Travel Archives - Page 2 of 2

Camel Racing And The World’s Longest Damper

camel racing-damper — Camel racing at Boulia -Image courtesy of http://www.bouliacamelraces.com.au/camel-racing/

Queensland’s outback towns may still be struggling with the impact of drought, but they are now more than ever engaging communities and outsiders in unique events. Tourist attractions like Winton’s Vision Splendid film festival, Birdsville’s Big Red Bash, Boulia’s camel races, an outback golf tournament and the national silo art trail are just a few of the initiatives. Attractions and events are primarily organised by locals (and sponsors) as a way of attracting cash-spending visitors and giving locals some respite from the hard life on the parched land.

Travel writers tend to visit places for a day or two, then write about them as if they’ve lived there for a lifetime. It’s quite a skill and I’ll admit to doing this presumptuous thing in the interests of whetting your appetite for outback travel. Though we spent only 10 days in Western Queensland on this trip, we picked up more than a few pieces of information and inspiration.

camel-races-damper — Kerosene tin hut at Morven, image by Laurel Wilson

For one thing, there’s a kerosene tin hut built in the grounds of Morven’s historical museum. The hut is made from flattened kerosene tins, held together with staples and built over a light timber framework. There are few remaining examples of Australia’s ‘tin towns’, which sprung up on the outskirts of towns and cities during the Great Depression. (Photo by Laurel).

Small western towns like Morven and Bollon need the support of visitors. Local people have less to spend as a result of the ongoing drought. Some have made an attempt to attract and keep visitors, especially the ubiquitous grey nomads. Travellers are important to the rural economy; they spend money in supermarkets, hardware stores, pubs, clubs and petrol stations.

We were horrified to learn that Bollon, a town of 334 people, has lost its last service station. If you don’t happen to see the sign on the highway between St George and Cunnamulla, chances are you might run out of fuel on the 294-km journey.

Even when outback towns do have a service station, there are no guarantees. On the way home we limped into Charleville with six litres of fuel left, after finding that Quilpie’s service station had run out of fuel – drained dry by the convoy of grey nomads and 4WD adventurers heading 625 kms to Birdsville for the Big Red Bash.

The Bash is a three-day outdoor music festival held in mid-July. This year it was headlined by Midnight Oil, the Living End, Richard Clapton and Kasey Chambers. At $539 a ticket, not to mention the cost of driving 1,600 kms (from Brisbane), you’d want to be keen. Last year, the Bash raised more than $100,000 for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. This year, 9,169 people attended, including volunteers, crew, kids, sponsors and vendors.

Meanwhile, the Boulia Camel Races are now scheduled to follow on from the Big Red Bash. If you are already at Birdsville, all you have to do is drive another 200 kms or so to Boulia, a tiny outpost on the edge of the Simpson Desert.

The 1,500m Boulia Camel Cup was won this year by a local camel, Wason. About 5,000 people came to Boulia (pop 230) for the two-day event, which featured heats over short distances before the main race on Sunday. If you are game, there are bookies on hand to take your bets.

The jockeys (who wear protective head gear), sit on small saddle pads behind the camel’s hump. There are no reins – the camels steer themselves down the racetrack (and can be disqualified for running in the opposite direction!)

July is the main month for outback tourism events, as the weather is at its most stable, with mild day temperatures and cool nights. In Charleville, an intrepid team set about cooking the world’s longest damper. At 153 metres, it surpassed a 125m-long damper made by Swedish boy scouts in 2006. The Guinness Book of Records is yet to officially recognise the attempt, but it’s in the oven, as they say. The event, organised by the Charleville Fishing and Restocking Club, involved a large team of volunteers who made the damper and then baked it in a 153m trench filled with hot charcoal.

Hundreds of locals and visitors attended the event, which made news bulletins far and wide. No doubt, that was the whole point. She Who Drives Most Of TheTime once amazed some Belgian backpackers at Carnarvon Gorge. She mixed up a batch of damper (flour, water, herbs and baking powder) in our 12-foot caravan. She then wrapped it in a piece of tin foil (first manufactured in 1910, in case you were wondering), and threw it in the camp fire. The primitive nature of this kind of cooking, the sweet smell of burning wood and campfire camaraderie perhaps convinces us that it tastes better than it does.

Damper is a traditional Australian soda bread, enjoyed in eras past by swagmen, drovers and stockmen. The basic recipe, one could suggest, was derived from bread prepared and baked in the coals of a campfire by Australia’s indigenous peoples for thousands of years.

Yelarbon rural oasis scene by Brightsiders

Small towns in grain-growing districts are increasingly embracing the idea of having artists paint murals on grain silos. The most recent example of this is at Yelarbon, 300 kms south-west of Brisbane. The first stage of the silo art project by artist group Brightsiders was completed in May.

A viewing station is being built so visitors can get off the highway and admire this artwork on the edge of the spinifex desert. The rural scene is titled ‘When the rain comes’. Local sources tell us that 100 visitors a day are stopping in Yelarbon to view the artwork, funded by the Federal Government’s Drought Communities Programme.

If film festivals are your thing, Winton’s Vision Splendid festival in June is quite an experience. Maleny residents Robyn and Norm Dobson spent 10 days at Winton’s Vision Splendid film festival this year. They took a train from Nambour to Longreach and then a coach to Winton – a 24-hour journey.

“We booked a sleeper,” Robyn said. “We couldn’t do that trip sitting in a recliner for 24 hours.”

She observed that a lot of the people in Winton for the festival were grey nomads, strengthening her theory that the survival of small outback towns depend on annual festivals. Films are shown at Winton’s famous open air theatre, with day-time films shown at the (new) Waltzing Matilda Centre.

Robyn and Norm were impressed with the 1949 British-made film, “The Eureka Stockade” starring Chips Rafferty, with a yet-to-be-famous Peter Finch in a minor role. The other highlight of the festival was the now-traditional silent movie feature. This year it was the 1906 film, The History of the Kelly Gang.

Our country town of Maleny had its own tourism event in July – Knitfest (a yarn and fibres art festival). Preparations for this included dressing street trees (and cow sculptures) in knitted garments. This event predictably saw visitor numbers to the town swell.

On the Southern Downs, the Jumpers and Jazz Festival will be winding up this weekend. This Warwick-based festival is a bit like Stanthorpe’s Snowflakes (July 5-7), in that both make a celebration out of being among the coldest places in Queensland.

I guess it could have been easier to do that instead of trekking to Thargomindah. But we did get to see green grass in several areas and most of the creeks we passed had at least a little water in them – not something we’ve seen on our previous outback treks. Ed)

Ten days in Aotearoa

Aotearoa-Te-Urewera — Aotearoa – Te Urewera, looking towards East Cape. Image by Brucieb, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2260517

As the doors swished open at Brisbane International Airport and I walked out into 35 degrees and a dusty, smoky atmosphere, I very briefly wished I hadn’t left Aotearoa behind. How I love the mellifluous way that Maori word trips off the tongue – Ao-tea-ro-a.

The Maori language uses vowels more than we do in English and it also uses them in combinations. The language has fewer consonants, preferring the use of Wh to replace the letter F, for example. The Maori alphabet has 15 letters including two digraphs (Ng and Wh) and five vowels, each of which has a short and Continue reading “Ten days in Aotearoa”

The Roads More Or Less Travelled

All roads lead to Canberra – at least that’s what most politicians think. This week we’re having a break from politics, the plight of refugees and why Australia’s asylum seeker policies are on the nose. Today guest writer Laurel Wilson (aka She Who Also Writes) looks at the hazards of the highway for travellers. This post contains 21 images. – Ed.

roads-travel — Definitely NOT our next road rig..

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, I’m feeling quite refreshed after our 6 week, 6,000 kilometre road trip around Queensland in our trusty 12ft caravan (despite the occasional mishap, chronicled elsewhere).

One of the positives in travelling is that it can give you the opportunity and inclination to study the ever-changing surroundings. Unlike those who object to outback travel because “you can drive for ages and not see anything”, I’ve always found there’s something new to experience as you drive along. Some of these experiences, such as the pungent stink of Gidgee in humid weather, are perhaps not ‘must does’, but it was a relief to find the source of that odour, when I was beginning to think that we had a leak in the caravan’s gas cylinder or the car had developed some nameless fault.

Having a naturally curious nature (unlike the woman living in Dingo, who neither knew nor cared how that small town got its unique name), I was intrigued by the extent and variety of roads we travelled on during our latest trip.

I began to wonder just how many kilometres of designated roads there are in Queensland. According to a Department of Main Roads factsheet, as of 2013-14 there were over 33,000 kilometres of State controlled roads (which includes over 5,000 kilometres of the National network). In addition, Queensland Local Governments are responsible for almost 155,000 kilometres of roads in their respective areas.

In our latest trip around Queensland, we travelled on all but one of the designated ‘National Highways’, the only exception being the Barkly Highway, which runs westward from Cloncurry. In all of our trip around Queensland, we managed to stay off the highway called ‘Bruce’, except for the 400 or so kilometres from Cairns to Townsville, where we had tickets to watch a North Queensland Cowboys Rugby League game – one of Johnathan Thurston’s last games (I realise that the bulk of readers neither know or care, but I don’t get to write this blog very often, so thought I’d take the opportunity…).

This time, our most westerly destination was Winton, where we spent four fascinating days at ‘The Vision Splendid – Outback Film Festival’.

What constitutes a ‘National Highway’ seems to be open to some interpretation, but I’ve used a list supplied by Wikipedia (I know, I know, not necessarily the best source, but should be adequate for this purpose).

Whether the roads we travelled on were ‘National’, ‘State’ or ‘local’ wasn’t always possible to tell. (Apparently the various tiers of government have a similar problem when deciding which tier is responsible for building and maintaining them.) And we really didn’t care who was ‘responsible’; we were more interested in their state of repair (or disrepair). To be fair, of the 6,000 kilometres we travelled, the great majority of the roads were at least two lanes wide, bitumen and either in very good repair or quite adequate. roads-travel

Give the road-trains a wide berth – they ain’t stoppingOnly a couple were gravel or ‘dirt’ and gave us (and the poor old caravan) a rough ride for our money. And one of those we can blame on the GPS, which decided to take us on a trip from Glenmorgan to Surat via the most circuitous route it could find.

The other was the ‘shortcut’ from Hughenden to ‘The Lynd’, some 250km to the North. We chose this road (The Kennedy Developmental Road) because it went past Porcupine Gorge National Park, which we wanted to visit, and was much shorter than the alternative route to our next destination. And after all, most of the lines on the map were solid red (indicating bitumen) rather than the dotted line for ‘dirt road’.

As it turned out, the accent should have been on ‘developmental’, rather than ‘road’. There were frequent patches of the dreaded ‘corrugations’, in which the road surface consists of a series of ruts which run at right angles to the direction of travel. This is a phenomenon common to ‘dirt’ roads and apparently results mainly from the numerous vehicles travelling over the moveable surface of such roads. Regular grading of the road helps smooth out the corrugations, so it’s worthwhile trying to find out whether an unsurfaced road has been recently graded before you travel on it. Being of fairly ‘senior’ years, I’m quite used to travelling ‘off the bitumen’ and have met corrugations before. The general wisdom about negotiating corrugations is to drive at a reasonable speed (not necessarily too slowly, but not highway speeds either) and to drop the tyre pressures a bit if you usually run to higher pressures- though not really worth the hassle unless you’re stuck with a long stretch of ‘corro’.

The Kennedy Developmental Road was the site of one of our minor mishaps this trip. The continual bouncing of travelling across corrugations was eventually too much for the 30year old+ hinges on the wardrobe door, and we arrived at ‘The Lynd’ with the wardrobe door lying on the floor of the van. Interestingly enough, the clothes remained in the wardrobe! (Finding new hinges to fit, putting them on and getting the door to shut properly was a small triumph for ‘Handy Mandy’ and her trusty sidekick.)

This time next year the road will probably be a much more comfortable drive, as there was plenty of roadwork going on as we drove this stretch.

We met these International travellers at ‘The Lynd’ – It’s a 1915 Model ‘T’ Ford. They prefer the dirt roads (see below) and avoid highways in their world travels. They have travelled to over 50 countries, raising money for the charity SOS Children’s Villages International. http://www.tfordworldtour.org/

As you would expect, most sealed roads are black or grey, but we do come across some which, to my eye, are a rather fetching shade of pink. Some may see it as ‘tan’, but the idea of pink roads somehow appeals to me. I haven’t been able to find out why they are ‘pink’, but my theory is that it has something to do with the roadbase containing a fair proportion of the red dirt/sand common in many parts of Queensland.

One of my pastimes while travelling is to take pictures while we are inside the car (and I promise I only do this when I’m the passenger). Most of the photos in this ‘blog’ are of that type. And a few shots of the roads more or less travelled:

Caravan maintenance and the art of journaling

No 6 in a six-part travelogue.

caravan-maintenance-journaling — Theresa Creek Dam at sunset. Caravan maintenance and the art of journaling.

As we start out on the last six days of a six-week caravan adventure, now is the time to dig into my journal for publishable insights and ironies. We found quite by accident an oasis in the outback called Theresa Creek Dam, 22km south west of Clermont. The dam was built here in 1985 by Blair Athol Coal to supply Clermont with drinking water.

It’s a tranquil lake spanning some 8,100 acres with abundant birdlife and a special kind of light. The dam is also an angler’s paradise, stocked quite recently (2015-16) with 14,200 barramundi and 34,147 golden perch. There’s also jewfish, saratoga and red claw. All kinds of boating is allowed, but you must have a licence to go fishing.

So after some hard driving across the flatlands of central Queensland, known for beef cattle and abundant reserves of coal, we took time to sit by the cool waters and reflect on the journey. We also did some running repairs on car and caravan. I say ‘we’ advisedly, as I am the sort of impractical bloke who will try three ways of doing something before the fourth and correct way.

This trip has not been without its mishaps, starting with the realisation, three days out, that the three-way caravan fridge wasn’t working. It cost $230 for a fridge mechanic in Charleville to tell us the bad news, that the fridge, given its age and resale value (nil), was not worth fixing.

So it’s had a good innings, this fridge, which the mechanic said was still working on gas, or at least it was until we took the van on dirt roads. She Who Plans Ahead Even When Being In The Moment reckoned it would cost $500 just to get the old fridge removed and a new three-way fridge (about $1200) installed.

The alternative, we figure, is an upright 12-volt fridge which will also cost about $1,100 but the installation will be a piece of cake. It can then run off the car battery when driving, the van battery when camped and the solar panel can keep the latter topped up. (Meanwhile, we pretend we’re in the 1920’s and use the fridge as an icebox, replenishing ice every couple of days. Ed)

In other on-road adventures, we bought a new car battery in Clermont. The old on failed once at Mt Surprise for no real reason other than to suspect the original Ford battery (four years old) was about to cark it. We got a ‘low battery’ warning a few days ago when starting the car, so got it tested in Clermont by the local RACQ approved repairer.

caravan-maintenance — Handy Mandy and the art of caravan maintenance

The other challenge was the caravan wardrobe door, which fell off while we were bouncing our way across the dirt road shortcut between Hughenden and The Lynd. Fortunately, the mirror on the inside of the door remained intact. Not so the hinges, which apart from matching all other hinges in the van, proved a curse to replace. Uncle John, who is possibly more handy than She Who Screws With her Left Hand (make of that what you will), tried three different hardware stores on the Atherton Tablelands and came up empty. He suggested a hardware store in Cairns which (a) was hard to find) and (b) couldn’t help us anyway. Persistent as always, SWSWHLH found a set of offset hinges in a caravan supplies shop in Townsville. But there were only two to (the only) packet. Not to be deterred, SWSWHLH took a hinge off a back cupboard, replacing it with the damaged one off the wardrobe, figuring that it ‘would do’ as it is not load bearing. So yesterday, with my assistance, She hung the wardrobe door and what do you know, it closes and locks. Yay. Estimated cost $4.86.

Anais Nin and my 40-year journaling habit

All of these little challenges are detailed in my journal, a long-running series of notebooks which contain not only factual observations, but also fiction and my interpretations of life as it progresses. It’s hardly the erotic adventures of Anais Nin, but as any good psychologist could tell you, it can be cathartic and even helpful to pour one’s feelings out in a journal that will hopefully never be read by anyone else. My executors have their instructions.

My journal contains sentiments which could be misinterpreted in the context of a loving relationship spanning many years. For example, Ms Acronym is apt to interrupt my sudden brilliant flashes of creativity, encouraging me to go birding, walking, do the laundry, work out what we’re doing tomorrow etc just when the small kernel of a new song has started rattling around in my head.

And as she no doubt caustically observes when scribbling in her own book, when travelling I tend to get dazed and confused in the late afternoon, readily confusing left and right and north and south. I grant that one’s spouse could find that exasperating, as I so often insist my way is the right way (when it is abundantly clear it is not).

She Who Keeps A Journal While Travelling has another writing exercise where she is supposed to spend 10 minutes writing down her feelings and then burn the paper. I apparently blundered into this exercise, rummaging around in the fridge (kept cool with ice boxes), saying “Honey, where are the carrots?” (My riposte was milder than you might suspect. Ed.)

Other minor mishaps on this escapade were usually due to somehow getting lost, which we either found amusing (or not). On leaving Glenmorgan for Surat (we’d been at Myall Park, a fascinating botanic garden in the bush), our GPS told us to turn left and continue down a corrugated dirt road which, half an hour later, had not yet met a bend. As my journal now tells me, some weeks after we stopped being annoyed about it, if we had not taken this road less travelled we would not have seen a mob of wallabies, a Bustard, a feral cat, four dead dingos hanging from a tree and a drover on a horse, durrie hanging from the corner of his mouth, who gave us a puzzled look and a laconic wave as if to say ‘are youse lost or something’. Later we deduced we had taken a local access road through various pastoral properties, emerging some 120 kms later at Surat.

We share equal blame for mishaps and forgetfulness. Someone left the van step on the footpath in Augathella while we went to take photos of murals. “Maybe someone nicked it,” I said, in an attempt to be charitable.

We drove on to Morven, planning to have a leisurely meal at the pub then watch State of Origin II. Alas, the pub burned down two years earlier so we ate canned stew and watched the game on the Ipad. I believe it is called finding strength in adversity.

My best act of dazed and confused was going into the ladies loo at Morven Recreation Ground. I came out of the shower wearing only a towel to find a woman about my own age looking less than excited to find a paunchy, near-naked old man in the ladies’ loo. “I think you’re in the wrong place, mate,” she said, in that charming understated outback way, adding “Ewes means girls, mate.”

Cape York or bust

No 5 in an outback series

On the last day of Queensland’s school holidays, a steady line of dusty 4WD’s returning from Cape York are queuing up for the Daintree River ferry crossing. Many of these road-beaten vehicles are rentals from Cairns. You can tell the real deal 4WD by the snorkel (a vertical exhaust above the cabin – designed for crossing creek and rivers without killing the engine).

Kids or even adults have written epitaphs on the dusty windows including “Cape York or bust” “Been there done that” and “still driving”.

(And my very favourite one-“Capey McCapeface”.Ed)

The bitumen road peters out just past Cape Tribulation in the Daintree rainforest. Intrepid travellers with appropriate vehicles can take the scenic Bloomfield track to Cooktown then loop back along a sealed road to Lakeland, where the 582 kms journey to Weipa begins. After Weipa, the route becomes a 4WD dirt road with a few sealed sections, all up 908.4 kms, a 28 hour drive to the northernmost tip of Australia. Last time a survey was done, between 60,000 and 70,000 people had made the arduous trek every year. Those are small numbers compared to the volume of tourists visiting Uluru or Kakadu National Park, but in the context of a wild, undeveloped frontier, it’s a lot of traffic.

Some take organised 4WD tours, some fly/drive; others take a boat to Cape York and come back by road. If you do decide to drive from Lakeland, you have an estimated 15 and a half hour journey to Weipa (averaging 37 kmh). By contrast, the bitumen road from Cairns to Lakeland is a three hour drive (250 kms).

You might know that our outback travelling is constrained by the limitations of a six-cylinder rear-wheel drive vehicle and a 30 year old caravan. It’s a high-set van, but as recent journeys on unsealed roads have shown, the suspension is not built for corrugations. We call the 271 kms short cut from Hughenden to The Lynd, which has sealed sections and some rough stretches, ‘The Road that Broke the Wardrobe Door’.

So our adventures north of Cairns were limited to a day trip from Newell Beach to Cape Tribulation and back, via a cruise on the Daintree River, two hikes in the rainforest and the extreme disappointment that arose from listening to the Broncos getting thrashed by the Warriors (well may you scoff and say, ‘what’s that about being in the moment’?).

Daintree-Cape-York — Daintree River croc – Cape York or Bust

Despite the high tide, we saw three crocodiles on the (highly recommended) one-hour Solar Whisper cruise, including a 3m croc known as Scooter who decided to swim along the mangrove-lined bank a few metres from the boat. John the skipper pointed out a few birds including an Azure Kingfisher, a Papuan Frogmouth, a Rufous Night Heron and Radjah Shelducks. (There are photos on my camera, but the downloading process is rather primitive. Ed)

As for Cape York or bust, I can only repeat what authorities will tell you: take extra fuel, water, tyres, vehicle spares, a jack or two and a shovel. Always give way to wildlife. Note to those who are tempted: there is no mobile reception in much of the Cape region and satellite phones do not always work.

Nevertheless, Cape York or bust is a major bucket list item for the intrepid traveller; some ride trail bikes, others mountain bikes and more than a few walk the track, carrying their food and shelter on their backs.

Tourism is just one part of the Cape York story, a tussle between pro-development lobbyists (remember the Spaceport?), the mining industry, pastoralists, the traditional owners and increasing awareness that this pristine wilderness has to be protected for all time.

Even on the relatively tame Mossman to Daintree road there are decisions for the risk-averse. We don’t often take guided tours, but when it comes to croc-spotting (that’s Scooter on the left) on the Daintree River, go with an expert. I told our skipper about Paddy McHugh’s chilling song, Dan O’Halloran. He’d not heard of it, but I said he should look it up but maybe not share with his passengers. Not to spoil a good story song, I’ll just give you the chorus line: “Nobody knows what happened to Dan O’Halloran except me, and it makes me shiver”.

As we drove back along the narrow, winding but sealed road from Cape Tribulation, I wondered if (in the future) I had a Cape York or bust trip in me, and, when I did, would it be a sealed highway by then.

Successive governments have made efforts to upgrade the road from Lakeland to Weipa, which in 2014 still had 380 kms of dirt road, impassable after rain.

The Federal and State governments co-funded work to seal sections of road between Lakeland and Weipa, on the Cape’s west coast. Weipa is the site of a major mining operation and a deep water port. So there are commercial imperatives involved with sealing that road.

But it is a slow process, at about 30 kms per year on average between 2014 and 2018. The slow pace of the project was used as an election issue in 2017.

The numbers of tourists visiting the region fluctuate according to economic conditions and extreme weather events. Studies have concluded that the majority of Cape York adventurers are self-contained, so their contribution to the local economy is negligible.

As the Federal Government’s Wild Rivers report observed, Cape York is large and underdeveloped and only accessible for eight or nine months of the year. The region comprises 15% of Queensland in area, but accounts for only 0.3% of the State’s population. Cape York’s residents are amongst the most disadvantaged in Queensland. More than half (54%) of Cape York people aged 15 years and over have a gross weekly income of less than $400 per week.

While sealing Cape York’s main road and also minor roads to Aboriginal communities might be a good thing for locals (less wear and tear on their vehicles and all-weather access), one ought not to make the trek too easy. Cape York has been nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage site (near neighbours, the Great Barrier Reef and the Queensland Wet Tropics, are already listed). But as the University of Melbourne’s Jo Caust recently wrote in The Conversation, some World Heritage listed sites are being loved to death and authorities need to exert some control over visitor numbers.

When you read about the impact of mass tourism on Cambodia’s Angkor Wat and Vietnam’s Hoi An, a coastal town that escaped the ravages of war, perhaps it’s a good thing that mass tourism is unlikely in Queensland’s rugged and remote top end.

Longreach to Winton via Mystery Road

longreach-winton-mystery road — Apex Park outside Longreach (photo by Bob Wilson)

From Hughenden: No 3 in an outback adventure series

So we’re driving into Longreach from Barcaldine, a journey rarely punctuated by a bend in the road, when snippets of a song jump into my head.

“I dunno why they call it Longreach, it doesn’t seem that far to me,” goes the line from one of Mick O’Halloran’s songs. .

Unlike much of the outback, at least you know when you’re coming into Longreach, 1,175 kms north-west of Brisbane, because of the unmistakable landmark which is the Qantas Founders’ Museum. We found our way to the town information centre and paid $6 for the privilege of camping for two nights at Apex Park, 4 kms west. The photo doesn’t quite do justice to the sight of 90 or so caravans, fifth-wheelers, slide-ons, camper trailers, A-vans, converted buses and the occasional tent, squatting in the dust alongside the Thompson River.

There’s a barbecue and covered picnic tables, flushing toilets and it’s only five minutes from town. But we were all a bit too close together for comfort and there were irritants like drifting smoke from camp fires, the grumble of generators, the untimely crowing of feral roosters and the bloody flies! I’ve been on a quest for a pair of his and hers fly swatters but so far on this trip they’ve been out of stock everywhere we looked.

I could not help noticing how many more vans there were in the morning, implying that some arrived late (or early), as it the habit of the lesser crested grey nomad, nabbing the best sites. I’m not suggesting they do it to avoid paying $3 – nobody’s that much of a tight arse.

Apex Park is reached via the Landsborough Highway west of Longreach across a series of bridges forming a long causeway across the Thompson River flood plain. The Thompson is a 3,500km long inland river that runs across channel country into Lake Eyre. While Longreach, like other western Queensland towns, has relatively low rainfall (average 450mm a year) floods are common because the many tributaries of the Thompson join and spread during heavy rain. The causeway’s 16 interlinked bridges stretch 24 kms across the flood plain, one effort to minimise flooding in the town.

We drove to the other side of Longreach for a late afternoon walk through Iningai Nature Reserve. Named after the traditional owners, this example of Mitchell Grass Downs country along the Thompson River has been allowed to regenerate since goats left it a dusty desert in 1950. There’s a fine example of a Coolibah tree, under which one can pose for the inevitable photo. The reserve is touted as a bird watcher’s paradise but we didn’t see many, maybe because night was gathering fast. Tip for bushwalkers – always carry a torch.

Onwards to the town seeking to claim the crown of South Australia’s Quorn as the country’s best known outdoor sound stage. Major films like Mystery Road and Goldstone were filmed in the Winton district. We were in Winton primarily to enjoy the Outback Film Festival, established in 2013 after the successful premiere of the aforementioned Mystery Road, starring Aaron Pedersen as a surly black cowboy detective. Some 400 people packed in to Winton’s famous open air theatre for the event, which remains the main venue for the film festival. Some films are also shown in a theatre at Winton’s rebuilt Waltzing Matilda Centre.

We saw some great films in the four days we were in Winton including Mystery Road, Sweet Country, Brothers’ Nest (starring Shane and Clayton Nicholson), documentaries (Night Parrot, Black Panther Woman and Backtrack Boys stand out), and a gory sci-fi film, Upgrade, which was a last minute replacement for That’s not my Dog.

If you get bored with the show you just look up, let your eyes adjust and take in nature’s starry, starry night. When Upgrade finished about 10.20 we were heading to bed but noticed that comedian Lawrence Mooney was doing an R18 late show at the North Gregory Hotel. Mooney came out in character as PM Malcolm Turnbull and wasted no time establishing the tone with a few swear words.

“Are there any kids here?” he asked. “If there are, f*** them off because this is an adults-only show.”

Mooney’s sharp satirical sword spared no-one; Millennials and Gen Xers copped it, so too the Greens, Labor and a few Senators singled out for special mention. Two people walked out when he made a joke about farmers and suicide and one heckler in the front row kept up such a running commentary Mooney resorted to telling her to shut the f*** up. You attend late night comedy shows at your own risk.

Grey nomads also copped a spray, although they were so under-represented in the Monday night audience there was little risk someone would take offence at his suggestion that serial killers should stop preying on backpackers and focus on grey nomads instead “because nobody cares”.

The telling part near the end of his show was Mooney asking the audience of 30-40 people how many actually lived in Winton. One woman raised her hand only to say she used to live in Winton but had moved away.

I had vague ambitions about driving out to Middleton, where Mystery Road was shot, until I figured out it was a 360km round-trip. Every place of interest around here is at least two hours’ drive away.

The Outback Film Festival, A Vision Splendid, is a bold project for a small outback community to sustain. It deserves to be supported (and you can still find time to go fossicking or dinosaur spotting).

On Wednesday night we got glammed up and went to the 100^th Anniversary celebrations of the Royal Open Air Theatre, which included dinner and a special screening of the silent film classic, The Sentimental Bloke.

It meant skipping the spectacular sunsets you so often see in the flat country spreading west, but there are sure to be more as we head north to Hughenden and the Gulf country.

The alert among you will observe that this was posted on Thursday, as we’re going bush and will be out of WIFI range for a few days. I’m off to buy some block ice as our caravan fridge decided to cark it (Aussie expression meaning it died). After our visits to the Stockman’s Hall of Fame in Longreach and Barcaldine’s Australian Heritage Centre, which tell stories of the hard life of country people in the 1800s, getting by without a fridge for a few weeks is no great hardship (as long as you don’t forget to buy the ice-Ed.)

When desert stars disappear

Outback: No 2 in a six-part series

stars-outback-music — stars – Image of Charleville night sky, June 26 by Laurel Wilson’s Nikon Coolpix

I was going to be cute and headline this piece about stars, ‘Charleville’s starry starry night’, which in one tells you where I am and sneaks in one of those song references for which I am apparently known. Our plan was to visit Charleville’s famous Cosmos Centre, an observatory which takes advantage of the (usual) crisp and clear night air to show the far west’s spectacular night sky.

But you can’t count on the weather. Halfway through our second day in Charleville, 747.3 kms west of Brisbane, the clear blue winter sky began clouding over. By the time we came out of a supermarket expecting to go to dinner and then to an astral show, we found instead rain spots on the windscreen and a voicemail message from Mike at the Cosmos Centre. Tonight’s shows are unfortunately cancelled due to cloud and expected rain, he said. If you are still around tomorrow you can rebook, he added. But the weather forecast was a 90% chance of precipitation, and besides, we had to be in Blackall.

Drat, we said and went off to the RSL for the Barra special.

I was space-mad when I was a kid and so were all my mates. In 1957 (most of us were 9 or 10), the Soviets declared themselves winners of the space race (on account of launching the world’s first satellite station (Sputnik), which orbited for a couple of weeks before running out of battery power. The USA was aghast and immediately ramped up its own space programme, frantically trying to catch up to the USSR. These were the Cold War years, long before perestroika and glasnost. The US and USSR happily spied on each other and played nuclear chicken (the Bay of Pigs crisis). The US arguably won the space race in 1969 when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Even today you will find conspiracists who say the whole thing was a con, filmed in a studio.

Do you remember Laika, one of Moscow’s stray mutts until the USSR space team captured the dog and sent into orbit? Laika was one of three dogs ‘trained’ to become astronauts. The Soviets coldly admitted that the dog would die in space (and it did), heralding perhaps the birth of the animal rights movement.

Not that me and my Kiwi school friends were thinking about such deep things, but the space race got us interested in the wider world.

Our parents were not too thrilled, though, about experiments with home-made rockets (taking fireworks apart and stuffing the explosives into toilet roll tubes).

I read up on astronomy and became something of an expert (so I thought) on the planets, their moons and even distant stars. A famous New Zealand radio quiz show (It’s in the Bag) visited our small town so I put my name down to answer questions on my special subject. Genial host Selwyn Toogood found me out, though, on question two or three which was: name the second furthest planet from earth. I said Saturn when the correct answer was Neptune. Selwyn said something like “By hokey, that’s not right, Bobby. But thanks for taking part in the fun.”

‘It’s in the Bag’ offered contestants the choice between keeping answering questions (and being gonged out), and choosing between cash or an unopened bag. Nobody knew what was inside the bag. It could have been a (voucher for) a new fridge or washing machine, or one of the dreaded booby prizes.

You will have to take my account of this episode with a grain of nutmeg as it was long ago (1958?) and these days I’m flat out remembering where I left my keys and phone.

I’ve always been a bit of a stargazer, and you can take that any way you like. When you grow up in a small country Kiwi town, the stars take their proper place in the firmament.

Australia’s outback is the best place to see the night sky. There’s no artificial light and in the winter months the colder nights mostly guarantee a crystal-clear sky.

More than a few songwriters have had a stab at describing the starry starry night, but none as convincingly as Don McLean, in his ballad about Vincent van Gogh. There are others, as I found when plundering my IPod – Dream a Little Dream of Me, Starman (Bowie), And I Love Her (Beatles). More recently Coldplay came up with A Sky Full of Stars. Moon Dance doesn’t qualify but it’s a great tune and Van is undeniably a star.

Music historian Lyn Nuttall (aka Franky’s Dad), found an example from the 1950s (I knew he would). Don’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes was a hit for Perry Como, but the original was recorded by the writer, Slim Willet. Lyn, who curates the website poparchives, quotes Arnold Rypens of The Originals (this is for my songwriter pals patiently waiting for their APRA cheques), who wrote of this song:

“Slim pulled a gun on Bill McCall (head of 4 Star records & publishing), forced him to walk to the bank and collect an overdue payment for royalties in cash.”

The poets waxed on about stars, to wit the ‘mansions built by nature’s hands’ (Wordsworth). Shakespeare’s Sonnet 14 is often held up as the gold standard. But Gerald Manley Hopkins was more adventurous. He likened stars to the ‘eyes of elves’ or ‘fire folk sitting in the night sky’. Hopkins also described stars as ‘diamonds in dark mines or caves’.

That makes my ‘blazing starry nights’ (last week) seem prosaic.

We went outside at Moonie last week where there was a clear sky. She Who Knows About Such Things pointed out the Southern Cross. We both identified Venus and guessed we were about a week away from a full moon. But, as you might gather, there’s a bit of rain about in the west for the next week or so. Charleville got 10mm overnight after our star gazing was thwarted, making it 173mm for the year to date.

Out west the paddocks are dead brown and parched and we’ve already seen a couple of drovers driving cattle along the ‘long paddock’. So it would be churlish of us grey nomads to complain about a bit of rain, eh.

Next week: further west

Re last week’s episode, Ridley wrote to point out that camper trailers and other camping vehicles (slide-ons, for example), didn’t factor in our stats. Moreover, slide-ons (the camper sits on the tray of a Ute or small truck and can be dismounted), don’t have to be registered. So yes, there’s even more undocumented grey nomads out there.

Does a six-week outback trip make you a grey nomad

(No 1 in a series of six)

The last thing packed into the 12ft caravan we call The Tardis was a heavy duty doona, an essential item considering we’re heading west, to Charleville and beyond. Night temperatures out west at this time of year vary from -2 to 6 degrees. The days will be beautiful, though – sunny and still. I’m looking forward to the blazing starry nights.

The ubiquitous Grey Nomads, many of them temporarily migrated from Victoria, have Queensland all worked out. In the spirit of the Canadian ‘Snow Birds’, who winter over in New Mexico and Arizona, they are escaping the unforgiving cold of places like Ballarat, Bendigo and Melbourne for the stable sunny climes of west and north Queensland.

Likewise, Queenslanders tend to head south and west when the seriously humid part of summer starts.

The first thing you find when trying to research this elusive subject is that reliable data on grey nomads is hard to find.

A Sydney Morning Herald report last year surmised that grey nomad numbers had doubled in the previous three years. The latest official Tourism Research Australia figures show that caravan and camping nights are up 13 per cent on the previous year, to 11.78 million nights.

A more reliable way to get a sense of potential grey nomad numbers is to look at caravan and camper van registrations. They totalled almost 500,000 in 2017. Caravans led the way by a long margin (450,564), with 47,775 camper vans. States with the most registered caravans were Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales, each in six figures. NSW led Queensland and Victoria in camper van registrations.

Of course, these figures do not suggest that all of these vans are on Australian roads every day of the year. As caravan owners know too well, these expensive bedrooms on wheels sit in garages and carports 80% of the time. As many of you know, the old Coromal or Windsor van that has ‘done the lap’ twice is now sitting out the back, semi-permanent accommodation for a family member. It could be the adult son (between share houses), the adult daughter (between marriages) or Mum, who can still live by herself but needs a loved one checking in quite often.

Nevertheless, the call of the wild still drives tens of thousands of Aussies around the eastern seaboard or trekking across the outback. All they need is a reliable person to mind the house and pets (or take the pets with them). Or they may have sold the house to fund the road rig.

Research by Professor Jenny Onyx of University of Technology Sydney cited an estimate by the Bureau of Tourism Research that in a single year Australian retirees undertook 200,000 caravan trips of six weeks’ duration or more. The same source speculated that these numbers were set to increase greatly as more baby boomers retire.

Let’s be clear about the term Grey Nomad – it means a person of at least 60 years of age, retired and often pursuing domestic travel as a way of life. While the size of some caravans and road rigs would cause you to think otherwise, the demographic is not wealthy, often eking out stays in free camps waiting for the next pension payment.

Prof. Onyx also did research on the North American phenomenon known as ‘Snow Birds’ – North Americans who choose to winter in warmer American states like Arizona, New Mexico and Florida.

Prof. Onyx says that 220,000 retirees moved to Phoenix Arizona in the winter of 1993-1994, of which one third lived in what North Americans call RV Parks (dedicated resorts for recreational vehicles). All of which is a long way from the Aussie grey nomad, camped down by a billabong with a solar panel, a portaloo and/or a generator.

PhD student Rod Caldicott from Southern Cross University identified a growing problem for caravanners who stay on the road for extended periods. He said that while there was a 257% increase in caravan registrations between 1995 and 2005, the short and long-term capacity of caravan parks was on the decrease. Caldicott chose Tweed Shire for a case study, concluding that tent sites in the shire’s 27 tourist parks had declined by 64% since the 1970s and the number of ensuite cabins correspondingly increased. Annual caravan sites have fallen 12% between 1970 and 2010.

The advent of fly-in fly-out workers has increased demand for permanent and semi-permanent accommodation.

It’s not unusual to stay at an outback caravan park and find the washing lines full of overalls and high-vis vests.

There are a few unwritten rules if you are going to be on the road with a caravan for months at a time. The first of these is to take a break from driving every two hours. And the driving ought to be shared. It’s hard work.

The next rule is to set a constant speed – 90kmh is good, and keep a steady eye on the road behind you.

Extendable side mirrors are good, but a CB radio is better. Paint your UHF channel on the back of the van so the road train that’s following can call in: “10-4 Ned & Mary, B-triple right behind you and about to pass.”

SMH writer Sue Williams raised the common conflict between grey nomads (who seem to prefer 70kmh) and the road trains on freight deadlines. She quoted truck driver and Pilbara Heavy Haulage Girls trucking company boss Heather Jones.

Jones says she was driving a triple road train with a 70-tonne load along a highway when she came up behind a grey nomad caravan that drove at 30km/h, then 80km/h, then 30km/h. Then it stopped dead.

“It turned out they’d stopped to take a photo of a Sturt’s desert pea flower,” she says. “But they seemed to have no idea that a massive truck was behind them that takes a while to stop.”

Our photograph this week, which I’ve used before, shows our road rig next to a cattle road train. It does make you think.

We were in an auto electrician’s shop recently having a new car aerial fitted to the Ford Territory (this is a virtue signal to show we have upgraded from the green wagon in the photo). While chatting to the young fellow who fitted the new aerial, the conversation fell to reversing cameras. The Ford has one, but it’s not much use once the van is hooked up. It turns out we could buy a monitoring camera for the caravan as well. This means you could have as good a view of the road behind as the road ahead.

Or we could do what most Grey Nomads do. The husband (usually) starts backing the rig into the designated camping site. The wife (usually), stands at the back and waves her arms to indicate keep coming, keep coming, and stop! (I prefer ‘left hand down’, ‘right hand down’ etc in dulcet tones while conversing through the open car window- ‘the wife’) We’re looking forward to this jaunt – west to Charleville, then north to Winton, Hughenden and on then to Coastal north Queensland before turning for home via Townsville (go the Cowboys!) and points South. We have star-gazing, the Winton film festival, national parks, hiking, bird watching and an ongoing scrabble tournament on our to-do list.

Somewhere along the way, we’ll do what all travellers should do – schedule do-nothing days. Throw the laundry in a commercial washing machine and assign the husband to peg it out when the time comes. Sit out in the sun and read a book; take a nanna nap…

This would be the day when hubby cooks dinner, right?

In praise of the small caravan

small caravan at Barkly Homestead Roadhouse, NT

It’s hard to estimate just how many kilometres we’ve clocked up touring around in this little Jayco pop-top caravan, but it’s a lot. Probably close to 100,000. We bought the van back in late 2011, after an exhaustive search for a small, older caravan. We decided that as we did not know if we’d enjoy caravanning or not, it seemed wisest to spend as little money as possible.

Eventually we bought ‘The Tardis’ from a retired aeronautical engineer, a Mr Fussy who’d looked after the 1984 caravan meticulously, kept it under cover and added luxury extras like electric brakes and LED lights, as well as small truck tyres to give extra clearance. There was an awning too, stored away under the beds (more on that later).

Done all the dumb things

Caravanners would probably agree, but you never stop learning. You never, ever stop doing dumb things (like not putting the chocks back in the van; instead driving them into the turf as you leave). One of our neighbours at Castle Rock campground at Girraween confessed he had once driven out of a camp site with stabilisers still down. This is not recommended. The same could be said for not properly clipping down the front window, not locking the van door and forgetting to undo the safety chains before you drive the car away! (Guilty as charged, on all counts. Ed)

Most of the National Park campers we encountered recently were in relatively modest rigs – a few A-vans, a couple of camper trailers and one caravan even older than ours. There were also a lot of tents, a lot of kids and not an IPad to be seen anywhere.

You don’t often see rigs like the one above in national parks. The access defeats them and there’s usually not enough room to park a beast like this (the sides push out, making for a large living room). I believe this one also had a washing machine and dryer. For $100,000 or more (including vehicle), you could have one too.

We saw many rigs like this (and larger) on our three month, round-Australia trip in 2014. There was a rig we saw in Alice that also had a trailer on the back towing a small Suzuki 4WD. On the back of the 4WD was a bike rack and two bikes!

Meanwhile we have learned how to eat, sleep, make love and play scrabble in a 12ft caravan. There have been occasions when we coveted more space, a toilet and shower even, but they are few in number.

Our caravan is simplicity itself. We arrive, pick a spot, reverse in (easy), put the jockey wheel on, detach the car, get the van level and push the roof up. Job done.

We should have kept a log book. The top photo was snapped at the Barkly Roadhouse in the Northern Territory. I was taken by the contrast between our humble rig and the ‘B-Triple’ cattle train.

Our most recent van trip between Christmas and New Year and beyond was to Girraween National Park via Brisbane, Warwick and Yangan. Our sister-in-law had a houseful prior to and including Christmas, so we parked the van next to her house on the bayside and did some ‘home camping’.

Onwards to Girraween where we found a quiet spot near some other campers, who appeared to be camping as an extended family.

This was the trip where, apart from the super moon and the blessed silence after 9pm, we made two amazing discoveries about our caravan. One, I found out how to light the grill! The van has a full-sized oven and cook top that runs off gas. To light the grill and make toast, I finally discovered, you open the oven door, turn on the grill and stick a match underneath. Not what you’d call rocket science, but we had tried various ways of lighting the grill in the past, but nothing worked.

The second thing, given we were going to be staying a few nights, was to put up the awning (left) − an old-style canvas sheet which has to be threaded into a channel along the roof of the caravan, then pegged out with poles and ropes. Believe it or not, this was a first. Now, with a bit of wax for the sail track and a few extra tent pegs, we can achieve this every time we stay more than one night. #feelingsmug

It’s been around, this little van. And, I’d need to add that we have seen smaller ones – 10 footers with a door at the rear. A six-footer with a home-made tilt-top and a few slide-on vans that sit on the backs of utes. There are also bubble vans so small you could probably tow one with a motorcycle.

Ours has been hither and yon – the first big trip in 2012 to the Man from Snowy River festival at Cooma, the National Folk Festival in Canberra and home again. We did a big northern trip in 2013, to Cairns and Karumba, across country to the Territory and back in a loop that took in Budjamulla (Lawn Hill) National Park and home, via western Queensland. Then the big trip in 2014, road-testing our near-new Ford Territory (which had only 9,000 kms on the clock). On reflection, we should have gone for six months, as Western Australia is far too large to whiz through in a month.

We’ve also taken this rig to the Blue Mountains for the music festival and that was when we discovered the leaks we’d fixed were, er, not fixed.

So I went to K Mart and bought a really big tarpaulin for $30 and we threw it over the entire van. Try doing that in a fifth wheeler.

Caravans – a money drain or a hobby for DIY types

We have spent some money on the van, it’s true. The first time was when heavy local rain seeped in and destroyed the kitchen bench top, which we then had replaced with marine ply (after fixing the leaks). Then when our local mechanic checked the tyres, he concluded they were so old they didn’t even have identifier numbers on them. So $400 later we were back in business and feeling safe. We’ve had lots of spot jobs done on the road (the insides of our three-way fridge fell to pieces after being taken on the Lawn Hill road) but a smart young guy in Mt Isa fixed it for $130. Another chap in Mt Isa stayed back on a Friday night to fashion new aluminium hinges to repair the van door which had come adrift. An artful fellow with a van repair business near Sunshine Coast Airport recently fixed everything on the van that didn’t work properly and replaced worn wheel bearings.

Not a small caravan No 2 (is that a quad bike on the back?)

Some people, we found, are permanently on the road, hence the need for impressive rigs like this (left). Others make do nicely with vans as small as the one below.

I fondly remember on one of our first forays north stumbling upon a former work colleague, retired from newspaper life, travelling with his wife in an old 10ft van with single beds. “It’s all we need,” said Roy, getting his fiddle out for a few campfire tunes.

As an old fella we met in the NT, towing a 30-year-old van with an aged Kingswood* said, when a fifth-wheeler rig roared past: “Aw, he’s just showin’ orf.”

*Holden Kingswood, the classic car for everyman, produced from 1968-1984.

More reading : an outback travelogue from 2014

Prickly Pear makes a comeback

prickly-pear-comeback — Photo of Prickly Pear near Roma by Bob Wilson

You don’t have to travel far inland in Queensland to see that Prickly Pear, the invasive scourge of farmland in the early 1900s, is making a comeback. ‘The Pear’ as it is sometimes known by farmers, has started to re-appear, growing and spreading after the floods of 2011 and 2012.

The Opuntia species (a member of the Cactaceae family) was introduced to Australia (by white settlers) in the late 1880s to form hedges and provide fodder for times of drought.

Prickly Pear, a cactus plant from the Americas, thrived in the Australian outback. The combination of cacti and rabbits, another introduced species, took a heavy toll on Australian farmland at the turn of the century. By the 1920s, Prickly Pear was a major problem. After some years of experimentation, authorities introduced a biological control in the form of the Latin American Cactoblastis Moth. The moth lays eggs on the prickly pear and its larvae eat the cactus. This was hailed as one of the world’s most successful examples of biological control (the moth eggs were distributed manually). Within six years all varieties of the prickly pear cactus had disappeared.

Not so circa 2017, with varieties of Prickly Pear re-emerging along roadsides and in paddocks around western Queensland and the southern Downs. When we travel I notice things like this and habitually make notes (usually when I’m a passenger).

In some areas (Goondwindi to Inglewood is particularly bad); the cactus has spread into farmland back from the road. Some plants look unwell, though whether through poisoning or biological controls we don’t know.

At this point it should be noted that the variety known as Tree Pear (photos) has some resistance to Cactoblastis, though it can succumb to a cochineal insect. The Southern Downs Regional Council recommends the application of herbicides.

In the interests of moistening a dry subject, let me digress and mention two folk bands that enshrined the Prickly Pear legend into folklore.

Toowoomba musicians John and Sandy Whybird formed Cactoblastis Bush Band when John, then a high school teacher at Chinchilla, saw what Prickly Pear could do to the land. He taught students about the pest and the late 1920s solution to the invasive species.

The band, which recently recorded a CD, performed at the Chinchilla Museum last September to commemorate the 90^th anniversary of the introduction of Cactoblastis to the area.

A Brisbane folk duo (Jan Davis and the late Tony Miles), adopted the clever stage name Prickly Pair. They played together for eight years in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

My research led me to the Urban Dictionary, which defines Prickly Pair as slang for the stubble growing back on a man’s testicles after shaving (for an operation or whatever).

Anyway, the Common Pest Pear is back and local farmers ought to know that notification of infestation is required under the Biosecurity Act 2014. No-one expects a problem of the scale which caused farmers to walk off their land after ‘The Pear’ and rabbits finished off what floods and drought had missed. There’s a plaque alongside the Moonie River at Nindigully that commemorates the success of the Cactoblastis moth, when the use of poisons and cochineal insects proved to be ineffective.

Early settlers, in their wisdom, decided to set up a cochineal industry to provide dye for clothing. The cochineal is a scale insect from which the natural dye is extracted. The insects are found on the pads of prickly pear cacti then brushed off and dried.

The Pear is commonly spread by birds and animals eating the fruit and excreting seeds. However, the new spread of Prickly Pear has been accelerated by floods moving broken cacti pads from one location to another.

The State Government’s Business Queensland website describes the Pear as “vigorous in hot, dry conditions, causing other plants to lose vigour or die. It competes and invades pastures and impedes stock movement and mustering.”

Authorities took the rampaging cacti seriously and began investigating biological control agents in 1912. More than 150 insect species were studied, with 18 insects and one mite released in Queensland.

Today, eight insects, including Cactoblastis cactorum remain established in Queensland. An article by Leonie Seabrook and Clive McAlpine in the Queensland Historical Atlas describes Prickly Pear in Queensland as a generic term for five different Opuntia cacti. Three are low-growing shrubs up to 1.5 metres high and two are tree pears, growing up to three metres. The article observes that at the height of the infestation in 1925, prickly pear had spread across 24 million hectares in Queensland and New South Wales.

While the (imported) Cactoblastis Moth was hailed as a biological saviour, early settlers must shoulder the blame for importing invasive species and pests into Australia. Apart from prickly pear and many other weed species, settlers also introduced cane toads, rabbits and feral goats, pigs, cats, brumbies, foxes and camels.

Prickly Pear observations aside, we had four lovely days hiking in Carnarvon Gorge where the weather was balmy. It did rain on the last day but I went for a walk anyway. It’s only rain, as they say in NZ.

As you’ll have gathered, we just spent 10 days towing our little caravan out to Carnarvon Gorge via Rolleston and back via Injune, Roma, St George, Nindigully, Goondiwindi and Warwick. Today we headed home, via Toowoomba and Esk.

Other on-road observations included a lot of road kill, a feral cat, a lone kangaroo out in the middle of the day, a couple of pelicans in a dam, two emus foraging in the long grass, an abandoned car that had been pillaged for parts and a bloke on a recumbent bicycle (the rider lying down and pedalling in a reclining position). We saw two vans smaller than our 12-footer and a massive RV being towed by a 4×4 (with a small car being towed behind that).

We had the usual (and unusual) mishaps common to most caravan expeditions. Like trying to move the car when it was still shackled to the caravan by metal chains (good one, Bob). I bought one of those stainless steel coffee percolators you brew on the stove. First cup I poured tasted a little soapy. As I sipped further down the cup it transpired someone had left a spoonful of congealed dishwashing liquid in the bottom of the cup. (Guess who usually does the dishes? Ed.)

A highlight of the trip was the free camp at Nindigully, where about 50 caravanners were camped beside the Moonie River. A goodly number of them gathered in the pub to watch the State of Origin decider. Many people left at half-time (we assume they were NSW supporters or maybe they were just cold). The ones who remained were in good spirits, taking their crushing defeat like good sports. As we headed back to the van in the dark we heard a chorus of cheering and the war cry ‘Queenslander!’ from the pub.

“How do you reckon NSW will go next year?” I asked She Who Spilt A Pot of Pepper In the Van But Didn’t Want It Mentioned.

“I reckon they’re cactus,” she said, chortling quietly under her maroon beanie.

Online subscribers might have noticed we did not file a FOMM last week. That’s because we were out bush and offline. I did post a 2014 column to email subscribers. You can read it here:

https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/approval/v2?auto=false&response=code%3D4%2F95ecdlLPrRNanWf2kHbdOTsrt5gIfRbSQ-pTeN6r60s&approvalCode=4%2F95ecdlLPrRNanWf2kHbdOTsrt5gIfRbSQ-pTeN6r60s