Country between Alpha and Prairie

[B.S.F.]

Is anybody familiar with the country between Alpha and Prairie in central Queensland? It's part of the Greatdividing range. Is it open country ,wooded, rocky ,muddy, steep, flat, undulating,wet ,dry? Any information welcome.
Thank you W.

[Barefoot Dave]

G'Day, BSF.
I'm a Outdoors Guide and the first thing I do when looking at an area is hit Gooooogle Earth. If you aren't familiar, you can adjust the angle of view to simulate flying over to get a better lay of the land.
Pick an area that interests you.
Then DERM for Topo refs: Topographic Maps - Queensland (Department of Environment and Resource Management) (http://www.derm.qld.gov.au/property/mapping/topographic_maps.html)

Contact the local Council for specific info:
Qld Councils - Find Your Council (http://www.qldcouncils.com.au/web/guest/find-your-council)

For geological/ mineral info and map references: Geoscience Portal - geoscience.gov.au (http://www.geoscience.gov.au/)

There's a world of info out there, If you are wanting to remain 'Private' in your search for information, you can call the relevant Visitor Information Centre (get number from the local Council) for mostly unbiased opinion (there's a tautology).
I assume you are looking to relocate to the area?
Hope this helps.
Dave.

[Bigbjorn]

This is pretty harsh country. There are no towns or villages, only isolated homesteads. The only major stream is the Belyando in the SE corner. Lakes shown on maps are seasonal at best. I can't imagine much in the way of roadworks has ever been done in this area other than occasional grading and a few fords. If travelling there, you will need to take everything with you.

[ramblingboy42]

Is anybody familiar with the country between Alpha and Prairie in central Queensland? It's part of the Greatdividing range. Is it open country ,wooded, rocky ,muddy, steep, flat, undulating,wet ,dry? Any information welcome.
Thank you W.

It is everything youve mentioned....right now very wet. I love that country......if you love the bush you'll like it. But youre talking a huge area there, its about 500k from Alpha to Prairie...different weather zones. Some quite spectacular scenery along the range.

[B.S.F.]

Thank you for your replies . Is it open country or forest .Ramblingboy,when you say wet, do you mean wet as in impassable, or just wet ,as in damp?
W.

[Sprint]

wet as in the bulk of the dirt roads are closed and creeks/rivers are cutting off the highways frequently.....

the county varies from open plains, to rocks, to scrub and forests..... its a LOT of ground to cover, where are you going and what are you planning on doing?

[JDNSW]

I worked in that general area fifty years ago. As said above, it is a very large area, with a variety of types of country. It usually has definite wet and dry seasons, and in the absence of sealed roads you can expect it to be pretty inaccessible from about December to March. Much of the country is poorly drained and the soil becomes very soft - I have seen large areas too soft even for horses. And what are just insignificant gullies in the dry can have five metres or more of water for weeks at a time.

You can cross the dividing range in this area without even noticing it - the term "range" is misleading, as it is simply a watershed. There are occasional stony ridges, but these do not constitute a "range" in any normal sense of the word.

It is not very good country - the area a bit to west, with internal drainage into Lakes Galilee and Buchanan is locally known as "The Desert" (or was fifty years ago).

John

[Bigbjorn]

Yes, John. A lot of the soil in there is what the locals describe as "swampy" which is not a true definition but a local slang term. This soil type sets like concrete in the dry and wears off with traffic to sometimes an almost polished surface. Traffic wears off a fine dust which gets in everywhere. In the wet, as JD says it will bog a horse (even a duck) and in some cases locals move a vehicle every few days to prevent the vehicle sinking in and becoming badly bogged just from sitting there. I have seen this happen to a crawler tractor.

[JDNSW]

The crew I was working on was shut down for about six weeks, and during that time the vehicles parked in the camp gradually sank until the axles rested on the ground - the ones we tried to move were much more deeply bogged. After about three weeks I managed to get out in my Series 1.

John

[B.S.F.]

And here was I thinking I could drive along the Great dividing range to avoid all the flooded creeks and rivers.Thank you for your information. Nothing like first hand experience.
W.

[JDNSW]

And here was I thinking I could drive along the Great dividing range to avoid all the flooded creeks and rivers.Thank you for your information. Nothing like first hand experience.
W.

I don't think that would work! When I drove out in the Series 1 as mentioned above I managed to get to Torrens Ck - and put it on a train from there to Balfe's Ck, as the road was cut.

John

[Pedro_The_Swift]

Cant be that bad,, they are mining around Alpha,,

[Bigbjorn]

If you are planning to drive fom Alpha to Prairie at this time of year, you may only be able to travel in a loop from Alpha to Longreach-Winton-Hughenden-Prairie. All sealed roads.

[BigJon]

Cant be that bad,, they are mining around Alpha,,

My brother does coal exploration work around there.

[Sprint]

Cant be that bad,, they are mining around Alpha,,

doesnt mean a whole lot to mother nature......

[JDNSW]

Cant be that bad,, they are mining around Alpha,,

"Around Alpha" is not "between Prairie and Alpha. From memory, the immediate Alpha area is by no means the worst of the area, and in any case, where mining is carried out in areas of poor surface conditions, operations will be confined to roads that have been properly drained and surfaced - and presumably it is an open cut mine so that in the actual mine, the "swampy" soil will have been removed.

John

[Bigbjorn]

I know people with a pastoral property near Alpha. They have the same bog-a-duck soil as most of the rest of the area under discussion. Other than a short stretch between Longreach and Muttaburra, there is not a sealed road in the entire area. The population of Muttaburra is about 30 people nowadays. Sunstate Qld. road map shows a "town" at Tangorin between Muttaburra and Hughenden. There is nothing there, just a signpost at a crossroads of the Muttaburra-Hughenden Road and a couple of unmade roads leading to properties. There are no other "towns", villages, hamlets, service centres in the entire region. Quite a few pastoral properties but otherwise one of the loneliest and most socially isolated parts of australia.