Bunya Mountains

From our last stop at Casino we drove over the hills through Kyogle to Murwillumbah which nestles below Mt Warning, the rocky remains of an ancient volcanic core. Unfortunately the hills were shrouded in misty cloud so we couldn’t get any photos.

Next day we moved on into Queensland and over the next few days we skirted round Brisbane, through Ipswich and north through the hills on the Brisbane Valley Hwy past the Wivenhoe Dam to Kingaroy, the peanut and navy bean capital of Australia.  The area has rich red and black basalt soils, excellent for crops but it is the huge peanut silos which dominate the town. After a visit to the Tourist Information Centre and Museum we now know a lot more about growing and harvesting peanuts.

Blue tongue lizard sunning himself on the track 

 We drove up into the Bunya Mountains, named after the Bunya pines which cover large areas of the mountains. The area was logged from the 1840s and in 1908 was declared a national park although some logging continued till 1917. There are many unique plants in the area and also some rare birds and animals and the pine themselves are a very old species dating back to the dinosaur and beyond. The area was very important to the aboriginals who gathered the nuts and used the natural grass clearings for ceremonies. We met an aboriginal ranger who told us that some of the grass trees were over 1000 years old. They only grow a couple of cm per year but some are up to 5 metres tall. The aboriginals made a drink from the flowers in water which is a great pick-me-up, and the flowers when eaten are better than Viagra!    The roads were very narrow and twisty but sealed but the gradient on one was 20%! Not suitable for the bus and not for caravans although some had come in on a different route.

View from Mt Kaingarow with grass trees below the track

Bush Turkey

We climbed a short track to the top of Mt Kiangarow, through real tropical rain forest with lots of vines and moss hung trees. Little birds were flitting ahead of us down the track and whip-birds were calling in the trees. We saw a big blue-tongue lizard on the track and the view from the top was spectacular looking out to the east and west. We had a late lunch of scones and coffee at the tearooms and then drove down to a picnic area where there were bush turkeys and wallabies everywhere.

Wallabies 

Central and North-east NSW

As we moved on up through New South Wales, our next stop was at Condobolin where we found free camping with hot showers at Gum Bend Lake and stayed for a week visiting local sights like Utes in the Paddock on a side road between Condobolin and Parkes.

Instead of using the highways we travelled north on sealed back roads up through cattle and then cotton country.   The back roads are good though narrow with almost no traffic. The disadvantage is coming up behind huge cotton harvesting equipment doing 15kph and using the whole road. There’s no chance of passing until they find a place to pull over.

We passed through little townships like Tullemore and Albert where we had lunch at the Rabbit Trap Hotel. They have a huge trap ready to mount on the roof of the hotel, but as it weighs about 1 ½ ton, they need to get the roof structure strengthened first. The project has been underway for a couple of years already – things don’t move very fast in the country!

1910 Regal Roadster at Gunnedah Rural Museum

Crossing the Mitchell Hwy at Nevertire we turned east through Warren where we could hear the cotton gins running all night as we camped by the river, then through Gilandra, Coonabarabran and Gunnedah were we looked through the big rural museum which had a wide range of displays and is well worth a stop if you’re travelling in the area.

 We turned north again on back roads through to Manilla and joined Fossickers Way north to Inverell, Glen Innes and Tenterfield. As well as Manilla, we saw roads to Wyoming and Bolivia, and Texas is not far up the road – you can see the world without leaving Australia! By now we were into much greener country, driving gently winding roads through green valleys and well wooded hills –quite a contrast to the flat plains not far behind us.

Ready for the parade - they wanted everyone
 in our group dressed as hippies!

After Tenterfield it was up over the Great Dividing Range to Casino where we met up with old friends and drove our Mokes in the Beef Week parade. The theme was Aussie icons so there were quite a few Edna Everidges, jars of vegemite, and large native animals. 

Over the hills towards Casino