The first leg took us up the Warrego Highway [54] through range to Toowoomba, Oakey and Dalby then Chinchilla, Miles and then to the Channel Country and the town of Roma, known for agriculture and gas fields.
Then we took a right turn onto the Gregory Highway [55] and travelled through Injune (lots of kangaroos here, you have to be very watchful on the road at night) up to the Carnarvon National Park and visited beautiful Carnarvon Gorge where you can see beautiful cycads that have been round as long as dinosaurs, palms and ferns and in the sandstone overhangs, Aboriginal paintings. Deep erosion made the canyon which is in part of the Great Dividing Range.
Quite amusing was seeing our local mate Graeme of Watugo Tours at the National Park. He runs outback mini bus trips out of Samford and just happened to be there when we were. Small world!
Native flowers
After that we headed back to [55] and on through Central Queensland to Rolleston then to [60] the Dawson Highway to Moura, the coal, cattle and grain centre of the shire with the saleyards moving thousands of cattle each year. There are also 6 huge silos that can hold 192,000 tonnes of grain and you can see them 30km from town. The major industries in the Dawson and Callide valleys and its ranges is coalmining with open cut mines near Moura and Biloela. Banana was the next town, not named for bananas but after a trained bullock that could decoy wild cattle into pens whose name was Banana. Biloela the next town is a rural service town and was settled around 1850.
A slab hut at a museum along the way.Next, we started to chart back towards home and from Bioela took [17] the Burnett Highway, down to Thangool (small crops and lucerne) and further down through the Coominglah State Forest towards Monto (dairy cattle, pigs, grain lucerne and timber). In Monto you can still find gold flecks if you pan in the local streams.
Small towns along the way were Three Moon, Mulgildie, Cynthia, Ceratodus (named after an extraordinary species of lungfish that occurs naturally only in the Burnett and Mary Rivers of Central Queensland) and then Eidsvold and onto Mundubbera.
Travelling further down we crossed the Burnett River in Gayndah (orange crops) and then continued on to Ban Ban Springs, through Tansey, Boonara until we reached Goomeri. Goomeri has an annual pumpkin festival and is a very pretty place. Vineyards and olive groves and popular here as well as good home cooked tucker. After chowing down at Goomeri we continued on to Murgon (agricultural, beef, dairy, leather and wine) on [49] the Bunya Highway through Wondai, Tingoora, Wooroolin and Memerambi to Kingaroy, 'the peanut town' and home of one of the most memorable Queensland Premier, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
The 'home stretch' was next. On to the D'Aguilar Highway to Nanango (on the divide between the Brisbane and Burnett Rivers), and then the Burnett Highway through Yarraman, over Cooyar Creek, down through Blackbutt, Benarkin and its State Forest joining the Brisbane Valley Highway near Harlin where the Brisbane River comes down heading into Lake Wivenhoe.
Drove through Toogoolawah and stopped in at Esk where settlement began around the 1840s and there are some graceful old buildings showing Queensland style architecture. We had refreshment then off along the edge of Lake Wivenhoe through Rockville, a left turn up to Billies Crossing
and then a right turn along Northbrook Creek towards the Brisbane Forest Park and Maiala National Park at Mount Glorious and the D'aguilar National Park which sits atop the Samford Valley. Home.
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