Author: geoff

Karma [noun]: Good or bad luck, resulting from one’s actions.

Three things happened in quick succession this morning. Possibly four things happened this morning if I mention the weather, but technically the weather happens every day so it doesn’t really count as a thing.

Let’s get the weather out of the way first. It was cold. Like maybe 5 degrees inside the van, and unpleasantly colder outside the van. Fortunately I’d had the foresight to put the air conditioner remote beside the bed last night so I set it to tropical and hid under the doona for another hour or so until it warmed up.

If I am to be completely accurate in my reporting, I’d have to confess that I fell asleep again and didn’t wake until about 8.30am, which was embarrassingly late, but I must have been tired.

Once I got out of bed, three things happened in quick succession. You probably thought that I’d forgotten about them. I may be getting old and forgetful, but at least I’m … nope sorry, I can’t remember 🙁

Anyway the first thing that happened was that I heard old mate from site #29 – you remember old mate from #29 … sunning himself like a lizard, twice the man that I will ever be, PPE, toilet canister, crocs – he was stomping around, packing down his van, rolling his hoses, hooking up his car, and he left in a cloud of dust.

So essentially that means that there will be no more blog fodder from him.

The second thing that happened was that I was greeted by a cheery little red light on the top of my toilet … it’s time to empty my canister. And I wasn’t taking any chances 🙁

The third thing that happened was that I discovered that the blue bird of happiness had been to visit us during the night. That’s going to need a good wash …

Today was a bit of a lazy, “walk up the main street one side and come back the other side” kind of a day.

All of the museums and attractions are free entry, and most surprisingly most are open 24 hours. “Just push the door open, any time of the day or night” was the instruction we received on several occasions.

The first stop was the Rail museum …

We stopped by the visitor’s centre and had a look at the art gallery …

… the Quilpie museum, and the military museum …

… and then we stopped at the bakery for a cream donut, and then the newsagent for coffee. Yes, the newsagent. Best coffee in town we were told, and it was pretty good.

By this time we had reached the end of Brolga Street, so swapped over to the other side to stop at the Empire Cafe to get “the best toastie in town”. I had a ham, cheese and tomato toastie, and MBW had a chicken, cheese and pineapple toastie, and they were both pretty good!

We then wandered down to the Quilpie Powerhouse museum. Quilpie was the first town to have a powerhouse as a result of a government scheme to provide electricity to small towns in rural and outback Queensland, and the Quilpie powerhouse was commissioned in 1952.

We then went around to St Finbarr’s Catholic Church to have a look at the opal altar.

On the way back to the van we stopped in at the local library and bought some 2nd hand books.

Today was mostly a walking day – a great way to get out and see Quilpie and meet the beautiful people who live here. >10,000 steps and a beautiful day in outback Queensland.

This afternoon we gave Elsie a run out to the lake and then did the river walk – both locations attractions that we were told we really should do.

I’ve mentioned in an previous post that the streets are very wide in these country towns. This is the street that leads down to the caravan park. But my calculations it is about 23 metres wide!

I’ve also mentioned – yesterday I think – that you need to ensure you have plenty of fuel when going for a drive. You know that they are serious when they give you a final warning before leaving town.

Tonight we are going down to the Bulloo Racing Club because JT is in town for a community meal, and we are told that everyone is welcome. You’ll hear about that tomorrow.

Ciao

One of the best parts about staying in a caravan park is the sport of people watching. That could be anything from watching people try to reverse their ridiculously large van into an impossibly small space, or any other activities that happen in the park.

The older couple next to us on site 29 at the Channel Country Caravan Park in Quilpie were sitting outside their van sunning themselves like a couple of lizards on a rock when we arrived yesterday.

Our spot – site 28 – was indeed one of those impossibly narrow spaces that had “divorce” written all over it … or at the very least “sleep on the couch for the next couple of nights.”

I’ve seen a sign that says “I’m sorry for what I said when I was reversing the van.” Truer words have never been spoken.

But despite that, I managed to reverse it in almost perfectly on the first attempt, and with just a little more jiggery-pokery I was able to make it completely aligned with the concrete slab, perfectly straight, at right angles to the road, and level. My OCD is still alive and well, even on holidays 🙁

I’m not sure who was more surprised by my parking efforts – me or the bloke next door.

It would be unkind to describe the bloke next door as seriously overweight, or even just obese … my mother always taught me not to say unkind things about others.

So let’s just say that the guy next door is twice the man that I will ever be. Perhaps three times. And he uses a wheelie walker to get around, just to complete the picture.

When I got out of bed this morning, the temperature gauge said it was about 7 degrees inside the van, and quite a bit colder outside.

I opened the screens first thing this morning just to check that the world hadn’t ended, and I’m pleased to report that it hasn’t – well, not here in Quilpie anyway. Anything is possible elsewhere in the world.

The thing that I noticed was that old mate next door was kitted out in his PPE – short sleeved shirt, shorts, crocs and garden gloves. OK, so maybe not full PPE in the traditional sense, but the garden gloves were the give-away. He definitely had something important going on, and he needed to protect his hands while he was doing it.

A few more minutes of covert observation and everything became clear. It was time to empty his toilet cassette!

This caravan park is the only place I have ever stayed where there is a mini dump point at each site. Normally you have power, water and sullage, and then there is a centrally located communal dump point where you get to queue up behind all of the other poor suckers who are waiting to empty their cassettes, but not here in Quilpie. Here you get your own dump point, right there at your site!

So I got to watch him go through the process of emptying his cassette. Now I won’t go into all of the sordid details, but let’s just say that it gives a whole new meaning to the expression “splash your boots” .. or in old mate’s case, splash your crocs.

At least he was wearing gardening gloves to protect his hands, but a shame he didn’t have something more substantial on his feet.

That cheered me up 🙂

Then I opened the fridge to start the process of making coffee and I discovered that we were almost out of coffee for our coffee maker.

That made me sad 🙁

Just to clarify, if you are at all surprised that we brought a coffee maker on our western Queensland adventure, then you clearly don’t know us very well and we probably shouldn’t be FaceBook friends.

There was only really one thing on the agenda for today, and that was a trip out to Eromanga (population ~30) to meet Cooper, Queensland’s newest dinosaur out at the Natural History Museum. We had an 11.00am booking and it is a bit over an hour from Quilpie, so we knew that we needed to get away by around 9.30am to be there in plenty of time.

We also needed to get some groceries – milk, bread rolls, etc – so we needed to get moving by 9.00am. We went to the bakery, and then to the Foodworks, and then back to the van to drop everything off.

Surprise, surprise – despite being in a township of 570 people and 1000km west of home, packets of ground coffee were (almost) the same price as we pay at home. So were many other items.

Not bananas though – they were 8.00/kg for cavendish, and 11.00/kg for lady fingers, so we didn’t buy any of them. In fact, other than the milk and the bread rolls, I don’t think that we bought anything fresh. To be completely truthful, I think that we made some poor dietary choices, but the things we bought were yummy, on special, and I’m a firm believer that calories consumed on holidays don’t count.

As we were leaving the park this morning to get our groceries prior to heading out to Eromanga, we couldn’t help but notice how many vans had cleared out of the park early this morning. I assume that they were all here for the football yesterday?

Quilpie is a pretty little township; very quiet on a Sunday morning. Nothing much open, nothing much happening, nobody moving around – all of the locals must have been still safely ensconced in their homes, because the majority of people on the streets had a caravan hooked up and were getting fuel.

The trip out to Eromanga was uneventful. 101km and (from memory) about a dozen cars that we passed on the way out. I think we saw more things dead on the road than we saw alive and grazing in the dry and desolate paddocks.

Among the dead were pigs, cattle, kangaroos, sheep and an emu, and much the same among the living, except that we also saw some brolgas in a paddock. Well, I think that they are brolgas. Feel free to comment and correct me if I am wrong.

It’s funny how at home, we never really worry too much about fuel because there is always another fuel station around the corner. You have choice of stations according to the retailer your prefer, where you get the best discount, and how much you want to pay.

Out here in the west, you find yourself looking at the fuel gauge each time you get in the car and doing a calculation to figure out of you’ve got enough fuel to get you to where you are going, and – if the place that you are going has no fuel options – get you back again.

We had just over half a tank when we left Quilpie this morning, or 400-odd km according to the trip meter, so there was no real concern … but if any of the (4) stations in Quilpie ran out of diesel, we could have a problem.

The road to Eromanga was just like every other road we have travelled so far out here – alternating between wide enough for two cars, to barely wide enough for one. The roads are straight, well surfaced, and the scenery is ever-changing.

We got to Eromanga at about 10.45 and went in search of the museum, which is about another 10km on the other side of the township. Eromanga is also a pretty little town, with an emphasis on “little” – population 30ish.

Eromanga’s claim to fame is that it is the furthest town from the sea, a claim that is disputed in various “reputable” forums, like Wikipedia. But their “welcome to Eromanga” sign states it as a fact.

The Eromanga Natural History Museum is an interesting place, with a good tour of the workshop and demonstrations on how the bones are found, extracted, and processed.

Apparently they have 90 years of bone processing to do based on the bones that they have extracted so far, so job security sounds like it is pretty good at the museum.

The trip home was much the same as the trip out, except in reverse.

We were back at the van for a late lunch, then out to fill the car at one of the few fuel options in Quilpie – this one an unattended card-only station.

A bit like in the USA, you prepay $100 for fuel, then fill up, then collect your receipt. For my $100 of prepaid fuel, the pump clicked off at $96.43 and then shut itself off, and gave me a receipt for $96.43 … yet the tank wasn’t full. Maybe it thought I was panic buying, so limited my purchase?

In any case, after getting fuel, we went and (unsuccessfully) fossicked for opals, then went to the local free vehicle wash down facility and gave Elsie a nice bath with hot artesian water, then off to Baldy Top to watch the sunset.

Baldy Top is a local lookout in an otherwise very flat landscape, a beautiful spot for watching the sunset, and one of the local “must do” attractions in Quilpie.

The track up to Baldy Top is at best tricky, and at worst treacherous, and certainly not for the faint of heart or fleet of foot … yet the old(er) couple coming down the track ahead of us were both walking with the aid of walking sticks.

I offered to help them down the track as I felt that would be easier than having to carry them down on a stretcher if they fell, but they somehow made it down unscathed.

Tomorrow will be a lazy day looking around Quilpie, and we will be heading to the Newsagent to get “the best coffee in town”.

Today we did about 250km just going out to Eromanga and back, plus some running around and then out to Baldy Top this evening for the sunset.

I’ve realised that I haven’t been putting in the daily mileages and statistics, so I will go back and start updating them. If you have just read the previous posts and they have travel details and mileage, then you know I’ve already done it.

Ciao

It was a bit of a day for funny signs today. If you consider two funny signs a “day for funny signs”, that is.

As I described in yesterday’s post, we decided to pull up stumps a day early and head off to Quilpie. We also figured that with a population of 595 peeps, it has to be at least twice as exciting as Thargomindah with a population of only 270 peeps, right?

We checked with the caravan park in Quilpie if it was OK to arrive a day early and stay for the three nights, and the next question was “are you here for the football?”

You know that unpleasant and uncomfortable silence that happens when you are asked a question that seems completely out of context and borderline stupid? Wasn’t the 3rd of 3 State of Origin games LAST Wednesday night? And has the State of Origin EVER been played in Quilpie, or are they just planning to watch it here 3 days after it was played?

Have I missed something important?

Me: “Sorry, what football game?”

Lady at Caravan Park: “The footy game between Redcliffe and Ipswich.”

Me (thinking): ”Seriously? Redcliffe and Ipswich are playing football in Quilpie?”

Me (saying): “Er, no. We are not in Quilpie for the football.”

Apparently the NFL decided to bring some “real football” to Quilpie. No, I don’t understand it either.

In Thargomindah this week we have seen some hand-written signs in many of the store windows and public bulletin boards simply saying (in a child’s handwriting): “Bruiser is missing. Please find him and bring him to Nicholas’s house.”

I have a working assumption that Bruiser is a dog, because it would be an unusual name for a canary, or a cat, or a pet snake.

Now while I have absolutely no idea who Nicholas is, I am quite confident that you could walk up to any local and ask “who is Nicholas?”, and I’m sure that you would get a reply like “Nicholas? He’s Jimmy-Don’s and Mary-Lou’s oldest. He’s lost his dog, don’t you know?”

I also feel compelled to point out for the purpose of completeness that the sun rises and sets much later in the west than in Brisbane. In Quilpie today, sunrise is 7.09am (Brisbane is 6.36, Thargomindah was 7.14am as it is even further west), and sunset is 5.48pm (Brisbane is 5.11pm). I just needed to make that clear so you don’t think that we are lazy and sleeping in every day.

So we woke today at about 7.15am and did the normal stuff. Over breakfast we estimated that we should be out of the park by 9.30am, and at exactly 9.28am we were rolling out the front gate. Overachievers that we are!

The road out of Thargomindah is a single lane, narrow bridge over the Bulloo River.

To get to Quilpie you travel about 7km back towards Eulo and Cunnamulla, and then take the Quilpie turnoff …

… and then the road gets very narrow …

… and then it turns to dirt for about 20km.

The road from Thargomindah to Quilpie is roughly 200km, and it’s a great road for the majority of the trip, but some bits are pretty hard going. The dirt sections had us doing no more than 80km/h, and we were kicking up a dust cloud that Richard Branson could have seen from space.

Elsie is starting to look like she needs a good bath 🙁 Either that, or I could probably plant potatoes.

At about the middle of trip – around the 100km mark – you are starting to look out for a McDonalds drive-thru, or even a dodgy “Hepatitis Harry’s” truck stop, just to have a reason to break the journey and stretch your legs.

Sadly, there is no Hepatitis Harry’s, and certainly no McDonalds drive-thru … but you do come across the Toompine Pub (which is closed for renovations), and the Bowerbird’s Rest coffee shop, where you can buy a fabulous coffee and some passionfruit cake and gooey Caramel Anzac Slice, and it is absolutely worth the stop!

It doesn’t have quite the facilities of a McDonalds drive-thru, but there was plenty of parking and the coffee and cake was outstanding. MBW even tried (unsuccessfully) to prise the Caramel Anzac Slice recipe out of the lady running the place 🙂

I’m not sure what the population of Toompine is, but I suspect that I saw them all inside the coffee shop.

Which brings me to the second funny sign of the day … the enterprising spirit of the Toompine community in opening a coffee shop in the middle of nowhere is one thing, but a junior member of the Toompine community placed this sign out the front of the coffee shop offering an additional service while you enjoy your coffee and cake.

After coffee and cake, the trip was just another 100km of the same – all bitumen, no dirt, and the grand total of 10 other vehicles that we passed for the entire 200km. Plus some more emus, some cattle (both dead and alive), and more bug DNA on the windscreen than I care to think about.

We got into Quilpie around 1.30pm, unhooked, unpacked, did a couple of loads of washing, did a quick reconnaissance of the town and discovered – not unsurprisingly – that everything is closed on a Saturday afternoon.

Had a soak in the spa bath …

… and planned out the next couple of days in Quilpie.

The football game – remember the football game? – was in full swing by mid-afternoon and I’m pleased to report that Redcliffe beat Ipswich 26-22.

We swung by the campfire to meet some of our fellow travellers on the way out for dinner.

Dinner tonight was at the Imperial Hotel Quilpie and was a disappointing rump steak (mine) and a well-chosen Chicken Schnitty (MBW), and then back to the caravan park for coffee.

And another spectacular western Queensland sunset …

On our way back to the van, we thought that we would get a last 10 minutes of the camp fire to warm up, and some of the Redcliffe Dolphin’s players and hangers-on were also sitting around the campfire so we got to chatting. It appears that they are staying here at the caravan park in the “Ensuite Cabin” section.

You know that uncomfortable feeling when you are talking to someone and they seem vaguely familiar? One of the football crowd just gave me that feeling. MBW said that he played in the State of Origin, but I couldn’t place him and I didn’t want to be rude …

Apparently we were sitting around the fire with Justin Hodges. Who would’ve known?

JT (that’s Jonathon Thurston) is going to be in Quilpie on Monday night, hosting a free community meal at the Bulloo Park Racecourse and everyone is welcome … so we might pop down for a feed and a night out.

Don’t let MBW ever tell you that I never take her anywhere!

Tomorrow we are doing a trip out to Eromanga (about 100km) to have a look at the dinosaur museum, and if I remember to get fuel before we leave Quilpie, we will be making a trip back again in the afternoon … but you will hear about that tomorrow.

Ciao

The weatherman got it right today. None of this “43% chance of rain”; today was forecast to be windy and dusty and guess what? It was windy and dusty.

Possibly even very windy and very dusty.

So windy in fact that we rolled the awning in before heading out for the day just in case it tore off the van and disappeared.

It was one of those funny days where the wind was so cold that unless you put on several layers you froze, but as soon as you got out of the wind you couldn’t get those layers off fast enough!

Ok, so just to give you fair warning, there will be some audience participation required for today’s post. Specifically, a quiz. A bit like Where’s Wally, but … different.

I’ve completely lost track of days, but according to my watch today is Friday. If I’d been at work today I would have been … nope, it doesn’t matter.

Today was a pretty relaxed day in Thargomindah. Remember yesterday that I said we are here for 3 days? Well, that has now changed. One of the great things about being on holiday is that plans can change, things can be fluid, we can break some rules.

It’s a safe assumption that every day starts with ablutions, breakfast and coffee … so I’ll stop telling you that every day.

We started the day with a walking tour. Someone had told us that for $10 you can get a card that gives you entry to a number of the historical things to see in Thargomindah, so we purchased our $10 cards yesterday for $12.50 (don’t know, so don’t ask) and did the walk today.

Maybe not the smartest move to be out walking down wide open streets on a very windy and dusty day, but that was the choice that we made.

We are staying at the Explorer’s Caravan Park, which is a pretty little council-run park at the end of town.

Our first stop for the day was the Old Jail, which is almost next door to the caravan park.

Remember that I spoke earlier about breaking the rules … ? This was right across the road from the Police Station!

After the old jail, we had a nice wander down the Main Street of Thargomindah. As you would expect, everything is close in a small town like this.

One of the things that I love about these small towns is that they have very wide main streets and – on some streets – rear-in angle parking. I expect that the width of the main street is a throwback from the days of bullock teams, as the streets are wide enough to be able to turn a whole bullock team around in the one move.

Some of you may recall that I worked for Telstra in a previous life, and when I started my apprenticeship it was still Telecom Australia. This was renamed to Telstra in 1993-1995 … yet things do not change quickly in Thargomindah …

Also along the main street of Thargomindah are a number of buildings showing art work paintings.

We walked up a couple of streets and across a couple of streets and we had a look at the 2nd historical attraction – the old hospital.

We wandered back to the Main Street and went in search of coffee, finally tracking down a place called “Coffee on Dowling” … which is closed until further notice. Just a word of warning – if you are in Thargomindah, your coffee options are limited. Very Limited 🙁

We headed back to the van via the IGA after picking up some essentials, and made our own coffee.

After lunch we took Elsie out for a spin to the old powerhouse, the 3rd and final local historical attraction.

Here is a fun fact: outside the old powerhouse are the British flag, the French flag, and the Australian flag. Why?

Because Thargomindah was the third place in the world to have electric power supplied to homes, after London and Paris. The electric power here was generated by hot water coming out of an artesian bore under high pressure, which was used to turn a turbine, which generates electricity.

This blog may be many things, but we try to make it informative.

We also swung past the old cemetery to have a look (if you are interested in looking at old cemeteries), and it was … disappointing. Or maybe empty is a better word? But at least we can say we stopped and saw it.

We decided to take a spin out to Lake Bindegolly National Park – about 40km before Thargomindah – to have a look at the lake. It is one of the “must do” things when you are here.

We (foolishly) followed Google Maps directions and overshot the turnoff to the National Park by about 3km, so we turned back to find that the turnoff doesn’t actually exist. So instead of following good old reliable Google Maps, we decided to follow our instinct instead and kept heading out of town until we found the real turnoff to the National Park.

Now remember right back at the beginning that I said there would be a quiz? Here it is: Can you spot the lake in any of the photos above?

Nope, I didn’t think so. Maybe a glimpse of a sliver of water waaaaaaay off in the distance in one of them, but really not anything worthy of being called a “lake”.

It was a nice drive anyway, and on the way back we were rewarded with all manner of wildlife wandering aimlessly across the road into town.

We got some photos of the Bulloo River heading back to the caravan park for the night …

… and we were rewarded with another spectacular sunset.

Now I also mentioned at the start that our plans had changed. Originally we planned to stay 3 nights in Thargomindah (population 270), but other things that we would like to see require some significant driving to get to some very small places – Hungerford (population 23, and a distance of 147km away), or Noccundra (population 3, and a distance of 130km away).

Both of those require the best part of a day’s driving each, so we decided to save them for the next time we are in Thargomindah. We have decided to hitch up Ernie (that’s the new caravan’s name, BTW) and head instead up to Quilpie (population 595) for the next three nights.

We will be staying at the Channel Country Tourist Park and Spas. They have artesian spas at the park so we will be taking a dip or two.

And after that we will turn east and start the run for home. Sigh 🙁 But that is still a week away and I will worry about that later …

Ciao

I really need to start tonight’s post by going back a couple of days just for context.

Two nights ago, we were at Charlotte Plains Station, remember? Tuesday night – grumpy lady, dead tree, vague instructions, bathtubs with artesian water, campfire, no mobile reception, no Google, no TV reception …. so we missed the Masterchef grand finale.

Fast forward to Wednesday night and we were free camping in Eulo and once again we had phone reception, access to the intergoogle, and 10Play catch-up TV. So after the Bogans went inside out of the rain, we played catch-up to see who won Masterchef.

We heard the Bogans cheering every so often, so I assume that they were watching the State of Origin, but because we weren’t watching it, we couldn’t tell who they were cheering for. Probably NSW. They seemed like those kind of people.

You may also recall that the forecast for today (Thursday) is 43% chance of rain. We watched the end of Masterchef, then the end of State of Origin, then – exhausted – I tried to get to the land of nod as I listened to the rain falling steadily on the van.

For reasons that I won’t discuss here, I needed to use earplugs last night and ended up having a terrible sleep. Not the fault of the earplugs, but probably more from the rain and that it was much warmer than we had been experiencing.

And because NSW won the State of Origin.

I woke this morning wondering if the Bogans and their giant Kermit caravan was just a bad dream, by alas they were still there and all stomping around in the mud.

Clearly that gene pool needs a little more chlorine.

So this morning we did all of the usual stuff. Showered, had coffee and breakfast.

During breakfast, I thought that it would be nice to put on some music, so I found a Spotify playlist called “happy morning music to wake up to” (and yes, it was written just like that).

Now I know that the English teachers among you will be horrified at that poorly constructed sentence, and the unforgivable sin of finishing a sentence with a preposition. I too was horrified. But it was a nice playlist anyway, with music of the genre that we enjoy.

And then the Spotify Gods had another laugh at me, with one of the first songs in the playlist “I can see clearly now, the rain has gone”. 43% chance of rain today. Very funny.

We hadn’t unhooked the van from the car last night, so because everything was still hooked up and connected, we just headed back into Eulo.

The morning went something like this:

• 9.30am – leave campsite
• 9.31am – arrive Eulo Main Street to look around
• 9.33am – finish looking around and head off to the mud baths – this morning’s adventure

Today we went to the Eulo Artesian Mud Baths for some mud bath therapy. Once you have soaked in the hot muddy water for 30 minutes or so …

… then you get out and apply this other mud all over yourself, and then when that’s dry you get back into the hot bath for another 30 minutes.

Clearly I hadn’t reaped all of the benefits of the mud at that point.

But all in all, a very relaxing experience. I’m not quite sure why, but after soaking in the mineral water for 30 minutes or so, you feel very heavy, and sleepy, and … ahh 🙂

The mud bath people had this boat in their front garden. I’m not sure if it is a garden ornament, if it is for sale, or they just haven’t used it in a while …

… but that reminds me that I need to sell my boat when I get home.

Remember I said that the forecast for today is 43% chance of rain? Well as we were leaving the mud baths and heading off to Thargomindah, this is what 43% chance of rain looks like …

Even the weather gods were making fun of us, but I’m OK that it’s not raining.

Now the trip from Eulo to Thargomindah is uneventful. I mean seriously un-e-vent-ful.

Naturally you would hope for a McDonalds drive through on the way, or maybe a road house, or a petrol station, or …? Nothing between Eulo and Thargomindah. No towns, no McDonalds, no fuel. Nothing. Zip.

The only thing we saw was turnoffs to other – presumably more exciting – places, and funny road signs.

And road signs to Thargomindah, just to remind you that this is a one-way road to one place only.

There were also a number of hand-painted signs that warned “Unfenced road: Beware of black cattle on the road”. I wasn’t sure if that is another way of saying “help yourself to some free steak”, but I suspect not.

As you can see, the roads are pretty good. Flat, fast, not particularly wide, but oncoming traffic slows down and allows you to pass safely. We are still seeing quite a number of vans coming towards us, although that has slowed to a comparative trickle since leaving St George.

We found ourselves in that strange place again today where there is no mobile coverage, no internet, and Spotify keeps throwing “American Pie” and “Piano Man” at you on repeat, because it can’t stream any other songs.

Without access to the internet, we find that we need to engage each other in conversation, so we have started a competition where we are tracking how many of various things we have seen so far:

• Other Supreme vans: 8
• Echidnas: 2
• Dead kangaroos: too many to count
• Emus: about 8 or 9
• Black cattle on the road: 2
• Unicorns: 0

We stopped about 40km before Thargomindah in a truck rest area for a bite of lunch, and I took the opportunity to get the drone out and take some more pictures.

I think that we sat at that rest stop for around 30 minutes, and only one other vehicle went past in the entire time we were there.

We arrived into Thargomindah at around 2.00pm to a glorious 24 degrees, checked into the caravan park, then went for a quick spin down to the Visitor Information Centre and fill up with fuel.

I paid a new record high of $1.65/litre today for diesel, but then we are in Thargomindah – one of the most western townships in south-western Queensland. And unleaded is still cheaper here than at home. Go figure!

Just before dinner we were rewarded with another spectacular sunset.

We discovered on arriving in Thargomindah that there is the Channel Country Music Muster happening in the rodeo grounds here on 17th to 18th July … so we may (or may not) partake. We will see.

We are here for three nights now, so expect to hear some more about this beautiful part of the world. Thargomindah is one of those places that I have always wanted to come to, so I hope that you are enjoying it as much as we are.

Ciao

I thought that I’d erred on the side of caution when I packed for this trip, but it feels like I am starting to run out of clean clothes 🙁

Most things can be recycled for a couple of days – the more observant among you will notice the same shirt/s for a couple of days in succession – but there are some things that are really just a single use item and then need to make their way to the washing basket.

Socks and jocks in particular.

I thought that I’d brought plenty to get me to the first opportunity for washing, but I may have miscalculated.

C’est la vie.

The plan today was to get from Charlotte Plains Station – just east of Cunnamulla – through Cunnamulla and on to Eulo for the night. Not a huge trip, but we need to be in Eulo Thursday morning.

If “packing down the van” was an Olympic sport, I reckon we would be on the podium. Maybe not yet gold medal winners, but on the podium anyway. We had the van packed down within about half an hour – MBW does the “inside stuff” (locking doors, putting dishes away, securing loose items) – while I do the “outside stuff” (hooking up the van to the car, retracting the legs, unplugging and rolling the hoses, locking the outside doors and hatches).

Just like on a plane as it is preparing for takeoff, we do a quick cross-check and we are ready to roll!

Today, the first 23km or so was on dirt, and that was just travelling down Charlotte Plains’ driveway and getting to the highway. Seriously – a 23km driveway!

It was only about 54km to Cunnamulla – almost 80km if you count the driveway at Charlotte Plains Station – so we were into Cunnamulla to see the sights by mid-morning. I mentioned my work colleague (Jay, originally from St George) who was providing tourist tips, and his tip for Cunnamulla was “don’t stop, just keep driving”.

Possibly a bit harsh, but the fuel gauge indicated that we probably needed to stop or we’d be stopping involuntarily somewhere before Thargomindah, so we did a quick reconnaissance of the three possible fuel stations in Cunnamulla.

The first one was boarded up and closed. The second was an unmanned (un-personed?) card only affair that was not particularly accommodating to people with caravans, so we went to the only available option and paid a record (so far) of $1.52 cents/litre for diesel.

That should keep Elsie happy for a while.

By the time we hit Cunnamulla, we were back in the land of the living again and our phones were beeping and pinging and vibrating like crazy with mobile phone reception.

I missed Google 🙁

So with our new-found ability to Google again, we searched for the top 10 things to do in Cunnamulla … and 4 of them were actually in Cunnamulla, while the remainder were around Cunnamulla (like going to look at a kangaroo).

Honestly, we have seen – and manoeuvred – around so many dead kangaroos so far on this trip that I have no real desire to see another one, dead or alive.

Being the good citizens that we are, we injected $9.50 into the local economy on two cups of coffee at the local cafe, and another $6.00 or so on milk and Jatz biscuits at the local IGA.

Last of the big spenders!

We saw the sights too – the Cunnamulla Fella …

… and the Robber’s Tree.

I actually find it a bit hard to believe that this is the very same tree that J Wells hid in back in 1881 after robbing the local National Bank, but I could be wrong.

I hate to admit it, but Jay was right 🙁

After we had seen the sights and bought groceries, we headed off to Eulo, our stop for tonight – about another 65km or 45 minutes up the road.

A bit of a low mileage day today, but that’s OK.

We got into Eulo in time for a late lunch, after a quick look around.

Eulo has a population of 221 according to Wikipedia and it is not much more that a main street, a pub, a post office, a police station, school and a cafe … plus a few houses for the 221 peeps that live here.

We had planned to stay at the Eulo Queen Hotel and Caravan Park, but they are fully booked out until August, so we decided to free camp tonight just outside Eulo.

There is a story that Isabel Gray (1851-1929) was the local publican, storekeeper and prostitute here back in the day.

Now I’m not sure whether that story is true, and I don’t know about you, but if I try to conjure up a picture to go with the word “prostitute”, that’s not the mental picture I get. Maybe it’s because the picture is blurry that I can’t get a proper appreciation of her true beauty?

Or maybe beauty wasn’t so important back in the late 1800s?

Not many sights to see in Eulo, but we saw them anyway.

Look kids – we bought a puppy!!

We found our way the last 5km or so to the free camping area just outside of Eulo and set up camp.

Lunch, a nap, and the camping area is starting to fill up with others who obviously couldn’t get into the Eulo Caravan park either.

I must say that I am suffering some serious caravan envy tonight, with this van pulling in not far from us.

Sadly, we also had the Bogan family move in beside us, including Mum and Dad Bogan and their Bogan teenage sons. And their “Kermit the Frog” caravan.

Apparently it is acceptable to talk to your family at the top of your voice, with no consideration for anyone else camping nearby. No need to watch the 6.00pm news, as I now know everything that I need to know that is going on in the world, plus a few things that I don’t really need to know.

Apparently it is acceptable to park your van on a level piece of ground, even if it means that everyone else in the park will need to navigate around you.

And then it is acceptable to start up your noisy generator so you can enjoy all of the luxuries of home … meaning that we need to talk to each other at the top of OUR voices so that we can be heard.

It could be worse – it could be raining.

And then it started raining … which turned out to be a blessing in disguise because the Bogan family needed to retreat inside Kermit and take shelter 🙂

It’s our first experience free camping in this van and it’s not so bad because luckily the overcast weather means it is a bit warmer tonight. And I don’t really mind being off the grid for a night. And I don’t mind saving $35 in accommodation costs.

BTW, if you are not familiar with the concept of free camping, let me assure you that it is not a euphemism for staying at a nudist campsite – it is simply … nah, if you want to think we are staying at a nudist campsite, that’s up to you.

At least it solves the problem of running out of clean clothes 🙂

Tomorrow we are doing the mud baths at Eulo, then off to Thargomindah for 3 nights. But you will hear about that tomorrow.

Ciao

If you felt let down that yesterday was a slow news day, you are going to be particularly disappointed today.

This morning we skipped breakfast in a vain attempt to offset some of the damage done by the fabulous chicken parmys from dinner last night, had coffee and went straight to packing up the van after two nights in St George.

We’ve got it down to something that could almost be described as a smooth and seamless operation – everything locked, attached, connected (or disconnected), switched off (or on), wound down (or up), closed (or opened), water tanks filled … all done as required, and as expected, and without any risk of divorce.

Just before 9.00am we were ready to roll out of the caravan park, and I gave a fleeting thought to what I would have been doing at that exact moment had I been at work today – and then I instantly dismissed the thought as irrelevant.

Now, before I tell you about today, there are a couple of things about St George that I wanted to comment on.

It was a bit unusual to see a sign in coming into town that says St George is a “Dementia friendly community”, and I’m not really sure what that means?

I had planned to put that picture up on yesterday’s post but … I completely forgot 🙁

I do have an idea of what that means, but I can’t say that I’m willing to think about it just now.

The other interesting thing about St George and some of these other outback Queensland towns like it is the different style of TV advertising that you see in the ad breaks of your favourite show:

• Farming equipment
• Cattle sales
• School is fun, get an education
• Keep St George scabies free …

… and then just as you are about to start your evening meal there is an advert that comes on showing a girl having dinner with her boyfriend, and she says “have you been tested for syphilis?”

Really? While I’m eating my dinner?

Today we were heading for Charlotte Plains Station for the night – a working sheep station just a bit east of Cunnamulla. The nice thing about Charlotte Plains is that they have an artesian bore head with 13 bathtubs, so you can fill a tub and soak in the warm water.

So far the roads have been pretty good, and it certainly spices things up a bit when you are confronted by a “wide load” coming towards you. I imagine that bottom edge of that bulldozer blade would do a bit of damage if you hit it.

The trip from St George to Charlotte Plains – about 245km in total – was the most boring and uneventful trip I have even been on. The roads started out good …

… and then got narrower with no lines …

There was only one small town on the way and that was Bollon (population 221). We had been travelling for about 90 minutes/110km and desperately needed to empty one tank and fill another.

So we made coffee and kept on rolling towards Charlotte Plains when we saw a road sign that says “Rough Surface next 22km”, and a rough surface it was.

The road kept changing from two lanes with a white line, to two lanes with no lines, to barely two lanes at all. In fact when a caravan was coming the other way, we generally needed to pull partly off the road so that we could pass.

And I have to tell you that there were a lot of caravans coming towards us! It felt like everyone was coming back from wherever it is that we are going. Van after van after van.

Sometime after Bollon we entered a dark and scary place with no phone reception and no internet. Yes folks, I can assure you that such a place exists and it is in south western Queensland. 

No phone service, no Google, no 4G … nothing!

And to make matters worse, Spotify had a bit of an issue not being able to stream music to our phone/s, so it started playing the same 4 or 5 songs over and over – “Stand by your man”, “Power of Love”, ”Brandy”, and “Kokomo”.

Now I just want to digress here for a moment and point out that this was MBW’s playlist, not mine. “Stand by your man” and “Brandy” are certainly not on any of my playlists!

We arrived at the entrance to Charlotte Plains Station at around 1.00pm and started the 15km drive into the camping area to be met by a rather unfriendly 70+yo lady at the homestead. She refused to discuss anything with me until I’d checked in using the Queensland Government’s COVID app (good, I guess), and then waved her hand at that dead tree “over there” and told me to drive past the tree another 3km or so to a camping area further into the property, described in the vaguest of terms (not so good..)

But we found it OK despite the hopeless directions and non-existent signage, and got set up.

I put the drone up again and got some nice aerial shots of where we camped.

Once camp was set up, we went for a drive (another 8.5km!!) to the bore head to secure a bathtub and soak our cares away.

The bore water was nice and relaxing and a pretty cool experience sitting in the tub watching the sun go down, but a bit of a shock to the system getting out into the cool breeze.

Despite all of the confusion, we were rewarded with the most spectacular sunset tonight and managed to capture some beautiful photos of the shearer’s shed building near camp in the gorgeous afternoon sunlight. 

After dinner we sat around the campfire with some of our fellow campers – Wayne, Janelle, Judy, Penny and Martin. Some of them were heading home after going to the Big Red Bash, some were heading home to the Hunter Valley after tripping around Queensland and the NT for the last 5 weeks, and Martin was heading towards Cairns.

And us? We are off towards Cunnamulla and Eulo tomorrow.

I told you it was another slow news day – sorry 🙁

Ciao

It was a bit of a slow news day today, so I’ll likely pad this post out with extra photos so that you think you are still getting value for money.

We had a nice, quiet day in St George today. One of my work colleagues – Jay – is from St George, so he was my go-to guy to get the low down on the things to do here … and we got some good tips!

We started the day in the usual way – coffee (duh!) – and headed out to see the sights. We started at the Balonne River and looking at the Jack Taylor Weir. There has been some good rain out this way, so it was quite full.

Like any body of water there is a risk of drowning, so the local council have nailed a CPR sign to a tree, but I imagine that the CPR rules have been updated since this one was installed 🙂

From there, we took a drive of about 24km back towards Surat to have a look at the Beardmore Dam. It is a beautiful picnic area which – today – was completely deserted.

The next thing on Jay’s list of things to see was the Cotton Gin. Now I confess to not knowing exactly what a cotton gin does, but given the amount of cotton that you see strewn along the side of the road from the harvesting and transportation processes, I guessed that it had more to do with cotton than it has to do with gin.

Now I’m not sure if we Googled the wrong thing, or went to the wrong place, but where we turned up was certainly not a tourist attraction, was not open to the public, and the gentleman who was at the site office regarded us with a certain amount of skepticism … but despite that he was pleasant enough, listened to our (albeit unusual) story, and welcomed us to take some photos of the cotton so long as we turned around and immediately left the property.

Oh, and then he told us that he hoped we enjoyed our stay in St George and our ongoing holiday 🙂

We were feeling a little decaffeinated after our somewhat unsuccessful trip to the cotton gin, so we headed back into town to look for a coffee shop.

We were also told that we should take a drive out to the irrigation area – an area about 25km south-east of St George which comprises >100km of irrigation channels, and used to irrigate 10,000 hectares of land.

While it was a lovely drive, there wasn’t a great deal to see as it appears that harvesting had occurred relatively recently, and there was just a great deal of big, brown paddocks as far as the eye could see.

The final thing that we were told we should do was to visit the Riversands Winery, even though we are not wine drinkers. So, go and have a look, we did.

Despite not being drinkers, we had a bit of a taste test and selected a bottle of Sparkling Sisters 2020 – a “lower alcohol fragrant sparkling (red) wine”. I’m not entirely sure what we are going to do with it – maybe drink it?

They say that you should never be photographed with a drink in your hand, and I can see why 🙁

Home for a bite of lunch, and then we pondered what to do for the afternoon.

Not far from St George – about 40km – is the oldest pub in Queensland, the Nindigully Pub. There was mixed reviews about the Nindigully Pub. Jay (the local) said “don’t bother”, while Alan & Gaye (our neighbours) said “don’t miss it”.

So we decided that for the sake of a 40km trip, and probably the only chance we will ever get to see the oldest pub in Queensland, we would make a trip out there and decide for ourselves.

The publican – as we were warned – was grumpy and unfriendly in an unwelcoming kind of way. But he happily took our money for the soda water and coke after insisting that we had checked in and that we paid in cash.

Go figure.

You can camp for free outside the Nindigully Pub, on the expectation that you will eat at the pub. Seems like a fair deal, expect that there were lots of people who had taken up the offer and it was pretty boggy and muddy.

One of my sons – Sam – loaned me his drone so that I could try to get some aerial shots of some of the places that we visit and stay. While I got the 10 minute training course when he gave it to me the other day, I hadn’t had the chance to actually fly it myself … so today was my first flight. We found a nice open park area back near the Balonne River and gave it a try.

Not exactly award winning photography, but hopefully I’ll figure it out. If you don’t see any more drone photos, you’ll know that I didn’t 🙁

It’s been a big day so we thought we’d go to the local Cobb & Co Hotel for a Chicken Parmy for dinner. We arrived a bit early so went for a walk down the river front before heading for dinner.

Chicken Parmys were fabulous and highly recommended. Home after dinner to watch the finale of Masterchef and then we are off towards Cunnamulla tomorrow, staying at Charlotte Plains station which includes soaking in bathtubs full of their hot artesian bore water. Can’t wait for that!

I don’t think we will have any mobile coverage or internet access tomorrow night, so there might not be a post … but I’ll make it up the next day, I promise.

Ciao

If every day of the trip had its own theme song, today’s would be “All Shook Up” … but I probably need to start at the start and work up to explain that bit.

Last night we stayed at Clover Hill Camping. I don’t know their full story but I’m told that they started out farming and were trying to build up a strain of cattle, but because of the drought they needed to diversify and so part of their property is now set aside for camping.

As a part of developing this strain of cattle, they have a prize stud bull named “Golden Nuggets” or “Golden Nuts” or something like that. Now that all seems highly inappropriate to me and I think that those who are sensitive about political correctness should be righteously outraged … but I don’t make this stuff up!

It’s on their website! That’s just a bit of trivia to get your attention and make you wonder where this is going.

Anyhow, the morning started out rather brisk in Chinchilla today. I woke from around 11 hours sleep (I was exhausted!) and it was a brisk 6.2 degrees – and that was inside the van. Outside was a mere 2 degrees.

It was cold enough to freeze the you-know-what’s off a brass monkey.

I was particularly concerned about Golden Nuggets because I understand that his key attribute generates significant income for his owners, so you wouldn’t want to see them put at risk from the cold weather.

Or maybe a different type of cold is needed to freeze the you-know-what’s off a prize bull? I’ll have to Google that …

We got away from Chinchilla a bit after 9.00am and headed east towards Miles. We had initially stopped at the local Chinchilla Woolies to stock up on some essentials – cream, coffee, chocolate and toilet paper – but it was closed 🙁

We weren’t sure if toilet paper panic buying was a pastime west of Brisbane, but we thought we’d stock up anyway just in case. You can never be too careful.

But no dice. We would have to start a panic buying epidemic somewhere where the shops are open.

We left Chinchilla and the speed limits opened up to 110 km/h, but thanks to the old Victorians in the Winnebago ahead of us, we didn’t manage anything better than about 80 km/h for the first 15 minutes or so – well, at least until the first overtaking lane.

We finally got our essentials in Miles and then headed towards St George via Condamine and Surat.

Condamine is a pretty little town, with emphasis on “little”. A pub, a fuel station … and that was about it.

The roads all felt pretty civilised to start with … there were even lines painted on the road, and rest stops, and turning lanes …

… but the roads got narrower …

… and narrower 🙁

We originally thought that we were on the road less travelled, but that started to feel like the road to nowhere.

Of interest, drivers coming the other way were very respectful and pulled completely off the road when they saw us coming to allow us to pass safely. Needless to say that when we encountered a B-double coming towards us on a particularly narrow stretch, we extended the same courtesy 🙂

We were in no hurry travelling along these backroads, but we were probably going about 80-90 km/h when we were on the safe bits and you could see far enough ahead to ensure that there was nobody coming towards us.

The roads were pretty rough most of the way between Condamine and Surat. Not due to potholes or deterioration, but (I expect) because of the black soil underneath that causes the road surface to change and become quite uneven. After driving at speed for an hour or so, you start to feel like your internal organs have all been rearranged – hence the reference to “All shook up” at the start of this post.

There was one section of road where the road got very rough rather unexpectedly and while there was no danger, the van’s electronic stability control (ESC) obviously decided that we were out of control and so it kicked in.

I have to say that while it felt a bit surprising that the van suddenly wanted to slow down, it was a relief to know that the ESC works.

The other thing I’ve noticed is that the naming convention for roads in the west is pretty straight-forward.

Yeuleba-Surat Road.

Chinchilla-Tara Road.

Chinchilla-Kogan Road.

So when you have been travelling on the same road for some time, and you’ve seen no other vehicles and no road signs, the fact that you are on the Yeuleba-Surat Road gives you a feeling of confidence that Yeuleba will be at one end, and Surat at the other end.

Well, you hope so anyway …

OK, so I know that while we started at Condamine and at some time during that journey we ended up on the Yeuleba-Surat Road, we did indeed pop out the other end at Surat. Just in time for a late-ish lunch.

We stopped for a quick bite at a local Surat park, and then kept going towards home for tonight – St George.

The road from Surat to St George was nice and open, relatively flat and posted at 110km/h … and the scenery kept changing.

We arrived into St George at around 3.00pm.

Staying at the Kamarooka Tourist Park, St George for a couple of nights.

Spaces are all pretty small, but we managed to get parked and set up without catastrophe. Wade – the park manager – guided us in, stayed for a chat, and then scurried off to guide the next arrivals into their space.

One of the things that we loved about our last trip was the get-together with other travellers around the campfire – and this park was no different. Bring a chair and drink to the 4.30 campfire and we were served hot nibbles from their pizza oven.

They talk about there being 6 degrees of separation between people, such that just a few “friend of a friend” statements can connect any two people. We sat with a couple around the fire tonight – Dave and Mandy – and it turns out that Mandy’s sister works at Queensland Rail and has an interest in a couple of key projects that my team are delivering, and yet I have never (knowingly) met her.

Today we travelled roughly 340km over about 6 hours, and we managed to stop and enjoy the hospitality of some small country towns on the way.

One of the things that frustrates us when we get away for a weekend is that small country towns close at lunchtime Saturday, so it feels a bit like walking around a ghost town. Tomorrow we will be exploring St George on a weekday, which should be fun. We may even make a trip down to the famous Nindigully pub … but let’s wait and see what happens tomorrow.

Ciao