Ever since a postal service was established here in 1872, Eulo has been the natural stopover for anyone heading out into the Paroo’s mulga lands.

Today the town continues to provide an ideal basecamp from which to explore the rich natural and cultural heritage of the Paroo River catchment.

If you’re just passing through be sure to take a relaxed break on a stroll through town and down to the river.

From a stopover here at Eulo you are also well placed to enjoy several memorable daytrips. Within easy reach (by outback standards!) are Currawinya National Park near Hungerford and the renowned opal fields of Yowah. On your Yowah trip you can also explore the stopover at the Allroy Campgrounds.

On any of these outings you can also explore the Springvale Mud Springs located some 8km west of Eulo along Adventure Way.

Then there are the twin features of the Eulo Granite outcrop and bush racetrack to explore on the town common. You can walk or cycle there via 3km section of the heritage path. Alternatively if you have a 4WD vehicle you can drive in via Pithery Road.

WHAT MAKES EULO SO SPECIAL?

You may have already heard about the renowned local features associated with Eulo. The Eulo Opal Queen, Eulo Springs Super Group, the Eulo Diprotodon and the Eulo Ridge Granites all spring to mind.

What you might not know about these Eulo icons however is the way their stories all intertwine and are linked together by a common thread.

This connecting strand is the variety of the bedrock and resulting landscapes on which they stand. We can easily appreciate this today thanks to a geological transect diagram printed in 1895.

Can you see how an upsweep of the ancient basement granite occurs here at Eulo? Look at the effect this has in warping up to ground level ancient sediments that are elsewhere trapped deep below the surface in the Great Artesian Basin.

Eulo’s fame and the legend of the Eulo Opal Queen rest on the opal boom at nearby Yowah in the 1890s. The opal could be won from shallow diggings there owing to the fact that the pink sandstones in the lower strata had been warped up by the nearby granite to outcrop at ground level.

... it all starts with Eulo Granite

As the Eromanga Basin sediments were being laid down over the past 100 million years, the Eulo Ridge Granites stood as small, high relief islands in the inland sea then covering large swathes of Eastern Australia.

Upsweep of the bedrock granite at Eulo has brought the freshwater-bearing sedimentary rocks normally found at the bottom of the Great Artesian basin up close to the surface. The resulting cluster of springs around here has long made this region an ecological hotspot.

Ancient animals like the now extinct giant marsupial diprotodon would have relied on the Eulo region’s natural springs. When they died, the alkaline spring waters around them then had the effect of preserving their remains.