Heading east we stopped over at the great free camp
at Bollon, parked away from the rest with only the chooks and ducks for company
– that is until, and despite the acres of room somebody decided we needed
company! Coffee in the morning from the only café in town – no pics of this, but
it is not often you see the Quick-eze for sale next to EFTPos machine, I am not
sure if that’s a marketing ploy or a warning if you buy a feed there!

Into St George for a couple of nights while the weather
settles down….Lots of water heading down the river and out the weir and we are
not sure where it might end up. St George was named by Mitchell the explorer
when he crossed the river here on St George day– the commemorative plaque takes
pride of place next to the river behind a tree…

St George is an interesting place – it claims to be the
inland fishing capital of Queensland, it has the St George Irrigation area
complete with a dam feeding the 3 or 4 weirs before going into the channels and
into farm storage before being released to gravity feed to the fields (a lot is
cotton, and for your fun fact – a bail of cotton weighs 227kgs, keep that for
your trivia night!). One of the weirs is in town making some of the pubs and house
absolute water frontage.

As we expected it did dump another 30 plus mm on the entire district
and we thought we would put in a big day in leaving St George. 40k’s down the
road it was time for morning tea at the Nindigully Pub. The pub has a huge free
camping area around it and alongside the Moonie River and would make an
excellent stopover next time. We had our coffee on the front veranda
overlooking the waterlogged carpark – for our entertainment one of the
caravaners decided that they should be closer to the river, they went from the
high ground down closer to the river and got bogged….it took them 30 minutes to
get out and we thought about getting another coffee! The next stop was Thallan
with its silos and hairy nosed wombat – nice little town that encourages camping
as well (although not as nice as the pub).

Our destination for the day was Mungindi, all of 113k’s from
St George. In keeping with stopping at the small towns this trip to find their
stories we booked into the van park for 2 nights.

Mungindi is a town that is trying to get going again (and
your trivia night knowledge is that Mungindi is the only town that has the same
name across a border in the southern hemisphere). We got the bikes down to tour
the town and follow the Mungindi sculpture trail, and we had a couple of dips
in the excellent artesian pool at the town’s swimming pool. At first it was
just us but one of the 9 teachers at the school (prep to year 12) joined us. We
had a great chat to both the teacher and pool manager.

We did some shopping at the pop-up supermarket in the RSL
club. The club went broke sometime back and the supermarket moved there after a
fire started in the butchers shop, ultimately burning it and 4 other stores down
including the town’s supermarket. Getting the keys to the History Park we
enjoyed a wander around – check out the old pokey machines, 1 penny or 1
shilling – the choice is yours! We rode the 7.5 k’s out to the “One Ton Post”.
It marks the end point of the work by the surveyor Cameron which is now the
straight line from Cameron’s Corner to here and it is here where the NSW/Qld
border gets squiggly.

We ended up staying for an extra night – the caravan park
hosts were doing a 2 course roast dinner – excellent feed for as much as you
want for $20. After dinner the parks phone rang, the Police were bringing a
young family in who had tried to get to Lightning Ridge but had gotten bogged.
They were stuck in the Walgett shire who don’t update the websites or put road
closed signs at the far end of the roads. You couldn’t blame the family except
for not turning around sooner.

From Mungindi the choices were limited with water still up
to the roads’ edges, we did get to Burren Junction for one last dip in the bore
baths before having one last truly bush night with only the aliens out there
for company. It’s now a run to Canberra for a few days before stopping one more
time on the way home. The caravan has gone very well and is literally dust free
inside despite all of the dirt roads we had been on and the car has carried the
load well also.

This is the last postcard for this trip. If you are still here
 – thanks for coming along!

Cheers, the J’s

The map