Winter Wanderings – Day 17 – Born To Travel Australia

Hervey Bay to Goondiwindi

Not my favourite things to be doing – arising early and heading south, all on the same day. However given we had a drive of just about 550 kms ahead of us it had to be done. With Goondiwindi our planned destination we were finished breakfast and packed up ready to go by 8:30.

Within half an hour we were passing through the edge of Maryborough with its well preserved ‘Queenslanders’ (houses).

After passing through the town we crossed over the mighty Mary River next.

Even though we were heading south we were still in sugar cane territory.

At Tiaro we turned off the Bruce Highway and headed to the south passing through a succession of small towns. First up was – Woolooga, where we swapped over driver.

Shortly after we came to a T intersection and joined Highway 49. The next town we passed through was Kilkivan.

The road was also named Australia’s Country Way for tourism purposes.

Hay stacks in the fields certainly gave a rural view.

Goomeri was the next town and it had a nice little caravan park we noted.

Not far from Wondai

we noticed this sign; needed to double check what we were reading.

After that we passed through Kingaroy, a centre of peanut growing.

The next big town we came to was Dalby. Here we had a stop at a railway level crossing while a very long goods train laden with coal went through.

We stayed on highway 49 there and after passing through a cotton growing area at Nandi

continued on through the little town of Ducklo. Just after that we came upon a police vehicle with its blue lights flashing so we slowed down. To our amazement, there laying on its side was a caravan.

As we came closer we found that it was still attached to the vehicle towing it which had somehow managed to stay upright. It appeared to be a very recent accident.

Slowly passing through and realising things were under control we drove on and quite a while later came to the crossroads at Moonie. We stopped here to swap driver and stretch our legs. As we wandered around we noticed a few interesting things. Firstly, back in 1964 it was the site of Australia’s first oil field. A pump still stands as a monument at the crossroads.

Secondly it hosts yabby (freshwater crustacean) races each year in March. The ‘big’ pink yabby proudly on display at the crossroads also.

Back in the car we now followed the A5 south. We only had about 80 kms to go. Of course we had the inevitable delay for roadworks, about ten minutes out from Goondiwindi.