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Malcolm Tattersall, Feb. 2005
If Australia is little known to the rest of the world, North Queensland is little known to the rest of Australia - and Western Queensland is little known even to most North Queensland people. Most of the NQ population lives in the provincial cities along the coast - Townsville, Cairns, Mackay, Bowen, Rockhampton - and most of the remainder live in the roughly 50 km wide strip between the coast and the Great Dividing Range. These pictures introduce some of the country on the inland side of the mountains.
Near Ewan, between Hidden Valley and Hervey's Range, in late July, well into the dry season - and after a wet season that provided much less rain than usual. For those who don't have a regional map handy (and that will be most of you) Ewan is less than 100 km north-west of Townsville.
Sawpit Gorge, White Mountains National Park.
Grevilleas in flower, April, Burra Range, White Mountains National Park.
Grevillea flowers.
It's not always dry. This is the bridge at Belyando Crossing, about halfway between Charters Towers and Clermont, in mid-January. We walked down to the bridge, and took the photo, because the river was much higher than usual - it's often a trickle between sandbanks. But there was more rain upstream a week or so later, and the bridge was under water for nearly a week after that.
Belyando Crossing, by the way, is the biggest place on the 400 km stretch of road between Charters Towers and Clermont. It has a permanent population of less than a dozen people.
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Created 2005
Updated June 2008