Innamincka

Headed into Innamincka and part of the way is bitumen but the rest goes from good gravel to rough. The condition of these roads depends on when the grader last went though.

The town was bigger than I expected. There is a pub, a General store, a Laundromat and sundry other depots and the like. The big excitement for the week was Friday afternoon when the huge semis came in with food and grog!. All hands on deck to unload it all. These places are very seasonal and so they have to make money in a few months to survive the rest of the year but the prices in the General Store were ridiculous. I am not paying $8:50 for a packet of biscuits. A small apple was a dollar. Now fruit and veg I can understand but biscuits????

We camped on the town Common – no power or water and an honesty box to pay. Lots of people camped along the banks of the Cooper Creek here. You can stay up to 3 days but no one would ever know or care how long you stayed.

We also met up with the 4x4 club mob – 6 cars of them – doing the East to West trip starting at Byron Bay. I just ‘don’t get’ 40+ days living out of the back of the car and pitching tents most days just to say I have travelled East to Wast but these folk were thrilled to bits and in high spirits when we met them.

The Innamincka’s history is really amazing. When you drive around the town you see ruins of a vibrant place long gone. Like the few lasting ruins of the old police station. The police now come from Leigh Creek a couple of times a year to do registrations and licences’ etc. Innamincka was founded by Europeans as a police camp in 1882.

You can also see an amazing pile of old bottles at the original pub site where they sat at the bar and when they finished threw their bottles out the back door on the pile of bottles.

What has been restored though is the wonderful old 2 story Nursing home. It is now the Ranger Station headquarters. The home was opened in 1928. It was part of the network of outback hospitals set up by John Flynn and run by the Australian Inland Mission and even then people had to travel hundreds of miles to get medical help. Declining population saw it closed in 1951. I couldn’t believe that the original building had a second story but the pictures show it did.

At one stage there were several nurses here at any one time. There is a great pic. of the nurses who went swimming in the river and playing tennis. They also showed their amazing garden where they grew carrots and other veg along with foxgloves and the like. Simply amazing to contemplate when you see the barren dry garden today. I might add the note also said they used to run the hose all day and sometimes all night. I must admit I stood in awe and looked at the nurses in their wonderful white starched uniforms ( head gear and all) and one can but wonder how they managed it out here.