1872) saw the establishment of supply depots along Leichhardt's old route, focusing attention on the possibility of establishing townships along the Roper and McArthur Rivers. The principal stock route for supplying the pastoral domains of the Northern Territory and Kimberley was opened up in 1872 when Dillon Cox contracted Wentworth Darcy Uhr to drove 400 head of cattle from Queensland to a telegraph supply depot on the Roper River. Upon his arrival, the depot was closing so he blazed his crucial trail by continuing on to what is now Darwin Harbour. By 1885, over 60,000 cattle had trodden this path.
The establishment of the stock route and the explorations for a prospective Queensland-Darwin-WA railway stimulated interest in developing townships on the McArthur and Roper Rivers. Thus, in early 1885, it was decided that town sites on both rivers should be surveyed with a view to establishing ports and supply bases. It was the survey team led by J. P. Hingston, which named the town Borroloola.
Below old Police Station now town museum.
The town grew rapidly. By 1887, the year of its first race meeting, there was a police station, a court house, two hotels, a butcher's shop and a general store. By the turn of the century Borroloola had gained a fierce reputation as a frontier town of total disrepute. The drovers moving cattle between the Kimberleys and Western Queensland stopped in the town and a trade in rum, smuggled from Thursday Island, was established. This illicit trade inevitably attracted the detritus of the South Seas to the town. It became known as a centre for criminals, murderers and alcoholics - a reputation it only lost when the town became a virtual ghost town in the 1930s.
An article which originally appeared in the Northern Standard in 1931 in which an old timer recalls arriving in the town, presumably around the turn of the century, to find 'What a motley crowd they were! Brumby runners from the Calvert and Robinson Rivers, the Orphan (Jack Martin) Jack Sherringham (who the police were after for lifting horses in Queensland), Pigweed Harry (Harry Herbert) Billy Hynes (Billy the Informer), big eyed Billy, Johnnie Mooney and others. Old Billy Macleod (an old Palmer prospector and a great bushman and one of the whitest men in the north) with his two partners, O'Brien and Hunt (also old time Palmer prospectors) were starting a store at the landing...A few days after we arrived, a schooner came up the river and made fast at the landing. The schooner was the 'Good Intent' and Black Jack Reid or Maori Reid owner in command of her. Her first mate was a big buck American nigger. We never heard his name, but christened him 'Smoked Beef'.'
In one of those strange stories which seem to be part of the mythology of the Territory the town once boasted one of the most impressive libraries in rural Australia. The story goes that in the 1890s, when the town was booming, the resident officer in charge of the Borroloola Police Station, an Irishman named Cornelius Power, decided to establish a town library. He was granted a small sum of money and duly ordered some books from Mudie's Select Library in London. From that point the story becomes blurred. Somehow, by the 1920s, the library had grown to 3000 volumes and, Northern Territory mythologising being what it is, the rumour mongers had a field day.
Some people suggested that a grant of books had been made by Lord Hopetoun the Governor of Victoria and later the first Australian Governor-General. Another theory was that the Carnegie Trust of USA or the Andrew Carnegie Foundation (sources differ) had been asked for some good reading material (there are suggestions that the person making the request was a visitor to the town in 1919 or, maybe, Lord Hopetoun) and had sent books to the isolated settlement. The library of books which arrived were initially housed in the Court House but when it was demolished they were transferred to the local lockup. The predictable joke of well educated criminals is supposed to have become a reality when W. E. (Bill) Harney was gaoled for six months for supposed cattle duffing. Certainly Harney went on to write a number of books and by 1958 he had been appointed official curator at Uluru.
The library, officially known as the McArthur River Institute, is a source of endless stories of outback education. Charles Joseph Scrutton, widely thought to be the last of the great Overlanders (he had worked for Wentworth D'Arcy Uhr on the 1873 droving expedition through the area) claimed to have read the whole of the library three times. Today the remnants of the library have been spread far and wide. Those books which weren't destroyed by silverfish, cockroaches, mildew, and the humidity of the tropics, found their way into private collections or simply disappeared.
Over the years Borroloola has been a haven for eccentrics with exotic names like 'The Freshwater Admiral', 'The Redbank Hermit' and 'Death Adder'.
None of these people was more interesting or unusual than Roger Jose, the Hermit of Borroloola. It was said that he was the brother of the Dean of Adelaide. In 1916 he walked to Borroloola from Cunnamulla in Queensland. He lived in a shed at the rear of Tattersalls Hotel until a cyclone severely damaged it in 1938. He then rolled a damaged 1000 gallon tank from the hotel to the site on top of the hill opposite the present clinic and, with his Aboriginal companion, lived in it until his death in 1963. He was an eccentric who took full advantage of the Borroloola library and reputedly knew vast sections of Virgil's Aeneid in Latin. He also had a good working knowledge of Shakespeare. There is an interesting transcript of an interview Ted Egan did with the ABC during the 1960's about the 'Loo'. The Ted Egan in the interview was an Aboriginal Affairs Patrol Officer, then he became a singer/composer of outback ballads and one song recorded during the early 1970’s “They have some Bloody Good Drinkers in the Northern Territory’ was the defacto anthem for the NT for many years. He has also recorded many Aboriginal and Macassans songs. He was the Administrator of the Northern Territory until his term finished a month ago, ie he is the Queen’s Representative here. His favourite musical instrument was the empty cardboard beer carton which he would beat the tune on.