The starting point

The starting point

Thursday 27 April 2017

27/4/17 In or Out , up or down

   Here we are again , further up the road at Goondiwindi , just over the border in Queensland , and out of NSW .
 After a night at the showground , the show people arrived at 8am and started setting up , taking over just about everything , so after doing a pump repair , we packed and headed down the road about 2 klms , most others also packed & left or relocated . 
 Rain was forecast for overnight and it came in the middle of the morning - well before sunrise !! We got up to find the park had pulled out all stops and provided us with our own paddling pool !!



 We back onto the billabong , and the site is pretty flat , or so we thought . The showers continued , but dried up after lunch , providing us with the most intense rainbow we’d seen . We'd had almost 30mm overnight !!


 Goondiwindi is a reasonable sized town , with racecourse , golf club , bowling club , hospital , several pubs and many shops . It sits beside the Macintyre River and has an historic bridge built in the early 1900’s . Beside the bridge is a statue of Gunsynd - The Goondiwindi Grey - very famous racehorse !! 




 This is the billabong behind us looked good in the late afternoon light .



  Today , we headed off for a drive to Texas - Texas Qld that is !! Stopping at Boggabilla for a quick photo of the pub - the Wobbly Boot Hotel !!


 Next stop was at the Dumaresq River at Texas , there is a free camp site that you can stay at for a maximum of 2 weeks , just need to be fully self contained , and was very popular . There were at least 30 vans & buses there today on both sides of the river . 


  We found our way to Texas Lookout , should have been Texas overlook as you don’t see much of Texas at all - just a few roofs !!


  Just like the Texas in USA , it has it’s fair share of cacti , with lot’s of prickly pear growing .


An industry from yesteryear has been cleaned up and will be open soon for tourists is the old Rabbit  Works . It started operations in 1928 and ceased in 1992 . The unskinned rabbits used to be sent to England by boat - might have been a bit on the nose by the time they reached the mother country - probably could have smelt them coming !!!! Skins from rabbit , kangaroo and fox skins were sent to Sydney from about 1955 to Akubra to make hats !!


 The weather has certainly been cooler today and being outside in the wind is not pleasant , so lunch was quick and then we headed back to Goondiwindi . 
 Cunningham Weir on the Dumaresq River seemed like a place we needed to see , so we pulled off the road and headed to the river - only about 400m off the main road . It’s an old weir across the river , with most of the old timber posts still in place .



The recent rain has brought out many flowers on small plants beside the river .


 The road came back to the highway near a town called Yelarbon , which has a grain handling facility . It appears to be in a desert like area - apparently caused by a naturally occurring saltinity scald , it looked anything but desert today , as there was a lot of water lying around and had green grass and small stunted trees . There’s also a dingo fence , and it has Queensland most eastern spinifex grass . It’s a bit strange that about 20klms out is one of the most fertile areas in the district . They grow wheat , barley , chick pea and sorghum . It’s a highly irrigated are with many of these boom type irrigators - this one was a small one !!!



 There were lots of these boom irrigators around this area , after a few more kilometres they dissappeared , the fields got larger & larger and there were more wheat fields appearing . We headed for home only to find the temperature here hadn't gone above 17 degrees . 

 That’s it , in & out of NSW again , back in Queensland , and you're all caught up , here’s a map link :- https://drive.google.com/open?id=1VzMgbw2-rF43Dd1o0wM7K8357WY&usp=sharing







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