Quilpie, Outback Queensland

If you are in Quilpie you are in the Aussie Outback! This little town on the edge of the Channel country has seen a lot of history, and known a lot of hardship. Right now, the area is in the grip of drought, again, and whilst it is bad here, it is much worse a bit further north around Winton & Longreach, where they haven't had any rain for 4 years. Hard to imagine, that as we sit at home and turn the tap on at will, there are kids out here who are starting school and have never seen rain!!

Main street Quilpie

You may have read a classic Australian book called Kings in Grass Castles, by Mary Durack. It was made into a movie as well. Well, that story is set around Quilpie, and traces the history of the pioneering Durack Family, led by Patrick Durack, and his quest to establish a strong pastoral industry in the harsh interior of Australia's north. Along with the Costello & Tully families, they settled on huge tracts of land. There was much marriage between the families, and many descendants still own the land today. The Durack Family property, Thylungra Station, still exists today, but is no longer in the Durack Family. Today the property is a mere 700,000 acres, a far cry from the 2,500 square miles it covered at its peak!!! Patrick (Patsy) Durack, in 1879, embarked on what is still the longest cattle drive in history, 3000 miles from Thylungra Station to the Kimberley Region. They started with over 7,000 cattle and arrived three years later with just over 3,000. Two drovers committed suicide along the way, such was the hardship. It is just the most incredible story. The Durack family homestead still stands in the Kimberley today, not far from the Ord River Dam, and most of the old property is now covered by Lake Argyle.

The old Quilpie Pub

The small town of Quilpie is very nice, situated on the Bulloo River. Whilst it is a rural town, it also has an Opal Mining history, and even today there are active mines searching for what is known as Border Opal. But it is livestock that keeps the town running. A local told me that the town has more trucks per head of population that anywhere else in Australia, such is the need for livestock transport. There are Road Trains galore! Ironically, the town came into existence because of the Railway. It is the end of the line, and a new town was built, dooming the nearby little towns like Toompine & Adavale. It is a tidy little town with a population of 650 very friendly people. The caravan park is The Channel Country Tourist Park & Spas, and it is very nice with very friendly & helpful managers. The Spas, are artesian spas. The town water is obviously bore water, but due to the extreme depth of the bore, over 3,000 feet, the water comes out hot, so hot, it is piped into the homes as hot water! Here, you don't have a hot water heater, you need a hot water cooler!  

Town mural section featuring Amy Johnson

An interesting little story about Quilpie, concerns the Aviator Amy Johnson, the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia. Having reached Darwin, she set off for Sydney. Now in those days with no GPS, the pilots followed roads and railways for direction. Her plan was to stop at Charleville for fuel. In theory this would be easy to find, as it was the end of the railway line. WRONG!!! Should have gotten a map update Amy!!! The railway now ends at Quilpie!! So the town got a few extra minutes of fame as part of this amazing flight.

On the Quilpie Outback Mail Run

The main reason we have come to Quilpie is to learn a about the history of the area, and to do that, we are taking The Outback Mail Run, a unique trip, where the mail man literally delivers the mail to the outlying properties, twice a week. They use a small 4WD bus to take paying tourists like us along for the day. They not only deliver the mail, but groceries and other supplies as well. Overall, there are 15 stations, but only around 12 are still lived at. The trip is a full day, and we will cover over 400 kilometres, mostly on gravel roads and tracks, some of which are private roads linking the stations.

One of our stops on the Mail run

We were up bright & early to meet Dave the mailman at 6.40am! There are seven passengers in our group, six tourists like us, and a local lady, a retired farmer who wants to relive some of her past. Attached to our bus is a huge trailer with two big bags of feed to be dropped off at Budgerygar Station. We made stops in town to collect the mail, some newspapers and some groceries, and we were on our way. We were very quickly off the bitumen and onto the dirt. The land is very dry with little grass or vegetation. It is fascinating to learn that the cattle eat the Mulga scrub. It is excellent feed. We had wondered what all the bushes were, neatly trimmed underneath. It is the Mulga the the cattle have eaten up as far as they can reach! The farmers use tractors and chains to bend the trees over to let the cattle feed when it gets desperate. Water comes from bores. These are some of the deepest in Australia, drilling up to 1600 metres to reach the artesian basin. They dig big dams around their properties, usually at corners where the huge paddocks meet, and using poly pipe, pump water, sometimes tens of kilometres, to fill the dams.

Dave delivers the mail

We dropped of mail at stations called  Nickavilla, Como, Gunnadora, Maybe, Milroy & Goombie, before arriving at Alaric Station for morning Smoko. The old homestead at Alaric is now a Vietnam Veterans Retreat. It was saved from being pulled down by a Vietnam veteran who used to visit the area to shoot & fish. Now veterans from all over Australia can stay in the old home, or bring their caravan or swag, and share the friendship of their fellow veterans.  We enjoyed a cuppa with the manager Allan and a couple of guests as well as some of Margaret's (Trinidad Station) fruit cake, as we wandered around this quirky place, with an outside dunny and some amazing memorabilia!

At the Vietnam Veteran's Retreat Alaric Station

Departing Alaric, we travelled through opal country, home to the Hayricks Opal Mine, then on over the Mitchell Grass Plains to Canaway Downs. The Mitchell grass, is excellent feed. It grows about waist high in a good season, but now is just short dry tufts as far as the eye can see. There are kangaroos and emus galore! We get to see some great action of these animals in full flight, which is a majestic sight. They are mostly in small groups up to ten or fifteen, but Dave told us that they have been in plague proportions, with as many as 2 to 3,000 in a paddock! We pass along a closed section of road, that once was the Cobb & Co Coach route between "Jack in the Rocks" & Windorah.

Outback Dunny at Alaric Station

Our lunch stop is at Trinidad Station, but before that we travel on to Budgerygar Station to drop off the trailer. Seems funny, just unhooking it and leaving it next to the mail box! It will be collected, empty, on the next mail run. I should mention the motley collection of mailboxes. These are not what you and I know as a letter box. We have seen old drums, refrigerators, freezers and metal bins of all shapes & sizes. They need to be big to take a lot more than letters! Normally, Margaret, the 82 year old owner of Trinidad Station would join us for lunch, but she is away for a few days. So, she has left the place open for us to help ourselves!!! Dave knows the drill and showed us where everything was! We sat outside in the lovely shaded garden, and ate out packed lunch of meats and salads with a cuppa. Margaret's daughter arrived. She lives on another home on the property. It was fascinating to talk to her. Only a young mum, she educates her kids using the Distance education System, where classes are beamed into the homestead by satellite from Charleville or Longreach. She talks about the struggles of farming and raising a family in such difficult country without a hint of pity or regret. City kids think meat comes from Woolworth's. If only they could see what people go through to get it there!!

Lunch at Trinidad Station

After lunch we head for Araluen Station. We crossed a cattle grid that forms part of the Dog Fence, the longest man made structure on earth. Stretching from the coast in Southern Western Australia, it crosses through South Australia, the north west corner of New South Wales, and into Queensland, it is 5400 kilometres long, and designed to keep the dingos out. It is still maintained by Government contractors, a team working out of Quilpie. We have now crossed the fence in all 4 states! A little further on we visited the scene of a fairly recent air crash in which the pilot died, but 8 passengers survived. It is incredible that the wreckage was just left here in the bush! Story is that the pilot was on his last flight with the company because he was unhappy with the companies safety attitude! Ironically, as he came into land, he forgot to put the landing gear down, and the planes engines dug in and the plane catapulted into the scrub!! Dead due to his own error, and lucky not to take 8 others with him!!

The scene of the plane crash

Last stop was the famous Thylungra Station of Durack family fame, now owned by the Scott Family. They now run cattle and have a lot of horses due to their interest and involvement with Polocrosse. We stopped by the old and huge shearing shed, used as recently as 2008. At its peak, 100,000 sheep were shorn in this shed in one year!! Now it only contains memories and an old Ford Station Wagon! We wandered around for a while in that huge old shearing shed, before heading on to our last stop at Kyabra Creek. It was here that Patsy Durack first met up with the local indigenous people, the Buntamurra People. Patsy would enter into a long term friendship with one of these people, a guy he called Pumpkin, and who travelled with him on the cattle drive to the Kimberley. Pumpkin is buried at Argyle Station in the Kimberley. We sat by the old billabong and enjoyed a beer from Dave's cooler, and talked about what a fantastic day we had, understanding first hand what our pioneers have done for this country and what they are still doing today. This was a truly memorable day. I sat up front with Dave all the way back to Quilpie, sharing some great yarns. He has seen much of Australia himself, and like us has much more to see and do. He plans to move on at the end of the year after three years doing "the run".

The Dog Fence

Next morning, we headed east towards Charleville. We stopped for coffee and an incredible Vanilla Slice. We had no specific plan of where to stop. We are having trouble with our satellite Dish, and have made an appointment to have it looked at near Brisbane, so we are just working our way there. That night, we found a lovely free camp just outside Mitchell, at the Neil Turner Weir. We put the van right along the bank of the weir, got out the chairs and a cold beverage, and sat down to watch the sunset. The water came alive with all kinds of birds. We were especially happy to see a Spoonbill wading along the edge just below our spot. There were cormorants and pelicans and all kinds of ducks and water fowl, and even a couple of Magpie Geese. The sunset was spectacular, and gave way to one of those huge Outback starry skies.

The Weir on the Balonne River at St George

In the morning, we enjoyed breakfast by the weir watching the morning bird life, which was very similar to the evening before! We were now heading for St George. Carolyn keeps telling me we are never going to live at a place called St George, but I haven't given up! Along the way we say a strange sculpture in a park and stopped for a look. It looked like a Ned Kelly sculpture, but we knew that was a long way from home, and it turned out to be the location of the arrest of Queensland's last Bushranger! I think it said in 1903, but it was hard to read. We made it into St George which is a lovely country town on the banks of the Balonne River. The bridge that you cross on the way to town is also a weir, that creates a large lake. The area along the river is lovely and the river is a favourite with inland fishermen. We stayed three nights at the Kamarooka Caravan Park, which was quite nice, but small and crowded and they were doing some ground works. In addition to the weir right in town, there are a number of other dams and weirs. There is a lot of irrigated agriculture around St George, with huge areas dedicated to wheat and also cotton. There is a cotton gin at St George. We found an excellent gourmet cafe in town, called Deli Cate.

Inside the bar at Nindigully Pub

On the Saturday, we decided to head out of town to the quite famous Nindigully Pub. This is another of the iconic bush pubs, that claims to be Queensland's oldest continually licensed pub. You can camp along the river near the pub, and there were a lot of people doing just that when we got there. It was very dirty & dusty in the campground. The pub is especially famous for its Road Train Burger. This monster costs $50.00 and can feed 1 to 4 people!! You can take the One man Challenge which is the burger plus chips and onion rings. If you complete the whole lot solo, you win "nothing but the satisfaction of completing the challenge!!!!" Our lunch date was a fizzer as the chef was on strike!! In fact, our lunch was a disaster!! It took an hour and a half to deliver our lunch of a regular burger and a Caesar Salad. Carolyn's Caesar salad was a bowl of green leaves of various origins, 4 croutons, a chicken breast cut in half and a blob of mayonnaise. It was inedible!! All the patrons were going crazy. This was Nindigully Pub's worst day, but they didn't really seem to care!!

Carolyn with Gunsynd

Our last stop on the way to Brisbane was Goondiwindi, only 200kms away. This really is a lovely country town. Larger than St George, it has a nice feel to it. Again it is a town rich from irrigated agriculture, and it is of course home to that famous race horse, Gunsynd, "The Goondwindi Grey". We stayed at the Top Tourist Caravan Park out of town, which was very nice. We had a large site down the back near the Billabong. The town seems very progressive and proud. Lots of lovely café choices and shops, and everyone seemed so friendly. We only had a couple of days, but will definitely be back to spend a bit more time.

The Bushranger Sculpture

We were on the road early to head for Brisbane. The guy fixing our satellite had told us to stay at Samford Showgrounds on the Northern outskirts of Brisbane. We have never been in this part of Brisbane before, and it was only thanks to our Sat Nav that we found it! It really is a lovely hidden gem if you are travelling near Brisbane. Samford Village is very trendy with all the services and a fantastic café scene. There are lots of small acreages around, and you are only 20 kms from Brisbane CBD. Our journey here had one big mishap. We did our windscreen big time. A car travelling the opposite direction threw a huge rock at us. The noise was like an explosion, we thought we'd been shot at. Glass exploded from the back of the fracture all over the dash board and us! So as well as the satellite we are also doing the windscreen!! We couldn't believe how good Youi was with our claim. Within ten minutes of it happening we were booked in to get the new screen put in, and with only a $50 excess to pay. Glad we took the windscreen option on our policy!!

Ouch! New Windscreen!

The Samford Showgrounds themselves are just lovely. Huge expanses of lush grass. The manager, Paul, is so helpful and obliging. It is best to book ahead, as they do have a number of events at the showgrounds, but at $20.00 per night for a full powered site, it is fantastic value, and only a five minute drive into Samford Village. The Kookaburras were at our site within seconds. Carolyn had the mince meat out and we were surrounded. Talk about tame. They would take the meat out of your hand. They were so tame, that as I was reclining in my chair absorbed in my book, one came and landed on my leg!!! Thomas the satellite guy, came and fixed the satellite, and updated our software. He was so efficient, and we got the new windscreen put in by O'Brien's. To finish off the trifecta, the handle on our caravan door broke, but I found a replacement handle close by, and after a lot of cursing and frustration, finally got the new handle on. I had heard how tricky they were to replace, but having fitted so many security door handles I thought it would be a simple task. Well, next time should be simple.

The tame Kookaburra at Samford Showground

From Samford we headed up to Maleny for a weekend with Lynne & Paul. We watched the footy and enjoyed the scene that Maleny offers. Carolyn got her puppy fix with Kenzo, and we had a lovely time. Maleny Showground is another cheap gem, at $15.00 per night, and the place was very busy. They have a three night limit, but some looked like they had been there a bit longer than that! Sunday morning we enjoyed a late breakfast in town with Lynne, while Paul slaved away at his job in the local Pharmacy! We dropped him in a coffee on the way back to the car. It was then back to the caravan for the short trip down the mountain to Coolum Beach. We arrived and the place was packed with the school holiday crowd. Thankfully, only our first week will be this packed!! We dodged the 200 bikes and scooters as we weaved our way to our site, and set up for two whole months of R&R at the beach.