Northern Exposure, Part 7 – Captains Log
Leaving Duringa we made it as far as Baralaba Showground – it was an enormous effort to do the 59ks in one day. Bikes off the van at the showground for a ride around the town...
Leaving Duringa we made it as far as Baralaba Showground – it was an enormous effort to do the 59ks in one day. Bikes off the van at the showground for a ride around the town shows that it is a tidy place with even the disused Catholic Church being kept neat and tidy. The town did have a pub some years back but that had burnt down and had ‘moved’ to the old bowling club. We checked out the menu for our once a week treat but the menu had only fried food on it so we gave it a miss. The town is in the middle of the coal country with a mining camp in town to keep the workers close to the work.
The next day Jo needed to visit the local medical walk-in centre – you couldn’t be in a better place with this one. While Jo was inside, I chatted to a local farmer about his farm (6000 acres) worked by 3 generations (he is the middle one and his father is still on the tractor at 91). We also spoke about the pub burning (although for sale at the time it was unlucky). The owner of the pub had spent money on the pub modernising it and also organised the local music festivals. The last of which brought 5000 people into town with acts such as Hunters and Collectors as headliners. Real estate, 2 x 1 acre blocks with houses recently sold to an investor from Perth for $100 each and are rented at $300 a week each. The old church on 2 acres with full amenities was auctioned recently for $130k to a bloke in SA. If you want an acre with a shed, power and water they go for less than $40k.
We moved on and after eating lunch in the local kiddies playground we continued to keep off the main roads by driving the 180ks from Bauhinia to Taroom down the dirt, a slow drive that took us around 7 driving hours plus the over night stay next to the road – only one car in that time. Through Taroom and up another back road to Cracow, a tired town with a donation campground with power and showers. No shops in town but only the pub, with its attached coffee shop. Having a coffee and speaking with the husband-and-wife owners they are really struggling – the increases in cost of living has been slowing nomad traffic for a while, and the fuel issues have knocked their trade down (for this time of year) by 70 to 80 percent. It’s a common theme with caravan parks empty and no one making a dollar anywhere away from main popular spots at the moment
Next up was a stop at a little place called Durong, and while we were sitting around our campfire we had mysterious light going over us around 6.30….the next morning a bloke pulled in to make his breakfast while on the road. In chatting to him I found out that he was 79 and on his way to Roma to check on some of his properties there. He asked if we had seen the light last night as well as it was something he hadn’t seen before. He also told me the that at one stage, he was the only son of the oldest man in Australia. His father born in 1910, died at 111 and 188 days. The light – on the news later on, it turned out it was from a Chinese rocket going over the top, and the light was from the sun shining through the exhaust from the rocket! It was very bright and we thought UFO???
Jo needs to fly to Canberra for a family matter (not her dad) so we have been making our way towards Brisbane so she can fly from here for a couple of days. We are north of Brisbane at the Woodford showground for the time being, before we continue on and try to stay away from the crowds again – we have enjoyed the starry nights and fires, camping anywhere we felt like it and travelling the back roads. We did go to the Woodford pub for our night out (excellent GF salt and pepper calamari) and have entered the cow pat lotto!
Fuel, before it goes up again – the worst we paid was just under a $2.60 for a litre, the best was $1.70 and it has curtailed the travellers this year – lets hope the small businesses survive this one.
Cheers
The J’s
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