Friday 16 August 2013 – Goondiwindi to Nanango

Up with the sparrows this morning – 10 to 7 for some unknown reason.  With such an early rising, we managed to get away at 20 to 9, heading for Nanango 331 kms northwards.  Before we left we had another chat to the neighbours when I mentioned that though I’ve had some differences of opinion with Zola in the past (our GPS lady), we would need to rely on her today as the route didn’t seem totally straight forward. The husband half of the couple (Trevor) said: Why would you take orders from a woman anyway.  I was gob-smacked when his wife told me that when they bought their GPS it had a woman’s voice, but he insisted it be changed to a man!!!  What a twit.

Almost immediately after leaving Goondiwindi we were struck by the big cactus looking plants scattered among the gum and wattle trees.  There were dozens of them.  Once I saw the fruit on some of them I realised that they are prickly pears – and they were out of control.  They looked really odd among the Aussie trees.

Today seemed to me like a day focussing on things of pure Australiana.  We drove through the Darling Downs which lie to the west of the Great Dividing Range.  This is a rich farming and agricultural district, where a wide variety of crops are grown. And it’s also the setting for the Australian classic novel On Our Selection - the life and adventures of Steel Rudd’s fictional family Dad and Dave who lived in Snake Gully.  And of course the fact that the Condamine River feeds the Murray Darling basin here reminds me of the folk song I’m sure we all learnt at state school – On the banks of the Condamine.

We had a fuel stop at Moonie – a name which rang a bell, and as we were leaving we noticed an oil drill out in a paddock. After checking it out the memory sharpened - Moonie was the site of Australia's first commercial oil field, somewhere back in the early sixties and though it is very small in comparison to deposits found since, it is still operating.

We continued on, passing through towns called Dalby, Bell and Kumbia before Zola first of all declared the trip invalid and had a bit of a meltdown, then when I reset her, she tried to send us off on a wild goose chase down gravelly tracks from Kumbia to Nanango.  So I took the easy way out – went into a café and asked directions and was told that from there it would be best with the van on to go through Kingaroy and backtrack the 21 kms to Nanango.  So that’s what we did, arriving here at about 1.30.  But the fun wasn’t over yet.  The street we were looking for – the one with the caravan park – wasn’t recognised by Zola either – she could find Arthur St west, but not Arthur St east, which turned out to be right on the other side of town.  So after a scenic tour of the majority of the township of Nanango, we made it to the park at about 10 to 2.

After setting up the van and having a bit of lunch, we went to visit a very distant Jessup relative who I had never met before to give her all the material I had amassed on her line of the family over the years – a large folder full of documents and a collection of photos.  She has taken on the research of that line of the family, and by doing so has taken a load off my plate.  We had a cuppa and a chat there for about an hour, then returned to the caravan park and have done nothing much since.

We found a fair chunk of the highways we drove today were not in very good nick – lots of very rough patches and uneven surfaces.  In a (pea)nut shell – well we are in the near vicinity of the peanut capital of Australia, though Grant did comment (tongue planted firmly in his cheek) that we haven’t yet found any peanut trees!  – a pretty uneventful drive, but the hills made it a different experience to the last few days.