Author: brianlaurance

We thought Dubbo was a big town!
Well we are now in Wagga Wagga, which is a very very big town.
After a weekend of not being able to get within a lion’s roar or even a coo-eeee of the Taronga Western Plains Zoo we abandoned the big ‘D’ , leaving it to the million kids on school holidays and today (Monday) we headed south.
The farmlands with broad acres of vivid yellow Canola and other green cereal crops looked radiant in the spring sunlight. Kilometre upon kilometres of the genuine ‘food bowl’ of Australia with ample offerings of fat spring lambs into the bargain.
What beautiful sights along the way; elevated views across the breadth of the countryside in striking colours of Australia’s green and gold, for as far as the eye can see.
Along the way we pulled into the Big Dish (CSIRO radio telescope) at Parkes. A big treat to see the ole girl, especially as the techs kept her vast bulk (64m diameter) moving all morning, which is wonderful to witness. Rob Sitch’s 2000 movie of the same name was doing a brisk trade in the souvenir shop.
Today was also our turn on the Olympic Highway; so aptly named with the car doing constant hop-skip-and jumps all the while the caravan simultaneously attempts the high jump. And pot holes that come in fives, being concentric rings just like the Olympic brand itself.
Tomorrow (Tuesday) we will arrive at Yackandandah for a couple of nights.

For lovers of NRL, all roads in Queensland resemble their favourite Broncos while a 800km drive south of the border into NSW evokes memories of the Blues.
The former PM Tony Abbott wanted to be remembered as leader of an infrastructure government; surely he must have travelled the NSW country roads. A veritable plaid of tar McAdam repair jobs and where these did not meet they insert a kerbside notice “reduce speed, rough road ahead”
To put a fine point on south of the border roads our caravan rig bounced merrily along its surface like the TV bouncing ball identifying the words of a song for everyone to sing along.
From Toowoomba to Armidale along the supposed New England Highway we passed Warwick—English, thru Ben Lomond and Glencoe—Scottish, Llanglothlan—Welsh, Guy Fawkes National Park—English, with an overnight stay at Tenterfield the Aussie home of Sir Henry Parkes 1889 address encouraging Federation. (Tenterfield being named after some Scottish farm!)
But!
The blue mountain scenery together with sheep pasture land and healthy crops are magnificent. Too difficult to capture on anything less than a Leica. And communities everywhere that demand that we return for a closer enjoyment. Poplar tree varieties tell of visionary plantings half a century ago that frame kilometre after kilometre of farmland acreage and creek-beds alike.
Just beautiful!
We left Dorothy O’Connor along with Rodney, Jo, Zachy and Sasha after brekky together in Toowoomba on Wednesday and here on Friday night we are about 800km into NSW at Dubbo, (with nightly stop-overs at Tenterfield and Armidale) and tomorrow we’re ready to check out the Taronga Western Plains Zoo.
Toowoomba is a gorgeous city, especially during its annual flower festival; a floral feast which is not limited to council’s park garden beds and median strip plantings, but lovingly embraced by house-proud gardeners all over this awesome metropolis.
Heading for Melbourne in a bit over a week, we know we need to re-visit this tremendous region— especially Armidale and all the major centres along the New England and Newell Highways—- scenery, wineries, tourist drives and perhaps all in the colourful autumn hues.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so these below indicate what we will be doing at least until next Wednesday when we depart for Tenterfield. And the caravan? It is comfortably parked at Rodney and Jo O’Connor’s home nearby with their young son Zachy keeping a watchful eye on it for us.

A word to describe our Bunya mountain hideaway along with the drive through farm land of rich loam/dark chocolate soils bursting with thriving crops. (Soil so good you could eat it!) and the magic of the thickly wooded mountain forest.
Arcadian: rural, rustic, or pastoral, especially suggesting simple, innocent contentment.
To add a few more descriptors perhaps serene, placid, pacific, untroubled.
But I just made the ‘untroubled’ bit up. Sitting on a bench seat up on the highest lookout—to get Telstra and download the paper—-I was quietly reading the news on my iPad when looking past the text I noticed a goodly sized brown snake passing by my shoes. Isabel and Dorothy were away looking at some sign or rather and remarked that it is the fastest they ever ever seen me move.
We three amigos (Dorothy O’Connor, Isabel and I) enjoyed the little rented pine cottage, comfy warm beds, gas log fire heating, even Foxtel and Skynews to watch the changing of the PM unfolding on Monday night. A live-to-air unscripted blockbuster television event, better than The West Wing and more stabbings than in Midsomer Murders.
Also, being so close to the home turf of a former Queensland political giant, we came down off the mountain to visit Kingaroy, to both feed the chooks and grab a big bag of peanuts.
A holiday within a holiday! How good is that?
The rest of this week and into the next we will be enjoying the floral genius of Toowoomba’s gardeners and their annual Carnival of Flowers.

With apologies to those in Tasmania my iPad decided to leave you all off the Australian map which shows at least our travels from Perth to Roma and this map is missing a few hundred extra kilometres to Dalby, where we are today and tomorrow it will be Toowoomba by about noon.

But today! Yes! We left the van in Dalby down by the Myall creek and made our way to the beautiful Mt Bunya about 60km up the road. Oh, how brilliant, Bunya Pine and unusual strangling fig/ficus cheek by jowl in a rain-forest setting.

It was so impressively gorgeous nature in the wild (with terrific little cabins) that we have booked to have Monday thru Wednesday next week in this idyllic setting.

The fertile black-soil plains in south-west Queensland—west of the great dividing range—is known as the Darling Downs, with the Condamine and Maranoa rivers and their tributaries flowing westward through the area and hence to the mighty Darling River*.
For a couple of nights the tiny town of Condamine has been our home. This little hamlet hosted a huge flood in 2011 which inundated everything, forcing evacuation of the town. You will readily recall those floods and associated deluges at Toowoomba and of the Lockyer Valley and all the way down to Brisbane.
Today at nearby Miles we visited the historical village museum, a street-scape of locally resurrected buildings from yesteryear, thoughtfully situated and restored making for a magnificent tourist enterprise. A bloody lot of hard work by successful volunteers down through time.
Tonight we enjoyed dinner at the wonderful little Condamine pub with Buddy and Maureen Statham, cattle and farming folk from about 25 kilometres out of town. Sorry: didn’t take the camera!
We are planning a couple of nights in nearby Dalby before arriving in the big-smoke Toowoomba.

*Five years ago we spent a holiday following the course of the Murray River from its mouth in Lake Alexandrina in SA to the Snowy Mountains near Canberra. At Wentworth on the Murray we saw the amazing confluence of the Darling River as it joins with the waters that form the Vic/NSW border.

On Sunday’s you can shoot a cannon down McDowall Street with no fear of striking anyone, for Roma’s main street after 12.30pm on a Saturday is like weekends in Perth used to be 30 years ago.
But on Monday the highways and streets are filled with the clattering rattle of cattle trucks and the airport arrivals is filled with cattle buyers; for on Tuesdays the posse of buyers and bovines muster at the Roma sales yards for the weekly store sales* when thousands of weaners, heifers, steers, cows and bullocks change hands.
And once that’s all over the streets and highways are once again filled with the clattering rattle of cattle trucks while the cattlemen socialise over a steak sandwich. The bovines destined for their new yarding somewhere up bush and the buyers fly home with thirsts slaked.

Queensland’s Roma is an important thriving hub for cattle, crops, coal, oil and coal-seam gas production. With the arterial roads in this part of the world reflecting those industries, wide loads of heavy stuff that support gas production and hundreds of gaseous 2 storey rattling trucks plying their trade from farm gate to market. The grey nomadic population has slowed to a trickle.
*cattle sales are held twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Today we moved to the quiet little town of Condamine and catch up with a friendly Qld grey nomad couple we met at Eighty Mile Beach.

Yesterday we profited from a 45km an hour wind on our tail which aided us getting to Roma ahead of schedule. Wednesday night we spent at Tambo on our way south from Longreach, supposedly making for Charleville. But the serious tailwind combined with an eagerness for a change of scenery, we continued straight on at Morven and gave Charleville—on a road back toward central Australia—the big flick.
Passing through the arid regions can be quite dispiriting.
And for nearly a thousand kilometres from before Winton heading south, the roadkill tally numbered in the 1,000’s. Small kangaroos, rabbits, emus, wombats, eagles and even feral pigs all met with a mangled end. More meat, with everything from very fresh to putrid with bones protruding, to feed colonies of kite and crows alike. Dodging fat carcasses in the middle of the road took great care lest we too became just another roadkill statistic.
Kilometres from Roma we encountered the wide sweeping plains of the Western Downs of Queensland. Majestic hectare upon thousands of hectares of thriving green crops.
What a change!
With spirits buoyed by the dramatic metamorphosis the smiles slipped by as we reached Roma.
I think we could easily spend a week in this idyllic town, before catching up with friends at Condamine and finally un- hitching the van to spend a few days with Dorothy O’Connor in Toowoomba.

The thousands of regular readers of this blog are having withdrawals with the severe shortage of postings in the past few days. But here in the central west of Queensland, Longreach—the gateway to the outback—they have a saying, “there’s no business like show business”
Forget the outback! Since we lobbed here at midday on Friday we’ve been out every night to dinner and a show and every day visiting the famed Stockmans Hall of Fame and the ever popular Qantas Founders Museum.
Blimey! Hardly any time for an afternoon nap, let alone write a blog post.
Friday night dinner and a show at the Heartland Theatre at Qantas Museum, very pleasant 2 courses with melody and yarns from a couple of folk singers.
Saturday, something with a bit more robustness at Smithy’s Place on the banks of the Thomson River at sunset with brilliant camp oven tucker, damper and a very entertaining cowboy singer.
Oh yes! And a coach to pick you up and drop you off at home again. Especially as there was a fishing competition on the river and it was a toss-up who caught the most; the fishermen on the river banks or the cops and their booze bus on the road in.
Sunday we were still very much up for it with dinner and a show at the Stockman Bar and Grill. A tasty roast with all the trimmings and trick riding, whip cracking, singing cowboys/girls.
Today we slept in and missed the Cobb and Co stage coach ride out to a local farm. Or perhaps we were a little bit cowboy’d out?
Longreach. What a top spot and well worth a trip across this vast land to enjoy everything on offer.

JV

Yeehaah!
At a quarter to four in the morning the heavens opened up in Winton and we awoke to the sound of quite heavy rain on our metal roof. Rain at last! What a truly refreshing sound of raindrops on your roof. But this morning, not a smidgen in the rain gauge at Winton airport; but the little lady in the craft shop told me she had 12mm at her home and a friend out of town had 17mm. (nearly half an inch in the old money!).

Winton is proudly a very neatly manicured town.

Dinner last night at the historic North Gregory Hotel was a real treat; delicious meals served within the original Art Deco styled dining room and plenty of like minded nomads occupying the tables.

And today we explored the usual haunts like the bakery, Winton Club where the Qantas business model was discussed, (only open Friday nights!) open-air picture gardens, arts and craft shop, Searle’s Outback Store, service station and a local waterhole.

So today’s pictures feature grey skies versus the usual big blue dome above.
Tomorrow we strike out for Longreach and the culmination of the Qantas history.