On the road again

We headed off on our first day around Australia feeling less than prepared.  There were still so many things that we might have been done, or that could or should have been done, but, as ever, we rationalised leaving it by saying it might all be tackled enroute just as easily.

Evenso, we were still really late setting out after last minute stops at the accountants, the bank, the chemist, a grocery store, gas station and tyre shop.  Sigh.  

Still the roads were much improved since our last visit, thanks to the coal and gas exploration works from Toowoomba westwards which have had a really positive impact on the road surfaces.   Big trucks with big loads still do their best to reverse all the good works, though.  This one we had to get completely off the road for as it occupied all the space.  We were thankful we weren’t one of the long line of trucks and utes following behind it.  Slow and frustrating for so long.

Massive truck load enroute

Our first night stop was a wilderness and environmental park in Wandoan as our route took us to many of the waypoints Ludwig Leichhardt passed when he left Jimbour station outside Dalby, on his long trek north to Port Essington in 1845.   Delightful park this was, and free, with immaculate toilets and  showers, and all the space you could wish for, filled with birdsong and a distant game of footie, going on in a nearby playing field.  We cooked up some rice and prawns from the freezer and finished the day with a game of cards which, for once, Miss Bec did not win.

Wandoan Environmental park 

Up early and on the road we found Mick the dog in the O’Sullivan Park on the edge town.  Animal tales feature hugely in the Aussie bush and Mick’s place is up there with the best for a good deed award for his initiative in 1901, rescuing his master.   Sid McCoy, a stockmen, broke his leg while mustering on the huge Juandah Station run which once occupied most of these bits of the country.  Unable to mount his horse Sid scratched a rescue message inside his tobacco tin and tied it with his leather belt to Mick’s neck, sending him off for help.  Mick rose to the task and hurried back with the life savers.  

Mick, the dog

Today, a statue in Mick’s memory sits beside the old Juandah railway station, relocated here, along with  an iconic Aussie windmill that spent its early days pumping around 6,000 gallons of water a day from a bore on nearby Bungaban station.   An interesting historic park well worth a visit.  

Old Bungaban station windmill 

Another park we found further on at Taroom was similarly historic and interesting.   Close by stands an old Coolabah in the heart of town, once blazed with Leichhard’s expedition record of “LL 44” , but the knife slashes have long ago healed, so that particular record is lost, but the lovely tree remains.  

Under a coolabah tree

As does another old memento in the park atop a cenotaph.  A piece of ancient petrified wood found when the railroad was being built in this area was placed atop a built cenotaph as a memorial to the young who died at Gallipoli and seeds taken from an Aleppo pine at Gallipoli were planted beside it.  The young with the old stand tall to this day.  

Petrified wood and Aleppo pine

As we drove out of Taroom heading north, we found another interesting historical artefact on the edge of town: an old steel windmill, one of a rare breed made by the Steel Wings Company in Sydney between 1895 and 1910.  There are only two others of this type, left in Australia — one in Jerilderee, the other in Dalwallinu, in Western Australia.  

Steel Wings steel windmill

A little further along we came to Palm Tree Creek and had to pull over and walk back to the amazing stand of Livistona cycad palms growing along the creek bed here.  Lush, ancient and gorgeous.   So unusually green in this sun-bleached landscape.  

Given the cycads we quite expected to see banana trees growing as we headed into the town called Banana -- only to learn that "Banana" was once a cow.  Way back in the 1880s, local stockmen trying to wrest wild cattle from these grassy plains often used a dun-coloured bullock called Banana as their decoy to coax the cattle into yards.  When Banana eventually died he was taken to a gully for burial, thereafter called "Banana's Gully",  and from which a settlement eventually grew:  Banana.

Two or three times enroute we came over rises that looked out over valleys so splendid we all gasped.  This is a quiet but lovely road heading north, and one we have not driven before, we realise.

After a late lunch stop in Theodore, we wave to my niece who is teaching here in town, then head off to meet up with old friends in Duaringa who are to be the other part of our convoy on our around Oz trek.  

We stopped at Duaringa just twelve months ago, on our trip up to Cooktown.  Here we had our first bit of bad luck with our motorhome overheating.  That problem now fixed, we head out the next morning and pop a tyre just 10 kilometres short of Blackwater.  Luckily, a young man at the tyre place in town fixes us up with our spare, though we learn our back tyres are old — too old to trust on a trek around Australia, so that sets the boys phoning around trying to find good tyres for the rest of the trip for both vehicles.  

By late afternoon, on a Friday, they’d and found a couple further ahead at Longreach.  The others, they ordered, to arrive when we arrive in about a week, at Mount Isa.  

Trip preparation never really stops, it seems.  

And anything that can go wrong likely will.

We just have to be ready for it.