Gulf of Carpentaria

So, really, I mean, it's in winter...

I've lived up in the Gulf of Carpentaria, full of crocs.

Those guys don't move during winter from my understanding.

I just think it's hilarious that they've picked a croc-infested river to hold an international event in.

Some of the finest Australian opals come from western Queensland.

That region has a long belt of opal-bearing country, extending from a point near the Gulf of Carpentaria across the southern border of the state and into New South Wales.

The opals are brought into Brisbane by the handful and sold at low prices.

Many of the opal miners are sheep shearers who hunt for the stones in the off-season.

We had a paper just last year that actually seemed to suggest that people came into northern Australia via two routes, both the southern route, which comes through island Southeast Asia and Timor, across the Timor Sea, which could have been up to 70, 80 kilometres of open water.

and into northern Australia, but also island hopping through the islands and then into New Guinea and into the Gulf of Carpentaria as well.

So we see different routes, we see different arrival times, and we see movement back and forwards.

So just a lot of connectivity and a lot more movement and complexity actually to the story than we originally thought.

Another vote for the morning glory.

Russ? in Howard says, what type of cloud is it? I think they call it the morning glory in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

That's the one, Russ.

She is a beauty.

So they kind of colonized the coast first, which makes sense, I guess.

They reached Birktown, which is about 800 kilometers west in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

So that's around here.

um, in the Northwest.

Wow, that is an enormous, uh, load in order to transport a- across the road, and I imagine there'll be some tight corners along the way, and your system enables them to get around it.

Yeah, well, you get a country like Australia, which we're, uh, you know, we, we took the business to in 2000, and a client like that picks the switch room up in, uh, in Adelaide and takes it up to the northern areas of, uh, the Gulf of Carpentaria, and it's, it's a, it's a 4,800, uh, kilometer haul, and, uh, having to go, uh, around a number of corners on the way there.

So, um, a trailer that has that ability is, uh, gonna pay dividends for the customer.

The other amazing thing that I've, that I've seen is the, this disconnected trailer that you have with the, with the same system, and it...

And it also involves the Queensland government, the federal government, and an environmental organization that does brilliant work called the Nature Conservancy Association.

And between them, these organisations, the two governments and the Nature Conservancy, have just purchased three properties in Cape York and the Gulf of Carpentaria, which will be added to Queensland's protected area network.

The acquisitions of Kendall River Station, Westmoreland Station and Cliffdale Station means almost 400,000 hectares of significant habitat across Cape York and the Gulf of Carpentaria will be protected.

Kendall River Station has an important swamp mahogany and Darwin stringybark ecosystem, while Westmoreland Station supports threatened wildlife, including the endangered Carpentarian grass wren.

the Grey Falcon and the purple-crowned Fairy Wren.