Continuing the winter escape…

As I mentioned earlier, every town has a story to tell – Jandowae has several!

Did you know that Jandowae is the closest town to the biggest man made structure in the world? Its location is right near the northern end of the dingo fence, the 5000 km or so long fence which strangely from here goes east, then north for a while and then to the west till it makes it’s way to South Australia.

Jandowae was also the new home of “Little Digger Henri”. Henri was smuggled home after World War 1 in a sack aboard a returning troopship bringing Tim Tovell home from France. Henri was orphaned during the war and he latched onto a British Officer who later was also killed. From there Henri found Tim and the Australian Flying Corp unit and ultimately became the units’ mascot. After the war they brought him home to Jandowae. The Queensland Government helped Henri into the country, and Tim was offered 1500 pounds from a mother to look after Henri, the mother lost her son during the war and she wanted to help however Tim declined the offer. Henri didn’t know his age and lived with Tim and the family for 5 years before moving to Melbourne to train as an aircraft mechanic. Sadly he never completed the training – he was killed in a motorbike accident in 1928.

The railway used to go through the centre of town, but that was a while back and with the town dwindling in numbers the Wambo Shire ran a “dollar block” promotion for 38 parcels of land that had the requirement of building on the block within 12 months or else the land was reallocated. There was over 1000 interested people so a ballot was held. I am not sure of how many blocks were built on but the town is a typical outback town with some businesses doing well along with the empty shops on the main street. The Butchers had some very nice tucker!

From there it is a big couple of hours to Munduberra and this time into a caravan park to catch up with the washing. This town’s stories include that it is a large fruit growing area with citrus farms everywhere, it is also the largest area in Queensland growing table grapes.

The town sits right next to the Burnett River with its river height markers showing 20 metres plus on the river bank. Around here 3 major rivers meet with different catchments – and if they are all in flood then the town is likely to be in flood as well. Inside the town is a river height marker all over the place including saying 23 metres just outside one the churches here. All of the markers have QR Code links to further information.

It was such a busy day with the long drive and other chores that we took the afternoon off and organised Chinese for dinner – it was pretty good too!. Finding the place was interesting – it turns out that the Chinese reception was at the back of one of the closed down pubs – there is nothing so forlorn or drear as standing at the bar with no beer while waiting for dinner to be cooked!

Wandering the town while some of the shops have closed and are empty, others say they are closed because of staff shortages – there is plenty of work in this part of the world. For real estate many of the prices for reasonable places was in the 160-250k range. The house with the sold sticker had a selling line of “above the flood line”!

Next stop – not sure!