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Published: November 7th 2008
The MacIntyre River
not much of a river but they are very proud of having it.We drove into Goondiwindi at noon to 35 degrees. This town will be our last in Queensland for maybe a year; tomorrow we cross the Macintyre River which runs behind the single street of shops and into New South Wales.
For the last six weeks we have been travelling down through NSW to pick up our home on wheels from Gosford, an hour north of Sydney, then back up to register it in Warwick which was the closest decent sized town over the border in Queensland. This trip had several functions - mainly to avoid $2800 stamp duty if we’d registered the van in NSW, but also to keep near civilization while we trial towing the van and the myriad things inside and out that have to be connected, switched, hooked, packed, unpacked, locked, unlocked, put out, put in and shaken all about while we travel.
I’ve decided caravanning is good insurance against Alzheimer’s as we’ve had to learn so many things and you learn new things every day. It’s also quite technical, which those of you who know us well will appreciate is a challenge for us both to begin with. I now know that AC/DC is
not just an Aussie band, but very important letters to help make sure the fridge doesn’t defrost. Trouble is, I’ve had to absorb so much information I keep forgetting the name of that hairy bloke I’m travelling with.
Fortunately, everything we had heard about people in caravan parks is true and we have had some wonderful help from fellow travellers which has made up for the woefully inadequate ‘briefing’ by the caravan sales company. Another reason for going back into Queensland was to spend more time in a place called Stanthorpe on the Granite Belt, which is the state’s premiere wine region and is close to the Girraween National Park. We had stayed in a cottage there on the way down and loved it’s dramatic scenery
Our neighbours at the Stanthorpe van park were Robyn and Adrian who shared their knowledge and humour with us when we arrived still slightly traumatised by several days solid travel with a new van. Robyn was a life saver with coffee and cake out for us even before we’d finished backing the van into a site for the first time (we’d been cowards and taken ‘drive through’ sites up till then). Adrian
Granite Belt Sunset
From Back Creek Cottage, Stanthorpe was a mine of information about vans, cars and all those practical things that we didn’t even know that we don’t know about. They were so generous, even when it became apparent that Adrian’s equipment was much bigger than Rhys’!
It had rained at Glen Innes (home to the Australian Standing Stones - a quite spectacular monument to Celtic settlers that had come to the New England area of NSW)...
...And the caravan had leaked through the window above the bed - much panic in the middle of the night with towels and plastic containers. We got it ‘fixed’ in Stanthorpe, but with the next night’s rain we again experienced a waterfall disconcertingly close to our pillows. With me furiously mopping inside and Rhys standing outside wondering what to do, Adrian appeared out of the dark and damp in his pyjamas and with duct tape. In the light of day he pointed out that the join in the cladding running across the top of the van did not appear to have any sealant on it. Even to me that sounded like a slight error of judgement in the construction of a caravan.
So back came the van
savouring the sunset
With Granite Belt wines fixing man and to date we haven’t had any more leaks - although we have had a week in Toowoomba which is on level 5 drought alert (the highest) where you are not allowed to wash cars or water gardens. Amazingly Toowoomba still looks beautifully green - it is known as the Garden City but had to cut back on plantings for its garden festival this year. They recycle household water on their gardens.
While in Toowoomba we made the two hour trip east to Brisbane, down the Great Dividing Range escarpment (picture taken at Picnic Point Park which has stunning views down the Lockyer valley towards Brisbane)
We had investigated casting special votes for the NZ elections via the internet but it all seemed too complicated and we decided a trip to Brisbane for the day where we could vote in person sounded much more fun. After doing our duty (good luck Tim!) we did the city botanical gardens where the Jacarandas were in full bloom
then drove up Mt Coot-tha which has spectacular views of Brisbane city
I was keen on doing one of the bush walks around the Mt but Rhys was
Mine's bigger than yours!
Rhys and Adrian compare their conveniences... much less keen - he wasn’t going to admit to the fact that he doesn’t enjoy ‘bush walks’ when you constantly have to be on the lookout for snakes on the path, giant spider webs across the path and giant stinging trees within arms reach of the path - that would be the Giant Stinging Tree which looks very pretty but has large leaves covered with hairy spines that insert themselves into your skin on contact and produce excruciating pain that can last for MONTHS! We know this because the National Parks interpretive sign on the path just below the dangling leaves of the Giant Stinging Tree told us so.
“Why don’t we just do the botanic gardens at the foot of Mt Coot-tha instead?” He enquired. Amazed that Rhys would want to visit two botanic gardens in one day, I happily agreed. Through the entrance from the carpark we walked past the restaurant towards some delightful looking lakes full of waterlilies, but a large sprinkler was spraying the main path. I was still gazing towards the waterlilies when Rhys’s arm swung across my chest with a force that told me something large and probably venomous was ahead.
The Australian Standing Stones
a monument to Celtic settlers in Glen Innes, New England region of NSW In the shadows of the bushes being watered, glistening in the dappled light and nearly covering the width of the three metre asphalt path, was a snake so large that I did not feel frightened at all - maybe we had wandered into the “Take a Walk with Snakes” part of the park, or this was a prop put aside for the new Harry Potter themed garden.
As Rhys stood frozen to the spot I moved towards it, grabbing my camera, further reassured by the large bulge ¾ of the way down the snake - look - it has already had lunch! It truly was a beautiful creature, with a lovely...um...snake-skin pattern - a real Steve Irwin moment! Then life in the raw took a nasty turn and a couple of birds that had been circling the snake got closer and braver and started pecking its tail...maybe one of their family was the cause of the bulge inside?
We watched as the snake slowly slithered across our path and into the display of flowering perennials. I was quite excited, but Rhys was a little subdued, “Come on Hils, we can’t be too long - I don’t want to
get caught up in the city traffic...” So we raced around the rest of the gardens, sticking to the middle of the pathways - the apparent security of paved pathways now having been taken away from us! We did encounter one more way nature could have its way with us before we left the gardens - this time flora not fauna.
The ranges of the Great Escarpment in Queensland were once covered with Bunya forest - a gorgeous tree in the style of a Norfolk Pine but fluffier. Aboriginal people would gather every 2-3 years to feast on the delicacy of the Bunya nuts, which look like pine nuts only 50 times bigger. Hence the pine cone is about 10 times bigger than a normal pine cone and can weigh 10kg. Another interpretive sign mentioned that during the feasts, the locals would never sleep in the forests, but camp in open ground. That seemed pretty sensible to me and we admired the Bunya pines from a distance to avoid coping a 10kg projectile on our own nuts.
At the Cobb & Co Museum in Toowoomba the next day I saw a display of taxidermied creatures and identified our
view from Picnic Park Point
That escarpment again - this time at Toowoomba new friend as a carpet python. On relaying our story to the museum lady she explained that they usually move very quickly, but were not as aggressive as the deadly tiger snake, which will chase people. You might have caught the news item about fire-fighters in Cairns this week, who were attending a blaze in a woodpile but had to beat a hasty retreat as the tiger snake family who had made the woodpile their home, started chasing the firemen.
Yep - this is a country of paradox all right - people friendly beyond the call of duty but at any step there’s something that could kill you. At Stanthorpe a week or so ago it got down to zero degrees at night, now I am sitting here in the shade of our awning a puddle of sweat typing this (oh sorry...was that too much information?) but it is so dry it is comfortable (as long as you stay in the shade!). Rhys just came back from playing golf and announced it was 37degrees.
We went through a lot of different weather on the way down to collect the van, from thunder storms then crystal clear days on
Jacaranda in Brisbane Botanic Gardens
They are in stunning bloom everywhere in Queensland at the moment the Gold Coast, to gloomy coastal weather around the Central Lakes. Here’s some more pics of the lovely coastal spots we visited:
And also some shots of the caravan for those curious to know what our living conditions are.
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Andrea
non-member comment
What an adventure - and its only just begun!
You spin a really good yarn, Hilary. Thoroughly enjoy reading about your journey, and the photos are spectacular. Just the thing to enjoy on ANOTHER cloudly shower-threatening NZ day.