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Published: October 6th 2015
After spending an enjoyable morning at Eumundi, we headed north west towards Moranbah to meet up with David and Mary ready to go to Carnarvon Gorge. David had been filling in at the Moranbah Baptist Church for three months until their new Pastor was able to start.
Much of Queensland is in serious drought at the moment, so as we headed north west through Gayndah and towards Moranbah, the transition from the coastal lush to barren dry became evident.
By and large the journey over three short days was easy and without incident, but we do wonder sometimes at some driver's mentality. We had stopped for lunch in a popular rest area, and after a stretch of the legs, we set out north again. We were approaching the highway entrance when a four wheel drive vehicle towing a caravan shot up our left side and took a shortcut to the highway through a ditch, and at some speed I might add. Though he beat us to the highway, his caravan bounced and lurched unbelievably. A few minutes down the road and we see him stopped inspecting his van. He was a slow learner I might add. A few more
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Blue Faced honey eater - femaleKs down the road and Captain Rocket flew (literally) past us a high speed on a very uneven surfaced road. Dash Cam picture shows the right wheel clearly airborne, and our memories of this clown are that the whole van was airborne. In an emergency, he would have had no show of controlling the van, in our view.
We spent a couple of nights at Duaringa, a small town of about 400 residents, and a great low cost camping ground with about as many people as the town. While the town is in the middle of a large and at the moment very dry grazing region, the town is like an oasis. The camping area is built around a billabong which has its water recycling down through a waterfall making for a very pleasant location.
With the water there all year round, the variety of bird life visiting is quite extensive, as are the busy mosquitos at sun down. We had a long chat to an elderly resident of Duaringa who was able to show us interesting facts from the region. Like many of the small country settlements, transport and rail have been the origin. The transport still
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Ibis are wide spread in Queensland. These ones have very little black, while in other areas, they can be up to 50% black. passes as does the rail, but the support required is small compared with 50 or more years ago. If you pass this way, drop into the visitor information centre, they have a lot of interesting things to see. There is a local wood turner who has made some really intriguing clocks which are on display. We watched the blue faced honey eaters drinking from the billabong. Unlike the others we saw wading, these birds flew at great speed and skimmed the water to drink. So fast that even at 60FPS the movies showed little more than a quick flash, splash and dash. There are 43 species of birds that regularly visit this billabong. We counted about 20 in one afternoon.
Duaringa had another surprise for us as well. We were enjoying the fresh air when an ambulance pulled up alongside our motorhome. No, we hadn't dialled 000, sent up a distress signal or wave frantically for help. Margaret even told him she didn't want to go for a ride! When there is no ambulance activity, the local ambulance officer comes down to the park and runs CPR classes for travellers. It was really good to have an update on
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Rainbow lorikeet. the best techniques for CPR. On reflection, we realised just how much things have changed since gaining a medallion for life saving while at high school. The Ambo had never used Holger-Neilson technique.
From Duaringa we headed west and later north towards Moranbah.
This part of Queensland is best known for it's coal mines and long coal trains that service both power stations and the export ports out on the coast. While we saw many such trains as we journey through the area, traffic was a actually quite low. Moranbah has had a reduction in the mining work force of around 2000 people, and this is true of several other towns in the outback. Much of the coal has been exported to China and other regions that smelt steel or use thermal PowerStation. The mining companies have mothballed a number of mines until such time as demand increases again. The flow on effect in the towns is staggering. Housing prices have collapsed, businesses struggle, community services decline quite quickly. We heard stories of folk loosing their homes to the banks as the mortgages exceeded the value of the properties, and the owners had no prospect of finding new
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What you cannot see is the high speed drinking technique of the honey eaters skimming the water. tenants in the near future. These are really serious social issues for these mining centres.
One of the pictures is a deadline bucket that operated at one of the Moranbah mines. While in service, this bucket dragged over a million cubic meters of coal and overburden from the mine site. I suspect the bucket may have been a little like Captain Cooks axe that had had several handles and a couple of heads. Certainly the cast steel scraping jaws would have been replaced many times during its service life.
We spent a couple of days at Moranbah which included David's last service at the Baptist Church followed by a community lunch. These country folk really made us visitors feel very welcome. The town itself, while dulled a little by coal dust, is actually an attractive town with plenty of green space.
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Mum & Dad
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Just found this one missed it when you sent it for some reason. A good one too. More to come when you get your new van! Perhaps some of the cruise when you get back?