Month: June 2017

THE GLASS HOUSE

We travelled down from Lightning Ridge to Gulgong for our last night.  We booked a house called the Glass House.  Well it certainly had plenty of glass. It was set down a long tree lined drive and had separate studio units on either end of it.  This would be good if you had 2 couples staying with you.  The walls everywhere were glass, with just a curtain to pull around the bath and bedroom walls.  It was winter so we enjoyed the double sided log fire that warmed the house along with the air conditioning.

 

 

I was surprised how big Lightnng Ridge is and that it is all above ground, unlike White Cliffs and Coober Pedy. I think we were lucky with our choice of motel – it is comfortable and quite modern, unlike the other 2 that were close by. It is owned by the Bowling Club, which is over the road, so guess where we went for dinner. Dinner was from 6pm and we arrived shortly after to find a long queue at the bistro and only a couple of tables free. It was so busy. It became evident that people were also getting the meals as take away. I guess that is because once again there were not too many alternatives. It was certainly a step above our dinner at Injune. It is a big club.
Monday we decided to explore Lightning Ridge. They have a unique method of seeing things – they have 4 coloured car door trails. You go to the start of a trail and follow the coloured car doors. It doesnt take long to see why they use car doors. Everywhere there is dead machinery, trucks, cars etc, so no shortage of doors. There is surprisingly quite a large area with bitumen streets and houses, back from the main street. However, after that it is dirt tracks and roads, in around the diggings. It is all still very active so you have to stay on the designated trails, there are too many mine shafts all over the place.

 

We did each of the 4 trails. On one we went to Amigo’s Castle, a private home single handedly built of ironstone. Amigo started building in 1981. His scaffolding consisted of 44 gallon drums, with planks arranged one above the other. As he had collected all the rocks from around the area, the Greenies brought action. Then the locals supported him and all sorts of issues and court cases ensued. In the end he was going to bulldoze the castle if he was not allowed to stay. It now has a Heritage listing (such a young building) but he has wiped his hands of it and is now living in a besser brick building behind it, but still mining. When we looked over the castle, there was a wishing well he’d made and you could hear him working below.

On another trail we stopped at Chambers of the Black Hand. We descended over 70 stairs into the top of the mine which was then a series of tunnels that had been mined over time. The miner has, over time been carving over 700 reliefs on the walls. He does it with a butter knife and fork. He was actually there, working on a possum. He said he saw an empty space that needed something so this morning put a possum in. The passageways were filled with every type of subject matter. He had Egyptian mummies, freezes, the Last Supper, Chinese warriors, animals of all sorts, Super Heroes, heads of Prime Ministers of Aust and then of famous people. He had put bars across the one of Rolf Harris. The passageways ran off in all directions and in circles. Amazing. He was chatting as he sculpted, saying he had quit mining 6 months ago but would still buy a piece of opal if he thought he could make money. He said he never made it big when he was mining. He’s probably doing well with this underground gallery at $35/person. There was a theatre and also another level below where you could go on a mine tour.

We went back to the Bowling Club for a sandwich for lunch – where else did you go? They told us that there had been a blackout in Lightning Ridge and the surrounding areas for some hours and it would probably not be back for another hour, but it was ok they had their own generator. We heard later that a kookaburra had flown into a substation.
After lunch it was another couple of trails. One took us to a ridge that looked out over the black soil plains. We went to Nettleton’s First Shaft Lookout where there was a Stone Labyrinth (a maze made with rocks) which of course we tried. Nearby was a Beer Can House (only in Aust) that was in some disrepair but quite amusing. We also saw a corrugated iron church purpose built for the film “Goddess of 1967”, and Bevan’s Cactus Nursery with 2300 species of cactus. We didn’t pay to go inside this.

There is an artesian bore bath that we checked out this morning. It was really a round pool with 40 degree water in it. I was not that keen to go in. You couldn’t see the water changing and there were quite a few sitting in it. I’ll stick to my beautiful water.
Dinner was back at the Bowling Club – where else!  This time it was not as busy as the night before, but they were still doing really well.

AGNES WATER TO ROLLESTON

We left Agnes Water and travelled the 62km to the highway and then north almost to Gladstone 1 1/2hrs before turning west and to Biloela. We stopped at the Lions Park to eat our breakfast and what a great park. Lots of tables and bbqs, even a stainless steel washing up space, great kids equipment with a bike track all around the park and excellent toilets.
It was out along the Dawson Highway and next was a town we got a laugh from on our trip 3 years ago out to AW – the town of Banana. It’s named after a bull, famous in the town, named Banana as he was yellow. He died beside the creek and as they say, a town grew up beside the creek and they named it Banana. We continued west, whereas previously we had come up to Banana from the south and our memorable overnight stay at Taroom (for all the worst reasons).

It was 180km further west to Rolleston and we were surprised at the size of the town. I think we had been expecting it to be bigger, not sure why. There were a few houses, some shop/buildings that were shut and looked like they may never be open and a park. We were going to stop there and boil our billy. When we got out of the car, it was a lovely park, with several seats with cushions and a pot of flowers on a table. There was a historical old Australian bark hut and under its roof, an old fashioned coffee van. We thought we should patronise the locals and discovered it was manned by a local woman and her mum, both volunteers, raising money for the local community. They said it is manned everyday and is certainly not taking business away from anything in the town as there is nowhere there to get a coffee. We also sampled their home made cake, sitting on one of the seats in the park. They said it is manned everyday.

 

INJUNE

At Rolleston, we turned south, to come down the Carnarvon Highway, which pretty much brings us down a straight line into NSW at Lightning Ridge. We had booked accommodation at Injune and arrived there around 2.30, approximately 700kms from Agnes Water but easy travelling because the roads were so straight and flat and there was so little traffic. It seemed funny to be staying at Injune, in May!
Injune was another small town. There were 3 motels, the pub, a caravan park, a small Spar supermarket, a few shops, cafe and visitor information centre. It was Saturday afternoon and everything was shut except the visitor information centre and the pub. Our motel room at the Injune Haven Motel was really quite good, although more expensive than our lovely 2 bed unit at Agnes Water. We set off to explore – more a walk along the main road/street. Injune began in 1920 when it was  established as a camp at the end of the railway line. The line was built to support the Land Soldier settlement blocks after WW1. Cattle and timber (harvesting of natural cyprus pine) are the main industries today. It is also the gateway to Carnarvon Gorge, the turn off being between Injune and Rolleston. Coal seam gas has recently benefitted the town. The pub was our only option for dinner but that was ok. We were staying opposite so it wasn’t a long walk. It was bright lights, a pool table, tv screen and bar to order, all in an old outback decor. The corned beef was off so we ordered rissoles and veg and sausages and veg. Quite ok for where we were. There were very few others there and it was Sat night. 2 couples were drinking outside with a few children and a couple came in after us and ordered a meal. One of the men from outside came in and the first thing I was aware of was the clinking of the spurs on his boots. He went over and started lighting one of the open fires in the room and called out a few friendly words to us. Then he brought his 6mth old son (John Guy Walker, known as John John as he was 3rd generation John) to see the fire and then pulled up a seat and began talking to us. He was a cowboy, did rodeos, quarter horse breaking in, horse whispering and Mon-Fri worked in the sawmill. He was 40, a twin and his twin was the other half of the other couple with the kids outside. He was well on the way to drunk but telling us of his life. A real character, all the while nursing John John, a really cute and alert baby. It was sad, however, as we walked out, to see the age of his mother, she was so young, probably still a teenager. You wonder what life is ahead for these children. They are living in such a small and remote town, and the facilities so few.
It was an early night and as we were the only people in the motel, quiet.

 

ROMA

Sunday we left Injune at 8 and drove 90km to Roma. This was quite a large town and we stopped for morning tea at a pub that had been totally modernised – popular and good. We tried to book accommodation for Lightning Ridge and found it wasn’t so easy getting 2 nights. After noone around in Injune we were surprised at how busy Lightning Ridge appeared to be. Anyway we found a motel. Roma looked a prosperous town, due to the oil and gas mining. They had some lovely old boab trees, including their biggest with a girth of 9.51m and 6m tall. There was an Avenue of Heroes – 140 boab trees lining one main and 2 short streets, each commemorating fallen soldiers from the Roma district in WW1. The main street also had well restored pubs and wide streets.

 

ST GEORGE

From Roma it was nearly 2 hours to St George. We were surprised how small this town was. Cotton growing is one of its main industries, using channel irrigation to supply the water from the Balonne River. The land is so flat and the cultivated areas immense. It was named St George by the explorer Sir Major Thomas Mitchell who crossed the Balonne River on Saint George’s Day – 23/4/1846.

DIRRANBANDI

We bought lunch at one of the few places open, and the salad rolls were made very much on country time from a very ordinary looking place, but they tasted fine when we ate them, 89 kms later at Dirranbandi (meaning frog’s croaking). Another small quiet town with not much but a small well kept park. This town is very close to Cubby Station, the largest cotton farm in the Southern Hemisphere.

 

HEBEL

Next town, was Hebel, just before the NSW border. This really did only have a pub and General Store. The pub was so outback – corrugated iron, wooden walls, everything rusty, broken or dangling. Utes were parked out front and it was very busy with the locals (all middle aged and male, with their big hats and boots and no women) drinking and talking. To the side was the “bistro” another rough corrugated iron structure with 2 windows, presumably to be served through. It is said that the pub opened in 1894 as a Cobb and Co changing station and was originally called the Commercial Hotel.

When crossing the border, there were so many signs for those entering Qld of what they could not take into the state. There were no signs coming into NSW???

It was only 63km and then we turned off to Lightning Ridge.

 

ROAD TO LIGHTNING RIDGE

We travelled 7 hours yesterday and 6 today and the whole way, since Biloela, the roads have had signs that they flood and indicators showing the depth. The roads have been flat, except for a couple of times when we rose to 400+m – once between Banana and Rolleston and today on the Great Dividing Range. Each was just an incline and not really noticeable. What it does show is how flat Qld is and how when there is a lot of rain in the north, floodwater spreads over such vast distances.
There has been a lot of road kill. Mostly kangaroos, but today a goat. We stopped or slowed for kangaroos twice today. We also stopped and then drove slowly because cows were grazing beside the road and were wandering from side to side of the road. They were being moved by men on quad bikes and their trusty dogs. It seemed they were feeding on the grass beside the road as the land on the other side of the fences had no feed. It was quite dry and dusty.