Qld Outback Trip - The Last Day

St George - Mungindi - Moree - Warialda - Tamworth: 515kms

One more cup of coffee
for the road ...

The last day of the tour - well the last day of the sprint home, at least.

We had a few issues getting fuel in St George. Finding a place open at 7:00am was one issue and when we did, the attendant not only didn't know what octane the the different variations of unleaded were but he didn't know what octane was.

The first leg to Mungindi was only interrupted by another mob of cows and some more green splatter for the car and caravan. So looking forward to the job of removing it. We drove past the Two Mile Hotel on the Qld side of the border, where I had some interesting experiences when I was on a Black Dog gig a few years ago. In the bar, they had a big, hand painted signed ...

STATE OF ORGAN

MATE V STATES

N.S.W. V Q.L.D.

I particularly liked the last line.

My accommodation was in a partitioned section of a shipping container out the back of the pub. No window, just a steel door and an air conditioner. 

This trip, we stopped at the Daily Grind, just over the Barwon River and hence in NSW, for a delicious coffee, where for the first time since we left, we could get decaf and lactose free milk. I had a nice chat to two young ambos who were heading off duty and a young school teacher who was having an outing with her two young boys.

At Moree, Sue stretched her legs and importantly her back, while I topped up the fuel tank for the final time and made a few phone calls to sort out some issues for Dad.

At Warialda, we pulled up at the park on the edge of town and had sandwiches in the van until making the final run to Tamworth and home.

Click here to see today's photos

In Twenty days, we traveled nearly 2000kms to Cloncurry in far northwest Qld. In three, we returned. We had some new experiences, sorted out the last issues with the AVAN, traveled new ground to new places and had reached a state of total relaxation and peace.

It will happen again.

AUC 1995 - Roma

Roma (Qld)
Moree, Munglindi, St George, Surat, Roma (Carnarvon Highway) 436 kms

After our wonderful evening with the Richardson's, we took our leave - with difficulty - and headed to the shops to stock up for our time ahead in Carnarvon Gorge NP.

This was to be one of our longest days on the road for the entire journey and was necessitated by the desire to put some of the long stretches leading to the places we wanted to see, behind us. Our path took us roughly north, through the border town of Mungindi and over our first real dirt road of the
trip. The car was already showing the legacy of road works on the southern outskirts of Moree: a fact that was made the more galling by the cleaning I had given it the day before departure.

Mungindi nestles on the Barwon River and looks like "just a place". I had heard many tales about it, but the fact that a colleague had once taught there seemed to be more than it deserved in terms of a reputation and we passed through without giving it as much space in our day as this paragraph.

Lunch was had beside the Balonne River - fittingly we had processed cold meat on our sandwiches - in the namesake of my favourite football team, St George. The town is the centre of a rich cotton growing district, as the roadside litter would indicate. On the southern approach, the large cotton gin was an intriguing sight, with the yards liberally littered with the large "bales" of cotton that are collected in bins and road transported to the gin. The extensive irrigation system surrounding St George has led to this success with cotton, but other crops such as wheat, barley, oats and sunflowers are also important cash crops from the locals. With sheep and cattle also having important roles to play in the local economy, the area has many similarities - in land use only - with Tambar Springs.

The children were excited to see signs indicating the bag limits allowed when fishing in the Balonne, but those wise sages among us saw too close a relationship with the sign, to the implied nature of the river, as indicated by its name. We passed on, without serious temptation to dangle the lines !

After our lunch break, it was on to Surat, where we had a stretch of the legs and then put the head down for the final leg to Roma.

Our overnight camp was at Roma Villa Caravan Park. Our powered sight was $3 cheaper than expected because the proprietor declined to charge for all of the children. He commented that costs sky rocketed when travelling with kids and as he had done it when he was younger, he liked to help families out who were staying together and seeing their country. Thoroughly decent of him, really. I guess it just goes to show that you don't have to be a pensioner to get the odd discount!

We pitched the overnight dome and each busied ourselves with chores towards the common good.

Our evening meal was a very palatable stew courtesy of Sam and Sue. Each of the children began their journals, as did I and we settled off to sleep as the cool of the evening descended upon us. The only bummer of the evening was my tardiness in turning on the phone, which meant I missed a call from Dad by about five minutes. The switch-on was accompanied by an immediate page from the electronic mail box and a message from Dad complaining that he had wasted his eighty cents in an attempt to do us a good deed!

The very pleasing aspect of the two days driving had been the fuel consumption, which appeared to be much less than on previous trips with the trailer. We have previously found that our range was only about 400 km, but we traveled well in excess of that on this day and still have not reached the final 10L warning light. Tomorrow's fill up will tell a story, but the change to a higher tow ball seems to have the car sitting in a more balanced posture .