travellingbennetts

Borders closed but not locked down and free to travel within your state? You own an adventure motorcycle? You live in San Marino or Monaco? Sorry about that. Fortunately, we live in Queensland which is about the size of 4.2 million Vatican Cities, and has a few more dirt roads even including Pope Francis’ private dirt track raceway, and August is a damn fine month to head north in Australia. So off we went.

Initially it was same old, same old. Up to Woodford to meet Alaska riding mates Nic and Margreth, which happily did produce a crisis of the type which brings joy to adventure riders – Margreth’s riding pants clasp failed. Cable ties, tape, staples, glue – indeed nothing that could rejoin things that needed to come apart again in the future were not thrown up as options. A lack of imagination eventually had something that would never come apart again – a cable tie – secured in place before we decided that we’d better stop mucking about and get to Mundubbera before dark.

After the sheer joy of riding some smooth farm roads, the steak and kidney pies were just sold out when we arrived in Goomeri (Goo-mary), but never mind a lamb and rosemary pie was available. Tools were handed to Margreth’s soon-to-be-more-vigilant husband Nic from the adventure riders’ essentials pack to cut the cable tie from the pants, but only after we’d located a priest to over-see the ceremony.

A cheap chastity lock was fitted by no-need-to-pay-attention-now Nic to the pants, and with only occasional panicky outbursts from Margreth that Nic had irretrievably lost the key, we headed north to Ban Ban Springs and around the corner to Gayndah. A discreet inappropriate Cindy touching of “Gay Dan” at the Giant Orange and we moved on to Mundubbera via the Burnett River road. At least Nic and I did, Cindy and Margreth decided the highway was a better option. Just like licking a handrail in a suburban train is a better option. The Burnett River road was epic – winding, spectacular river views, spectacular views from the top of the hills, certainly a Queensland road gem. Just to rub it in it was considerably faster than the highway, even with a delay drama….

Into Mundubbera and some wild gesturing from Nic caused a stop. Apparently there was a squealing noise coming from the bike. The piglet I’d brought along in case we needed more bacon was quiet and just enjoying the ride, so the source was traced to the chain which was very loose. A bit worrying. Chain adjusted, the rising heat had us out of the riding gear, showered, and into the restaurant for the BMWMCQ Back to the Bush event.

Saturday dawned. Team GS Lite was slightly diminished; only me, Margreth and Cindy turned up to attempt the Boondooma Road, which is a glorious piece of graded dirt and very pleasant in the reduced temperatures. Poor Nic had work commitments so we tried to have even more fun on his behalf.

The weather remodelled itself from very nice to verging on certain death as we headed in Kingaroy. A very nasty black cloud and a brief drenching rain inspired purchase of a baked potato stuffed with chilli beef, surely we were in Kingaroy for the long term. But no, the front moved away and the major delay turned out to be finishing the baked spud. Heading through Kumbia, required to be pronounced Kum-buy-yah in a deep melodic tone, the fork in the road was reached so in the words of Yogi Berra we took it – once more unto the Bunya Mountains dear friends, once more. In four attempts since 2015 to actually see anything from the lookout, we still haven’t actually seen anything. One day the weather will be perfect, likely just not when we are up there.

Rolling down the other side into Kaimkillenbun, the weather improved and we were mainly dried off by the time we rolled into Dalby for the part 2 of the Back to the Bush event. A stroll to the “what do you call a man with no arms or legs in the bush? – Russell!” Tavern and the crowd re-gathered for another excellent evening.

Western Queensland roads are divided into two simple direction categories – either north-south or east-west. There are five east-west road rows, and about six north-south road columns. Starting in Dalby, we were on the second row from the bottom and would be on it all the 540km day out to Charleville. The number of corners is not excessive, in fact a corner often causes momentary panic because it has been so long since the last one you’ve forgotten what to do.

First break was at the Boonarga Cactoblastis memorial hall. Prickly Pear cactus had been introduced in Australia from South America right from the 1780’s go, apparently to provide dye for the soldier’s red coats. But for some reason people decided to keep spreading it about, and by the late 1800’s it was a declared pest. It thrived on the Darling Downs in southern Queensland, and by the 1920’s an area the size of England was overrun. In probably one of the only really successful biological control efforts in history, Cactoblastis Cactorum moth eggs from Argentina were introduced in 1925 and in a scientific manner the moths and larvae were released in 1926. By 1933 the moth larvae had nearly wiped the Prickly Pear out, opening up a huge area of Australia for agriculture. Prickly Pear still loiters about the roads in places but was basically destroyed. Bad luck about rabbits, foxes, cats, goats, donkeys, cane toads….

The afternoon was a bit of a slog but at least the average speed is whatever the cruise control is set on. Some discussion at Morven – keep going west to Charleville or start the transition up to row 3 road and stop at Augathella? Never been to Charleville, so Charleville. Straight into the servo, then across the road to the Rocks Motel. Any chance of a room? No. Hang on, yes we have one left. Done. A pleasant stroll into the deserted town included unexpected interaction with a roaming pack of wild West Highland White Terriers – only Cindy’s skills in neutralising small dogs with “over the top” patting and cooing saved us. Thanking our lucky stars that we escaped with only minor dirt stains on our lower pant legs from the relentlessly jumping up moppets, we entered the magnificent Carones Hotel which covers nearly an entire block, and after the complex sign-in process was complete, beers were consumed.

The Charleville RSL beckoned for the mandatory third meal of the day, before finding our way under Warrego River flood channel bridges and back to crash on The Rocks.

We had a collective perception of a quick day to Longreach heading north up the third column from the left. Up at the normal time of 6-ish, the usual mucking about for two hours to ensure the night shift marsupials were home in bed, and away to Augathella. About then we realised we had a day of 515km, basically the same as the previous day so hitting Longreach museums in the afternoon was but an illusion. Augathella was a pleasant stop, filling with Gomads and even Sunshine and Gold Coasters heading to the bush in tiny little cars because they couldn’t go on their Princess Cruise.

A push on to Tambo for the morning tea and re-fuel, where we saw that history does indeed repeat itself. A significant memorial sits right out the front of the service station describing the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 and 1919, and the death of the Tambo Station manager Reginald Barry who had worked tirelessly to help the sick of Tambo before catching the pneumonic form himself which was usually fatal.

Blackall was the lunch plan, and we achieved the plan for once. The warmth was creeping up as we headed north, with some zips actually opened for the first time in the new Klim suits. Having gotten across the details of when we could drop off our stock of Dingo scalps into the Blackall council office and collect the bounty, it was another 100km scoop out of the day up to Barcaldine. The town is famous for the Tree of Knowledge, birthplace of the Australian Labor Movement during the shearer’s strike of 1891-92.

The final stretch was the 100km to Longreach, but we just had to make a brief stop in Ilfracombe to get some photos of the mile of tractors, bulldozers, graders, and trucks.

Arriving hot and sweaty into Longreach, first duty was to find accommodation and we were very lucky. The lack of travel options interstate and overseas had pushed a lot of Queenslanders around their own state, and until the previous week Longreach had been going off and getting a motel room was difficult. We found a good one right in the middle of town on the ground floor at the Longreach Motor Inn – always more pleasant for we poor motored cyclists than lugging awkward bags, helmets, gloves, and precariously balanced accoutrement such as the GPS and motel keys and the small complimentary container of milk up narrow stairs. We’d RSLed ourselves out in Charleville, so it had to be a pub this time, and the Birdcage Hotel satisfied our desire for some Contradiction to accompany the food and drinks, with social distancing signs up everywhere in the totally packed bistro.

Next day we hit the museums. Firstly the Qantas museum which is extremely well done, I had seen it the previous May but was keen to go back again as I’d missed some of it. A notable addition was the roof over the 747 and 707 and the DC3, the sun is brutal in Longreach and the damage to the paint was going to make them all look very average in a few years. We were second in the queue at the opening at 9am, and straight into the WW1 flight simulator where the target wasn’t so much the Red Baron because that’s too hard, but there were plenty of orphanages and baby animal petting zoos behind the lines to shoot up.

Museum number 2 for the day was the Australian Age of Dinosaurs. The only problem is that it is in Winton, into a screaming head wind, and 179km away. Fueled up before leaving Longreach, we slogged north-west into the gale while watching the fuel gauge dropping like a lead whatever. Pulling onto the Jump-Up plateau perched over the endless black soil plains, luck was indeed on our side with a tour just about to start after a scoffed lunch.

The tour was quite good, it started with what the land looked like 95 million years back; a network of floodplains surrounding rivers that drained northward into an inland sea. The floodplains are the source of the black soil and it is not hard to understand how large dinosaurs became stuck, and why the most common parts found are the legs and feet because the scavengers couldn’t get at them in the mud. The black soil throws up bones on a regular basis, with most belonging to some very big sauropods, and a small meat eating dinosaur that looks very like those velociraptors from Jurassic Park.

Some discussion after the tour on the way back to the bikes; with the following wind we should make it back without re-fueling in Winton, but when nearly in Winton one should at least see it. So we saw Winton, or at least saw the Winton servo. May have been a servo dimmie in the equation – I don’t remember. The trip back used only a sniff of petrol – travelling with the wind turned out to be the start of a wind direction trend from Winton all the way home. A spanking dinner in the Longreach Motor Inn which turned out to be the best restaurant in town according to a potentially conflicted Longreach Motor Inn staff member, and we ticked off the heading of north west and prepared for the heading of south and east.

Up the next day and heading south, we’d forgotten about the potential for more west so hit the Henge. Stonehenge that is. The plains leading up to it are impressive and while not as green as last year in May they still bring a Serengeti to mind without risk of being eaten by something. While doing a brew-up cup of tea in the relentless wind under the Stonehenge sports oval shelter, we struck a conversation with the local shire council gardener who was topping up his agent orange/DDT spray pack from a tap nearby. He showed us his citrus garden bordering the sports ground and invited us to take a pink grapefruit from a tree if we could find one amongst the thick leafy growth. Find one we did, and it was bedded down into the pannier before any hungry Gomads nearby could get wind of what was going on.

Into Jundah for a re-fuel, then onto Windorah where the green green grass tried to continue but was defeated by the over-supply of sand and lack of loam. Lunch at the Windorah servo in lieu of a celebration for reaching our most westerly point, and we continued on south toward row 2 again but with a new sub-direction – east.

Eromanga had been a hopeful next stop but we’d had no response from phone calls or emails to the Cooper’s Country Lodge at the dinosaur museum. Risk being way out west in the late afternoon without certainty of accommodation? Not bloody likely, so we kept on east to Quilpie where some certainty existed – the Quilpie Motor Inn. While I was massively distracted for a while by a couple of blokes on an Africa Twin and a Honda CFR250L all kitted for adventure, Cindy managed to book two of the remaining spots at the Quilpie Club on the night of nights – schnitzel Wednesday. The range and depth of schnitzels was considerable, and the finally chosen schnitzel fungi (i.e. mushroom) was everything we’d come to expect from when we first learned there was a Quilpie Club and it was schnitzel night 10 minutes earlier.

So back west into the wind to Eromanga, for the first time of the trip arriving at precisely coffee o’clock into the only place in Eromanga that sold coffee. Long discussion was held with the owner, until we inevitably addressed the elephant in the room – Eromanga claims to be the furthest town from the sea in Australia, so where is the closest sea? Turns out it is probably not the furthest from the sea, and so the claim tends to be moderated to the furthest service station from the sea. Kintore in the Northern Territory near the WA border is about 75 km further from the sea than Eromanga, but probably doesn’t have a service station. The closest sea to Eromanga at a tough 815km according to Google Earth is the Styx River delta north of Rockhampton – marginally closer than Port Augusta, South Australia.

Around the western – southern – eastern loop which still had some dampness from the recent rains, we lobbed into Thargomindah on the bottom row at about late lunch. Ham and cheese and 91 re-stocked, it was back on for the easterly push, finally with the relentless wind at our backs which has a huge effect on fuel consumption. A side trip down to Hungerford to the south has always been a dream, but lack of time and staying the hell away from the border sort of ruined any hope. With only 200km to get to the overnighter at Cunnamulla, no matter how casually we rode we still trundled over the Warrego River with hours of daylight left. Plenty of time to allow a peculiarly dressed old bloke to inspect the bikes in the main street, find accommodation in an upmarket cabin out the back of the Warrego Hotel within 10m of the hotel bottleshop, and a walk to the supermarket which is in a dodgy area nowhere near the CBD for some reason. A great dinner in the Hotel Cunnamulla, and the pre-penultimate day was done.

The planned temporary end to our trip was Toobeah just west of Goondiwindi for the Cane Toad Rally on Saturday, and as it was only 450km to get there and only Friday we decided a leisurely breakfast and a short day was in order for once. Leisurely breakfasted, we poked along to Bollon where a great coffee venue was reached close enough to lunch to tick all the boxes. Worry about getting into St George before the normal motel check-in hour of 2pm encouraged one of us to decide on a road less travelled down toward Dirranbandi and the famous cotton-growing Cubbie Station. Some high-quality dirt may be involved according to Cindy’s service station map.

The first “dirt” bit had a similar texture to Conrod Straight on Mt Panorama with some of the smoothest new bitumen imaginable. The next dirt bit was highly variable – tessellated clay pavers, smooth gravel, sketchy rutted two wheeled track, and sand. All precisely the same according to the servo map, once again proving adventure riding is always an adventure. Into St George and a call to Cindy helped locate the final pre-rally accommodation.  I decided that we should be ready to leave early the next day, so took the bikes on a tour of St George service stations to check tyres and fuel up. Cindy’s bike had a small lie-down at the Caltex, luckily the attendant was a burly motorcyclist and was rewarded for doing the lion’s share of the lifting with a detailed lecture from me on all things motorcycling.

The short trip to Toobeah was lengthened with random meanderings down south to see the Nindigully pub – too early for coffee unfortunately – and the Thallon painted silos which are common in other states but quite rare in Queensland. By now the howling tail wind was almost providing a carbon neutral ride, and with one more push we swung into the Cane Toad Rally with a guaranteed win in the longest distance award. A great weekend of reunions with friends from the BMWMCQ and 2019 Alaskan ride mates and then back to Brisbane with over 4,000km of riding fun completed, all without getting anywhere near a border.