Min Min Adventure - Day 1: Home To St George.
So...today we set off on our adventure out West. We wanted to get going by 9.00 am and actually set off at 8.55!
The first part of the journey was quite depressing as we passed piles of bulldozed trees cleared away to protect nearby fences. Such awful destruction.
First we headed to Inglewood where we stopped and had a quick wander, bought some ice and then continued West. Next we stopped at Yelarbon to see the silo art and a peek at the lagoon then headed to Goondiwindi. Here we missed a turn and scraped past the NSW border road block by going round a roundabout to stay in Queensland. (The border doesn't open until Tuesday).
We didn't stop in Goondiwindi and headed straight on for St George. This area is known as the Wheat Belt and we passed vast fields of wheat and occasional mounds of harvested grain. The road trains started to get bigger with trucks towing three trailers.
We stopped near North Talwood to take a quick look at an Aboriginal site, where wells had been carved out of the rock to provide water for travelling mobs on their journey to the Bunya Mountains.
The roads were pretty straight and the land became flat and scrubby and I was surprised not to see more roadkill than we did, but that was a good thing.
We had lunch at the Nindigully Pub by the Moonie River, purportedly the oldest pub in Queensland and also famous because Hugh Jackman made his first film there 'Paperback Hero'.
Will had a steak cooked just as he likes it and I had crispy pork belly. Delicious!
It was not that much further on from there that we arrived at our destination for the day, St George. We set up our tent at the Pelican Rest Caravan Park and then had a sunset stroll by the Balonne River. The tranquility was shattered by speed boats and jetskis whizzing past. We saw some water skiers and both thought they were paraplegic until we realised they were kneeling on their skiis.
It was a lovely river walk apart from the water yobs and we ended up at the bridge, which we will go over tomorrow on our continuing journey West. We discovered it was actually a weir, holding back the river for the town, and on the other side the river bed was practically dry.
It has all been quite demoralising today to see how Man is just raping the land, whether it be to protect their animal fencing, produce mountains of grain or just hold back rivers to water crops and provide river hoons with a few hours entertainment. Practically every house we passed this evening had sprinklers going watering their lawns and then you see the mighty Balonne River, just below the bridge, reduced to a trickle. It can't be right!
