St George Part 2

We packed as much as we could in our time at St George.  After visiting “The Unique Egg” we hopped in Frank Truck and drove 45kms out of town to the Nindigully Pub.  We drove in to have a look last year, but just kept going.  There was no way I was going to miss out on visiting this year.

Nindigully Pub is the oldest continually licensed hotel in Queensland, opening in 1864.

It really has some character.  

From all the hats hanging on the walls.

To the money pinned to the ceiling.

The dining room has plenty of character too.

Food wise, the pub is famous for its huge burgers.  You can order one that will feed 4-6 people.  The patty is 1.5kg and the bun is baked especially. You have to pre-order it and it costs $130.  As you can imagine, we didn’t have one.  Mick had a schnitzel and I had a wrap. Mick’s meal was so big that he couldn’t finish it and mine was a more manageable size.  We sat out in the beer garden in the sunshine.

We went for a wander outside.  The pub is located on the banks of the Moonie River.  You can camp there if you want.  

Opposite the pub there are two metal boomerangs.

It turns out that back in 1999 the movie “Paperback Hero” was filmed here.  This was Hugh Jackman’s first movie.  The plot is that Jack Willis (Hugh Jackman) is a truck driver who has written a romance novel, but used the pen name of Ruby Vale, the owner of the Boomerang Cafe, (who is engaged to the local vet), unbeknownst to her.  Jack convinces her to go along with the ruse and they head off to Sydney to publicise the book.  While there romance blooms, etc, etc. I had never heard of the movie, so once we returned home I found it on YouTube and sat and watched it.  It was a bit of light hearted fun.

The movie featured the pub renamed as the “Lucktown Hotel” as well as the “Boomerang Cafe”.  This building was built especially for the film and the boomerangs on display now were on the roof of the cafe.  The boomerangs ware refurbished in much brighter colours in 2019 to commemorate 20 years since the movie’s release.

Back in town, we had considered doing the sunset river cruise on the Balonne River like we did last year.  However, the weather was forecast to change, so we didn’t bother.  As it turned out, the afternoon turned cloudy, so it wouldn’t have been as impressive as last time, so a good choice.

More soon.

St George Part 1

We visited St George in May last year.  You can read my two posts here and here.  Sadly, while there we received the news that Mick’s mum had passed away and we had to cut our trip short.  We were determined to return to the area and continue having a look around.  I didn’t take as many photos of the town this time as the previous posts show a lot.

The first day that we were there was perfect weather for catching up on the washing.  After it was hung, we went for a drive to Beardmore Dam, upstream of St George.

Beardmore Dam was constructed from 1968 to 1972.  This new water storage enabled an irrigation scheme to be established, which in turn allowed the cotton industry to be born, as well as much other produce to be grown, such as grapes and carrots.

When we returned to town we then just had a nice walk around, covering much of the areas we visited last year.  

What we did visit, that we missed out on last time around, was “The Unique Egg”.  

This is an extraordinary exhibition in an unassuming shop front.  

It is a collection of hand carved emu eggs, created by Steve (“Stavros”) Margaritis.  Steve came out from Greece as a young man and had some wood carving skills, which he transferred to emu eggs.

You cannot gather the eggs from the wild, only from emu farms.

He had carved eggs with various geometric designs as well as series to commemorate various events or people.  He has even gifted an egg to Barack Obama when he was president.

The eggs have a hole cut in the bottom, so that they can sit on a small plinth with a light bulb inside the egg to illuminate it. Many have mirrors positioned behind them to show the back and enhance the effect.

Note the different shades in the circle in the above egg.  That has been created by digging deeper into the egg shell.  Such intricate work.  It must be so hard not to penetrate the shell.

Now his daughter is also carving incredible eggs.

It was rather wonderful to visit.

More soon.

Carnarvon Gorge to St George

Back to our travels once again.

After leaving Carnarvon Gorge we continued to head south.  It didn’t take long for the landscape to open up again, revealing wide open spaces.

The first town we came to was Injune.  This is only a small settlement but has a very good information centre with coffee shop and library.  I suppose this is because it is the main settlement heading north close to Carnarvon Gorge.  We partook of morning tea, as you do.

There was a small gallery space in the building as well with a nice display.

Outside we found a stunning sculpture of an eagle.

Behind the building was a museum, however it was closed when we were there.

Over the road an old building had been painted up like an old time shop.

From here there were no further settlements until we returned to Roma, where we had spent a few days on our way north.  As we had seen all we wanted to see there all we did was have some lunch and visit the supermarket to top up our groceries.

After Roma, for the first time this trip, we travelled on the same road we traversed on our way up, ending up in Surat. Remember we had lunch here on Mick’s birthday and had a good wander around.

This time we set up camp at the “Fisherman’s Park” on the banks of the Balonne River on the northern outskirts of town.  

It was a very popular spot and we were glad we arrived in the early afternoon and were able to nab a nice spot near the river.  

This is a donation camp with funds going to the local fishing club who use the money to restock the river with fingerlings.  A very worthy cause.

We just had a lazy afternoon at the camp and had to check out the bridge.  There is a pathway into town but we didn’t worry about going for a walk.

In the morning we went and had a look at the weir just downstream from town.

Then it was back on the road to St George.  We did encounter a large mob of cattle on the way.

Surprisingly, in amongst the cattle there was one sheep, a few horses, a donkey and a mule.  It looked like the working dogs were having a bit of a break.

When we reached St George this mural reminded us that we were in the heart of cotton country. We would spend a couple of days here, so more soon.

A Day Out With Rosie

I don’t know if you remember Mick bought a little red Suzuki Sierra three years ago called Rosie.  Well, she hasn’t been all that smooth sailing.  There have been little issues that have been hard to resolve.  Add to that, he only gets to play with her every now and then.

He is lucky, in that we have good friends who have a property just out of town that has a rather steep, rough section where he can take Rosie for test runs.  She will go fine and then all of a sudden lose all power.  The fact that it is intermittent makes matters worse when trying to locate the problem.  As a result, he hasn’t been game to take her for any distance.

Just lately, he has worked on all sorts of things that could be the problem and when he took her out to our mate’s place a couple of weeks ago, she ran like a dream.  Fingers crossed that she runs more reliably from now on.

As a result, we decided last Sunday to go for a drive in her and have lunch at Tarana.  

It is a pretty drive on quiet roads.

There are lots of little bridges.

The road is quite narrow in parts.

The cafe makes delicious burgers.

It was nice to see some wattle in bloom.

We called in to Flat Rock, on the Fish River.  It is a popular camp ground, but was quiet when we were there.  Yes, there are flat rocks in the river and the river was so named, as when Surveyor George Evans was mapping out the route for the first road to the west there were lots of fish in the river.  Very creative names, aren’t they.

We could see Ben Chifley Dam in the distance as we drove along.  It is our local water supply.

When we returned to Bathurst we finished off our drive with a lap of Mount Panorama.  There was definitely no lap record set, as Rosie is rather slow and underpowered.

We ended up doing just over 100kms on our run.

It was a really enjoyable drive.  It was a nice day and we were in no rush.

To our delight, Rosie didn’t miss a beat.  Such a relief.  Now we may take her for some more outings and Mick may look at joining the 4WD club.