The Long Way Home

As Victoria remained in lockdown and New South Wales was in covid crisis, we wondered about the logic of returning home. We were in complete freedom in Queensland, the sun was nearly always shining and life was wonderful. But sometimes, it's just time to go home, so we made our plans. Our route would take us along thousands of kilometres in less than a week.

We left the mountains behind and headed back into the outback. First stop was Charleville, about 600 kms west of the Bunya Mountains. We quite liked this town. Everyone was really friendly. 

The key attraction here was the bilbies. Due to loss of habitat and the introduction of foxes, dogs and cats, bilbies became an endangered species. Rabbits are also one of their biggest competitors for food and suitable burrowing space. You never find rabbits and bilbies in the same place. In the 1980's, two guys started a breeding programme and have successfully reintroduced hundreds of bilbies into specially fenced off areas. The fences are designed to keep foxes, dogs, dingoes, rabbits and cats out and they cost a fortune to build.

The only bilbies that we can see here are a few that are kept in an enclosure with special red lighting. Bilbies are nocturnal and can't see the red so they think it's night time.

The bilbies were cute but we learned some seriously frightening facts here.

1. Australia has the worst mammal extinction record of any developed country. Other developed countries have lost 2, 5 or even 7 species of mammals. Australia has lost an astonishing 31! This is not a record to be proud of.

2. There are over 20 million feral cats in Australia. Every 24 hours they kill 75 million Australian animals.

On a side note, I also forgot to mention in an earlier post that Australia has only 0.3% of its rainforest left. I can't find this figure online to substantiate it but that's what I read on an info board somewhere.

These are really sobering statistics......

Keeping on the nature theme, we went to the Cosmos Centre one night. We were led to a large shed and, once we were all seated, the roof rolled back to the theme music for 2001 A Space Odyssey. Someone has a sense of humour. Four large telescopes were pointed at the sky and we spent the next hour looking at a couple of stars plus Jupiter and Saturn through the telescopes. The two planets were pretty cool. Did you know that Saturn makes diamonds in its rings? How incredible! I'm sure there's someone already trying to work out how to harvest them.

Another day, we did a tour of the Hotel Corones, a gorgeous old pub. It has an amazing history. We were encouraged to don a vintage hat each first.

The bar is one of the largest in the southern hemisphere. During the wool boom years, the crowd around this bar would often be so deep that the staff would serve the first two rows from behind the bar then other staff would weave their way through the back rows taking orders as they went.

There were many shearers who would shear all week, get their pay then roll up at the pub. They would hand the publican their pay, then, when they had drunk it all away, he would tap them on the shoulder and they'd return to work. What an existence!

The verandah was enormous. At peak times the publican would fill this with beds and people just slept on the verandah. It's hard to imagine this sleepy town ever being that busy!

The pub even had a ballroom, which is now the bottle shop. Incidentally, the bottle shop was chockablock full with cartons of beer. We learned that it was ordered in expectation of thousands of people travelling through to the Birdsville races. The races then got cancelled due to covid. Even out here, where there is no covid, it still affects people.

We then headed north and our first stop was Augathella - Home of the Meat Ants. Yes, you read that correctly. There's even a Meant Ant Park with a huge meat ant sculpture in it! It turns out that when the first footy team was created, someone commented that they scurried around like meat ants, so that's what the footy team called themselves. I love the footy team's song:

Ah, you've got to laugh!

Their other claim to fame (that's two for a very tiny town!) is that the 1950's film "Smiley" was about a boy growing up in Augathella. There was a mural about it.

Who's old enough to remember this song?

As appealing as all this was, the real reason we had travelled this way was to go to Tambo, north of Augathella, to see the famous Tambo chicken races! Ok, so maybe they're not that famous but they were so much fun!

The races are run each night by the local publican and money is raised for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. The publican was a classic. We spoke to him earlier in the night and he was a bit busy and brusque but, give him a microphone and some coloured chickens and he transforms into a really funny and highly entertaining guy.

To cut a long story short, there are 10 chickens of different colours. They're all pets and he gives us a racing history for each one. He then auctions the chickens off (for the race only) and the 'owner' of the winning chicken gets half the funds raised while the rest of the money goes to the RFDS.

I had spoken to Cara earlier that day and asked her to pick a colour for the chook races. Thinking she was setting us a challenge, she wanted us to get whichever one was closest in colour to magenta. Funnily enough there was one that was quite magenta. Her name was Priscilla because she's the Queen of the Outback. The bidding was fierce because she had a good racing history but we secured her for $40. Others went from $5 for an older chook with little interest in racing to $50 for the one that had won several times recently.

The owner had a novel way of convincing the chickens to race. He put treats in a remote controlled car and they run after it. It was so funny to watch!

Finally, after half an hour or so of highly entertaining story-telling and auctioning (all in the freezing cold!) the race was finally ready to start. The chooks do four laps of the 'racecourse'. 

If you only watch one video this week, make it this one. The video starts on the second-last lap. Our chicken is the purple coloured one. The first one across the orange finish line (it's actually a bar runner!) on the 4th lap is the winner. 

I think it was a photo finish! Actually an incredibly excited young family 'owned' the winning chook.

We think Priscilla is lovely anyway.

It was another big drive the net day. First stop was Blackall, home of  'The Black Stump'. In 1887, surveyors set up their equipment on a black stump here to fix the longitudinal and latitudinal positions of the towns of inland Australia. Before long, people considered anything west of Blackall to be 'beyond the black stump'. Sadly, the original stump got burnt in a fire and a sculpted one now stands in its place which isn't the same at all.

We swung west to head to Idalia National Park. This was a long way from anywhere. It wasn't particularly spectacular but was interesting enough. There was a cool wave rock.

Rocks were a feature really.

There was a small Rainbow Gorge with coloured rocks along its walls. This exposed tree root in the wall was cool.

The next part of the drive was really interesting. The road from Blackall to Yaraka, our destination that day, travelled through what was one of the most highly populated areas by animals that we had seen for the whole trip. The road had only been sealed in maybe the last few years, so maybe the animals hadn't got used to having so much traffic along it but they were everywhere. We saw so many kangaroos and wallabies but also three pairs of brolgas and many emus with chicks!

Emus have things sorted - its the male that sits on the eggs and raises the chicks.

Unfortunately, with animals comes road kill. There were so many dead kangaroos and wallabies! It was interesting to see though that the emus and brolgas always made a great effort to get away from the road when a car came. Kangaroos and wallabies though seemed to decide that the best thing to do when a car comes is run in front of it. It's amazing how often they would do this. We missed one roo by centimetres and it was our closest shave for the trip, thank goodness.

I was saddened to see some areas being cleared of native scrub. I don't understand why it would be important to clear 10 or 20 acres when the property is maybe 10,000 acres. Dead trees lay rotting in the paddocks, a sad reminder of this belief people seem to have that we can just take what we want from our environment all the time.

Finally we arrived at Yaraka, a tiny town with a population of 18 in the middle of nowhere. We had chosen to stay here because we had heard it had a great pub to stay at, complete with pet emus. We were welcomed by this sign.

The story about the emus is that a local found an abandoned nest, took the eggs home and raised the three chicks. They now just wander freely around the town. One had returned to the wild ages ago and Carol had disappeared lately. As it was breeding season they presumed she was sitting on a nest somewhere. Anyway, Kevin was around somewhere we were told. I couldn't find him but didn't have much time to look as the pub owner ran a 'tour' each night to a local spot to watch the sunset. It was free but a donation to the Royal Flying Doctor Service was appreciated. We could easily have driven to the lookout point ourselves but thought it might be fun to join in with others so we jumped into the minibus.

The tour started a bit dubiously when the pub owner spent 5 minutes telling us about a power pole we drove past. We got told the type of power pole and all about the electricity supply. We climbed up to the top of a local mesa where he left us to our own devices to explore while he got stuck into some people who were clearly setting up to camp there when they weren't supposed to. I know they were doing the wrong thing but he was really rude to them.

The views of the surrounding land and the mesa and its outcrops were sensational!

The sunset was really spectacular.

The pub owner then sat us down (he provided chairs for the purpose) and proceeded to lecture us for ages in the freezing cold. He was all pro-farming and was against whatever got in the way of that. He opened his lecture by canning PETA then moved on to criticise local politicians who banned land clearing and even managed to criticise Aboriginal land rights in the process. It was the most opinionated, bigoted spiel I've ever heard. There was no pause in his tirade. John left and wandered around elsewhere til the lecture was over and it was only the cold that eventually stopped the verbal barrage. We were all staying and/or eating in the guy's pub so I think everyone just shut their mouths. An argument with him would have made for an uncomfortable night.

Finally we made it back to the pub where, in a twist of fate, I had one of the best parmas I had for the whole trip! Our bedrooms were 'rustic' (their term). They were old shearers' quarters which had been painted up nicely but the wind blew in around the gaps in the window. We had single beds and John didn't get a lot of sleep. There were only tin walls between the rooms and you could hear everything. During the night, someone got up to go to the toilet and they must have woken everyone else because I heard every other door open and close afterwards as everyone else went to the toilet as well. I was woken in the morning by someone farting in the next room! 

I went searching for Kevin the emu again the next morning but couldn't find him. We didn't want to hang around for any more lectures so we were out of there by 7am. It was all an interesting experience!

From Yaraka we headed south and were soon back into territory we had passed through at the start of our trip.  

On both runs through this area we wanted to see the Toompine Pub. It's just a pub in the middle of nowhere and calls itself  'the pub without a town'. The pub has been closed for renovations for months but this time the publicans daughter had opened a coffee van so we dropped in. There was the pub, the coffee van, a hall and a cluster of dongas. That was it. The publican's daughter home-schools her kids in this van while serving the occasional customer that passes through.

Bizarrely, across the road was a brand-new tennis court with a high fence and floodlights! I suspect that high fence is more to keep animals out than balls in! The Queensland government is certainly paying attention to remote communities.

To get home we had to pass through covid-plagued New South Wales. We had a permit to do this. You can't stop for anything other than essentials and can spend no longer than 24 hours in the state. We wanted to go through Broken Hill to be as far away from covid areas as possible plus it was a different way to the route we took coming up. There had been rain a few days before though and the road to the border had been closed. We kept calling the Thargomindah tourist office for updates but they kept saying it was still closed but could open the next day.

We got to this turnoff and had to make a decision - if we drove to Thargomindah and the road was still closed, we would have to backtrack to Cunnamulla, another two hours' drive on top of the six or so that we had already driven. The weather was great for drying out ground though so we took the punt and drove to Thargomindah. Once there we ate an ice-cream while we waited for Ben, the man who drives around all the roads in the area, to getback into phone range. The answer finally came back - the road would be closed for at least another five days! Arrgghh! We called up Pieta from the Cunnamulla hotel we stayed at on our first time here, booked a room and jumped back into the car.

It was good to be back in Cunamulla. It felt like coming home. We had a good sleep then got up early the next morning and, not wanting to stop any longer than necessary in New South Wales, drove from Cunumulla to home in 14 hours. It was about 1,300 kms (there weren't too many police in outback NSW!) Between the two of us it was fine. Weirdly, there were no police or any checks at the NSW/Vic border! We saw the sun rise in Queensland and saw it set in Northern Victoria.

So that was our trip - the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. I would go back to Queensland again at the drop of a hat. The winter weather was fantastic - even when it was cold, the skies were usually a stunning, cloudless blue. I think that's what I loved most about it. I also loved the way everyone is so laid back. No stress here!

Thanks for following along. It's back to the "real world" now until we see what covid allows us to do next winter.

Bye for now.

Heather and John.

Crazy Cousins and the Wonderful Mountains

Well, the story is that John has a cousin in Brisbane. Cousin John (yes, the two Johns gets confusing) and his wife Val invited us to stay with them for the weekend. We arrived on the Friday and had a wonderful lunch followed by impromptu drinks at the new house that some friends had just moved into. It was a fairly big night but just a warm-up for what was to come.

The next day, a few friends were coming around for lunch. It was so good to catch up with Liam and Joel (John and Val's boys) and John's other cousin, Ann, as well as some other people we have met before. 

There was lots of bubbly drunk. As the day wore on, there might have been dancing and singing.....

..... there might have been wooden spoons used as microphones, John might have done a Halki re-enactment by doing "the crane" on the edge of the pool and there might have been tequila drunk from belly-buttons!

John and Val sure know how to throw a party!

The next day, after a slowish start, John and Val took us out in their boat to Tangalooma, a series of wrecks off Moreton Island. It was weird seeing so many wrecks in one spot and it seemed that everyone in Brisbane who had a boat was out for the day. People snorkelled and swam but the water was pretty cool so, like us, they mostly stayed on their boats.

Moreton Island is a sand island like Fraser but, unlike Fraser, people must be allowed to run and slide down the dunes cos they were having a ball here. And yes, the dune was as steep as it looks!

We had a chicken and champagne lunch then motored home again. Wonderful! 

With arrangements in place to catch up with John and Val again the following weekend, we headed out to Springbrook National Park. We had booked a gorgeous little (very little!) cabin which turned out to be right on the edge of the escarpment, where we could see all the way to Surfers Paradise, plus it was at the start of some great walks.

On one walk we walked above, below and behind two waterfalls......

.... and we climbed through two rocky crevices.

Right beside the walking track, a pair of brush turkeys had built their enormous nest. Brush turkey nests are about two metres high! The eggs are incubated inside the nest and this brush turkey was madly clearing some litter from the top of the nest, presumably to regulate the temperature.

On other walks we saw this humungous uprooted tree......

many stunning waterfalls.......

.... and this special area of Antarctic beech trees from Gondwanaland times when Antarctica was still joined to Australia. The misty, mossy area here looked like it was straight out of Lord of the Rings. We half expected to see Gandalf to appear on horseback from behind a tree!

There were some highlights at our cottage too. Cute little pademelons came to visit in the evenings.

One afternoon a storm came through and we lost power for most of the day. John managed to cook the pasta we had on the bbq by torchlight.

There was an outdoor bath in the back yard. It was fantastic! On that cold, rainy night we made a mad dash for the bath, soaked in the heat for a bit then had a cold dash back to the cottage. So much fun!

On our way out of Springbrook, we drove through the stunning Numinbah Valley to another walk where a waterfall falls through the roof of a cave. Fantastic!

Springbrook really packed a punch for stunning natural things to see. Wow!

Next stop was Stanthorpe, a place high in the mountains with great walking and even better wine! It was sooooo cold! 

As soon as we arrived, we went for a short walk on the property we were staying on and found this mock drum kit built entirely from wood in the bush.

The next morning we were up early and walked up a nearby mountain. The sun was out but it was freezing! It was so beautiful though.

The rocks here were amazing - huge boulders were everywhere. It looked like Mother Nature had been playing marbles.

The walk across the top of the mountain was on exposed rock - one slip and it was a long way down. I didn't stop to take photos on the worst parts and soon realised it was perfectly fine so long as I didn't look down.

We met another couple on the way up and walked with them for a while.

John decided this rock looked like a giant peachy bum. I'm just giving it a scratch :)

A highlight of the walk was the masses of Happy Wanderers in flower. (They're some type of hardenbergia anyway).

We had a couple of lovely dinners here and had one fun night in the local pub with another couple we met there. At 9.30 we realised that we were the last ones left (again!) so we thought we'd better leave. The publican thanked us so gratefully for leaving as it was soooo late! We stepped outside and this was the chaotic scene that met us on a wild Friday night in Stanthorpe! Yup - there was absolutely nothing open and nobody around!

The next day we toured a few wineries. John found some nice wines and I discovered some lovely fortifieds. Yum!

Most logical people would have learned form the previous weekend with John and Val, but not us. We met up with them again for another huge weekend, this time around Maryvale as their friends own the pub there.

We started with a walk up Mt Cordeaux. It was a beautiful walk through more gorgeous rainforest.

The views were amazing!

We then headed to the Maryvale Pub. This seems to be in the middle of nowhere and is a classic Aussie pub. We had beautiful old rooms to sleep in.

Cousin John took us for a drive around the area the next day. We found a truly beautiful walk where we scrambled up a stunning river to a small waterfall.

We continued our drive and came to a track that had many river crossings along it. You can only drive along here if the water isn't too deep. This sign was up at the start of it. Classic!

The river crossings were fun!

The reason we came to Maryvale at this time is because once a month, the pub owners put on a pig on a spit and have a guy singing. People come from miles around for it. By the time the pig was ready most people in the pub had a few shandies under their belts and things were getting boisterous. The food was served, the singer cleverly switched his music from country to great rocky dancing music and the party was firing. People were dancing on the tables, strangers were dancing together and there was an amazing rendition of Living Next Door to Alice (a bit of Halki re-enactment there!). It was a huge night!

The music and dancing was outside and it was really cold. Hats and beards were the norm.

We said a sad farewell to John and Val the next morning. Thanks so much for showing us this great part of the world, guys!

We headed north to our last stop in the mountains in south-east Queensland - The Bunya Mountains. Wow- what a place! It was special for so many reasons. Firstly, the accommodation here is all houses so we had a whole house to ourselves! This was such a luxury and we loved every minute of it - well every minute except for those when I found fresh mouse poo on the bench and under my pillow!

The wildlife here is in your face as many of the birds and animals are really tame. You're not allowed to feed them, but the two cafes seemed to have special 'permits' and people fed the birds freely in the cafe grounds.

Kookaburras were everywhere and they seemed really big.

The most obvious animals though were the red-necked wallabies. These cuties grazed the grass around the houses and would let us get to within a few metres before cautiously moving away. They must be prolific breeders because every second one seemed to have an adorable joey hanging out of its pouch.

Sometimes the joeys seemed like a tangle of legs, tail and head inside mum's pouch.

Shortly after we first arrived I briefly saw a dog-like animal cross the road. Knowing that dogs aren't allowed in the national park, I wondered if it was a dingo. We soon learned that wild dogs are a problem here. There were signs up saying to not walk alone and to not let them go behind you, not unlike the dingo signs on Fraser Island.

One day, as we walked up to our house, we saw our first wild dog at close range. Its body was quite dingo-like in shape but it was the colour of a German Shepherd. The dog saw us and ran away from right beside our house. We looked where it had been and there was a freshly-killed wallaby. 

We kept an eye on the dead wallaby to see if the dog would come back for it. It came back three times across the day but didn't eat much of it. It seemed very nervous to be so close to people in daylight. It appeared again at dusk and, like the possum at Maleny, seemed like a different animal with the setting of the sun. This time it was more confident and settled in to eat the wallaby. By the next morning there wasn't a lot of the wallaby left.

We didn't see that dog again but another one soon turned up and carted the remains off to somewhere more secluded so it could eat in peace. The whole experience was a somewhat ghoulish way to see some wildlife action all from the comfort of our loungeroom!

The Bunya Mountains are named after the Bunya Pine trees. These aren't actually pines but they were a really important part of aboriginal diets in the past. They're really high in protein. When there were bumper crops, aboriginals from other areas would travel for hundreds of kilometres to trade for bunya nuts. It became a big social event and an important way for different groups to meet, exchange information and meet spouses. Of course, white man soon ruined everything and the last Bunya Gathering was held in 1902.

We ate bunya nut pies and bunya nut ice-cream. They're really yummy!

The bunya trees were scattered through the rainforest. This is one of the few pockets of them left. There were also some around the village area where it was much easier to get an idea of their distinctive shape.

We had some wonderful walks again. One track was lined with cool grass trees.

There always seemed to be amazing views on the walks.

We found one place where the long strangler fig roots clung to rocks in a way very similar to those at Angkor Wat.

There was only one place to eat at night and that restaurant also happened to have Australia's highest whiskey bar! John had a great time sampling different whiskeys some nights.

We had a lovely time here. We actually had some down time as well which was quite unusual and much appreciated after a couple of big weekends!

We are heading back into the outback next and it was so sad to leave the mountains. The nights had been cool, but not so cold that we needed to light the fire, and the days were sensational. We have loved the green rainforests, the fabulous walks, the feeling of being out in nature and the peace and quiet. We really love this part of the country.

Tune in soon for our last post!

Heather and John :)