Travelling Into Queensland

I think I can safely say that our holiday truly began once we crossed the Queensland Border.  We have been through here a couple of times before, but there was always a main destination further north, with the next couple of towns only briefly visited.  This time we were going to look around a bit better.

We were now entering the Paroo Shire, whose main town is Cunnamulla.

The town was made famous by the Slim Dusty song “The Cunnamulla Fella” and there is a statue in the centre of town to celebrate the song.  You can hear it here if you wish.

We had a wander around town and it was decidedly sad.  The town centre doesn’t just have one main street, it is kind of like a Y and the main highway north turns off before you reach it. Most of the shops are empty.  We called in at the butchers and they had very slim pickings.  

The town had obviously prospered back in the day, as there are some lovely old buildings with nice lead lights.  The chemist still had its Christmas stickers on the front window. The pub on the corner seemed to be trading with minimal hours and the post office was trading.

Surprisingly, there was a nice mural up the side of one building.

There were a couple of incongruous things, one being the amount of work that was being done on the old picture theatre.  Out the back seemed to be in the process of being completely rebuilt.

The other was the very freshly painted Memorial Fountain in a little park in the middle of the street.

Cunnamulla is on the Warrego River, so we went down to have a look.  The Greater Egrets are so graceful.

Beside the river is a new thermal pool complex, which looks rather flash on the brochures, but not really our thing.

We camped the night at a caravan park a bit out of town, beside the river.  It was very full.  

In the late afternoon there was a fire lit down near the river and a country singer was providing entertainment.  

His  name is Ken Lindsay, but his nick name is “Chainsaw” and he performed a song he had written called “The Night I Saved John Wayne”, supposedly a true story about how some young blokes went to the drive-in at Berri in South Australia and were watching a cowboy and Indian movie starring John Wayne.  The Indians were beating John Wayne, so one of the fellows decided to save him and took his rifle out of the ute and shot the movie screen.  Well, to Chainsaw’s delight, one of the audience piped up that it is true, as it was his Dad that shot the screen.

On our way out of town the following morning we went and found the painted water tower.  We had seen it before.

We also found the railway station, which is a nice old building.  The train doesn’t come here any more.

Out the front is a sculpture of the Cunnamulla Band, made from found objects.

They were cleverly done, but we thought the members looked a bit creepy with silver spoons as eyes.

Back on the road the next settlement we came to was Wyandra, about 100km north.  We had camped here on our last trip.  This time we just went for a quick lap of the village and had our morning tea in the rest area.  The pub had been closed down, but has just recently reopened, which is a good thing for the area.  A feature of every town, no matter how small,  is its war memorial.

Our destination for the day was Charleville.  It was also one of the main places we wanted to visit.  There was so much for us to see and do that I will start that in a separate post.

Where to Start? How About Our Latest Trip

Where to start on catching up on my blog posts for the last little while?  

Well, as I was a bit slack in posting on our last trip, as in I didn’t write any, I think I will share where we went and what we got up to, before everything went pear shaped, while it is still fresh in my mind.

PLAN A

This was the route that we had planned when we headed off, back in May.  We did make a start, but had to cut it short at St George when we received the news that Mick’s Mum had passed away.

PLAN B

This was the route that we then decided to follow once we headed off again in mid June, being slightly different to the original, as we didn’t want to double up, our timing wasn’t great for a couple of things we wanted to see and the flooding in western Queensland had well and truly finished.

We were somewhat delayed from getting away from home, as when we checked the lights on the van the entire panel on the passenger side wasn’t working.  After some investigating, it was discovered that a join in the wires had come apart.  It is handy that Mick is handy, as it was easily rectified and we were soon on our way.  Our first day was always planned to be a short one, so the delay didn’t matter.

Just for a bit of trivia, we left on the Mitchell Highway, which starts at Bathurst.  After Orange we did make a bit of a scenic detour, as we seem to have travelled that road quite a few times lately. 

Our first stop was the village of Cumnock for lunch in the park. On the way, we travelled through Molong and the lovely avenue of trees on the way into town had lost all their golden leaves that I took a photo of last trip.

Cumnock is a tiny village and was losing their post office and general store, so some community minded residents banded together  and started a co-op.  One hundred people pitched in $1,000 and they bought the store and took over the post office licence.  They are currently having building works carried out to open an adjoining cafe.

They also have the cutest little street library, but not books of interest this time.

We continued on our way via Yeoval and back into Narromine, where we rejoined the Mitchell Highway.  They have a great little craft shop, which sold delicious lemon butter, a nice treat on toast for breakfast.

As we headed further north we started to see lots of cotton bales from the recent harvest.

Our destination for the day was Trangie.  We have passed through here and had a wander up and down the street on several occasions, but never stayed.  The caravan park was terrific, with the friendliest and most helpful owner.  

As it was the night of the first State of Origin footy match, and we don’t take a TV in the van, we decided to have dinner and watch the game at the local RSL Club.  It was Schnitty night, so we partook and then watched the game.  The bar was crowded……the bar tender, her boyfriend, one other fellow and us.  It was actually rather nice being just small group.  The game wasn’t going too well, so we headed back to the van at half time.

Before leaving  the following morning, we went for a walk up and down the street.  Mick liked the mural at the bowling club.

Our second day saw us driving through flat, green countryside.

We called in at Nevertire to see the painted water tower.  Last time we drove through it had only recently been painted and a new cafe was just about to open.  We had hoped to call in for coffee and cake on our way, but sadly it has already closed for good.  What a pity, as it looked like it was going to be rather nice.

The next town on our way was Nyngan.  This is where we usually camp overnight if heading this way, so we are quite familiar with the town.

Of course we had to visit the Big Bogan.

We had lunch at the local cafe and there were books to take for free.  I picked up this one and read it over the next couple of days, before leaving it at a caravan park for someone else to pick up and read.

Just out of Nyngan there is a major intersection.  Turn left to head west to Cobar and Broken Hill or straight ahead to go north to Bourke.  We usually turn left, so it was a nice change to head north, a trip we have only done a few times before, the last time being 2019.

By now we were seeing loads of goats beside the road.  They do have rather good road sense, which makes life easy.

Our destination for the night was Byrock.  Byrock consists of a pub and a few houses.  The pub has a caravan park out the back, where you can camp and even get power.  We have stayed here once before, funnily enough, in exactly the same spot.  In the late afternoon we had a wander around the scrub behind the camp area and came across some interesting old artifacts.

Of course, we had to have dinner in the pub and they put on a pretty good feed.  It is a fairly modern building, but still has that country pub feel inside.

Day three saw us continue north towards Bourke.  The roads were rather good and rather straight.  We were enjoying seeing all the interesting cloud formations.

As you enter Bourke there used to be a billboard about being the Gateway to the Outback in front of the water tower.  This is my photo from 2019.

That was no longer there and the water tower has now been painted.  What a difference. Of course we stopped to have a look.

The subject is Percy Hobson and when we read all the information boards we learned of a rather unknown sporting hero.  Percy was an aboriginal boy who grew up in Bourke, taught himself to high jump and was rather good, despite not being very tall.  He came to the attention of a prominent coach and ultimately went on to represent Australia in the high jump at the 1962 Perth Commonwealth Games, winning the gold medal and breaking a 28 year old record.  However, the road to get there was rather rough, as at the time, he was not considered an Australian citizen and was not included in the training camps and was not afforded the assistance of non aboriginal competitors.  It is great to see such a tribute now in place.

We had a good look around Bourke last time we were through here, so didn’t worry too much this time, just going down to the historic port on the Darling River to have a look.

As you head out of town, there is a big rest area at North Bourke and I was happy to see that the billboard that used to be at the southern entrance to town had been relocated there.

Continuing on our way north, we passed the tiny settlement of Engonia and were heading to the village of Barrigun on the Queensland border, when we saw a cut out of a caravan with “Coffee” written on it.  We assumed it was for Barrigun, but no, to the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere was a cute little coffee van.  What!  When you see something like this you have to stop.

It turns out the van is run by the wife of the manager of the property that it fronts.  She is an active CWA member, so was selling delicious scones with jam and cream (no photo, we were too busy eating them before the pesky flies beat us to them).  Her two young daughters were there too and we had a lovely chat with the elder, who was looking forward to going on her first muster on her new motorbike, ready for their shearing.

A main feature of this part of our trip was the number of emus that we saw.  This one just leisurely crossing the road.

Before long we came to the big sign announcing that we were crossing the border into Queensland.  By the way, we were still on the Mitchell Highway, the same one that started in Bathurst.

I’ll leave it there for now.  More soon.