OUTBACK QUEENSLAND to the COAST

4^th October, 2012

Time to hit the road again … we’re working our way south through outback Queensland before turning east to the coast.  We stop at Augathella to take a look at a metal sculpture in Meat Ant Park.

Kind of frightening isn't it?

This sculpture of a meat ant is over a million times the size of an actual ant.

Thank goodness they don't grow this big!!

And why name a park after a Meat Ant?  Well the local football team was known as the Mighty Meat Ants and were fearless when attacking their oppon‘ants’.  This earned the town a nickname ‘Meat Ant Country’ ….  and the name has stuck.  Augathella has also hit the big screen with the 1950 ‘Smiley’ movies based on the adventures of a local boy.  As we continue down the road looking for a place to stop and have some lunch we cross the Warrego River and notice a dirt track leading off the highway beside the river.  Wok does a u-turn and we go bush.  We discover some great camping spots beside the river and Wok decides to try his luck fishing again so we set up camp for a few nights.

Our camp beside the Warrego River

Wok is keen to throw a line in so after lunch he heads down to the riverbank to see if anything would like a nice frozen prawn on the end of a hook.

A fisherman at work ...

It’s only a matter of minutes and he is back at the Van.  He has a great big smile and a nice sized yellowbelly.

Just look at that smile ... on Wok (not the fish)

Keen to try his luck again he heads back down to the river.  Within a few minutes he is back with a reasonably sized carp on the end of his line.

Wok with Mr Carp ...

Carp is an introduced species to Australia’s waterways and is considered a pest.  It apparently doesn’t taste any good either and if caught must be disposed of and not released back into the water.  Burning the carcass is acceptable so a campfire was a good option.  Wok had placed the carp on the ground near our caravan when along came a large goanna.

Our friendly neighbourhood goanna.

It didn’t take the goanna long to home in on the dead carp and it picked up the fish and carted it under our caravan.  The sounds of munching and crunching could then be heard.  A few minutes later the goanna was back out sniffing around for more treats.  Well that solved the carp disposal issue but not sure it's what the fisheries authorities had in mind.  That night Wok decided to try his hand at lighting a campfire and proved once again that he will make a good stoker for ‘Old Nick’.

Yes - it's a lovely fire Wok

Over the next two days Wok tried to repeat his first day’s success at catching a yellowbelly but all he could come up with were heaps of carp and two turtles.  He didn’t mind catching the carp and leaving them for our friendly goanna to eat but it is not so easy getting the hook out of an unhappy turtle’s mouth.  We finally got on the road again and headed into Charleville where we checked into the ‘Bailey Bar Caravan Park’.  Charleville has a couple of unique tourist attractions that one wouldn’t expect to find in an outback country town.  On the outskirts of town is the Cosmos Centre – which has an interactive display and theatre presentation on astronomy.  There is lots of information on the stars, planets and galaxies as well as meteorites and comets.  Hands on displays tell you things like your weight and age on other planets – it’s all very interesting and lots of fun.  After dinner that night, we headed back out to the observatory to take a look through their powerful telescopes at the night sky.  With a magnification of 110/1 distant planets, stars and nebulaes that are nearly invisible to the naked eye take on a life of their own.  It’s fascinating stuff!  The real stars of the show at Charleville however would have to be the Bilbies.  A few years ago a concerned zoologist spoke to a local National Parks Ranger about the plight of the endangered bilby.  Together these two men instigated a captive breeding programme for Queensland’s last remaining pocket of wild bilbies and established a breeding complex at the National Parks complex in Charleville.  It was hard to miss the large wooden carving of a bilby outside the office

Carved wooden bilby

and after learning about the time and effort it has taken to ensure the survival of the bilbies our volunteer guide took us to the enclosure for our first look at this rarely seen marsupial.

Bilby on the run

The bilbies are nocturnal and belong to the bandicoot family.  They aren’t very big with the females weighing in at about a kilo and the males a kilo and a half.  They have very large ears, a long nose, grey fur and a striped black and white tail.

Aren't I cute?

They are sooo cute!  We spent quite a bit of time watching them eat and moving around their enclosure.  A 25 square kilometre fenced enclosure has been established in Currawinya National Park in south west Queensland for the release and rehabilitation of the bilbies.  This was no mean feat with the money needed to fence the area being raised from public donations.  The eradication of predators such as feral cats and foxes from the fenced in area was also a painstaking job.  The bilbies that have been released at Currawinya are now being monitored to see if they will survive.  Let’s hope all goes well for these tiny little creatures.  It would be a shame if the only place we were to see them in the future would be in a zoo.  Time to continue on our way and at Cunnamulla we do a left turn and head east.  Now we have seen quite a few odd things in our travels across this wide brown land but this mode of transport that we passed was a wee bit out of the ordinary.

Maybe this is a mirage ....?

Obviously one isn’t going to break any speed limits with a camel engine but it has got to be a hell of a lot cheaper than petrol or diesel.

It's always good to have a backup camel ...

Well there we were – trundling along minding our own business when from out of the bush hopped a suicidal kangaroo.  Poor Wok had only a split second to apply the brakes (which he did) but there was no way we were ever going to miss this ‘roo on a mission’.  The last time Wok saw the ‘kamikaze roo’ it was rolling along in the grass beside the road.  Wok finally managed to find a place to pull up about a kilometre further up the road where we could assess the damage.

Ouch!  Poor Mitzi ..... Poor kangaroo ....

Well things could have been worse.  Our ‘nudge bar’ took most of the impact with a couple of plastic inserts completely gone AWOL.  With all the travelling we do the odds were always in favour of us meeting some unwanted wildlife on the road.  Guess we will have some insurance paperwork to do when we get back to the Sunshine Coast.  Only ten more kilometres up the road we came to Caliguel Lagoon on the Condamine River (our intended overnight rest stop) and set up camp near the water.

Our campsite on the Condamine River

It was mid afternoon so Wok decided to throw a line in and see if any suicidal fish were around.

Wok tries the hand line

To his utter astonishment a large ‘yellowbelly’ took a liking to his bait and we had fish for dinner again.

Good grief!  Not another one?

In the morning we drove the five kilometres into Condamine and stopped to admire the large oddly shaped square bell on display in the local park.

That's a really big bell!

A plaque on the bell explained what it was all about.

We hit the road again and later that afternoon stopped at Claude Wharton Weir near Gayndah for the night.  Wok couldn’t resist the temptation to try out his fishing prowess and decided to see what might lurk in the watery depths.  It wasn’t too long before he found out – a large catfish scruffled the bait and gave Wok a pretty decent fight when he tried to bring it ashore.

Yep it's a catfish right enough!  And it's going back in the water ...

With a couple of fish fillets already in the freezer and no knowledge of whether this type of catfish was good eating, we decided to let him go to fight another day.  We still have a lot to learn about ‘catching fish’ and ‘cooking fish’ – but we are having a heap of fun in the meantime.  In the morning we made our way to Bundaberg.  Nearly nine months ago we had left the east coast of Australia and now we were back.  We checked into Moore Park Holiday Park on the beach north of Bundaberg and breathed in the salty air of the Pacific Ocean.  Needless to say we are enjoying a few days of rest and relaxation on the beach before moving on – and Wok is now trying his hand at beach fishing.

Wok enjoying the sun, sand and surf

It’s a hard life but somebody has to do it!