GO WEST

By Duncan Bennett, Member #4171

Borders closed but not locked down and free to travel within your state? You own an adventure motorcycle? You live in San Marino or Monaco? Sorry about that. Fortunately, we live in Queensland which is about the size of 4.2 million Vatican Cities, and has a few more dirt roads even including Pope Francis’ private dirt track raceway, and August is a damn fine month to head north in Australia. So off we went. The B2B16 and the CTR in Toobeah were perfect bookends for the trip, which started from Dalby after breakfast in The Coffee Club Cafe with some other B2B participants, almost within sight of the Russell Tavern where BMWMCQ guests had crowded the bistro and TAB the previous evening.

A toast to honour Cactoblastis

First break was at the Boonarga Cactoblastis memorial hall. Prickly Pear cactus had been introduced in Australia from South America right from the 1780’s go, apparently to provide dye for the soldier’s red coats. But for some reason people decided to keep spreading it about, and by the late 1800’s it was a declared pest. It thrived on the Darling Downs in southern Queensland, and by the 1920’s an area the size of England was overrun. In probably one of the only really successful biological control efforts in history, Cactoblastis Cactorum moth eggs from Argentina were introduced in 1925 and in a scientific manner the moths and larvae were released in 1926. By 1933 the moth larvae had nearly wiped the Prickly Pear out, opening up a huge area of Australia for agriculture. Prickly Pear still loiters about the roads in places but was basically destroyed. Bad luck about rabbits, foxes,

cats, goats, donkeys, cane toads….

Roma tree and Duncan, after their big lunch

The afternoon was a bit of a slog but at least the average speed is whatever the cruise control is set on. Some discussion at Morven – keep going west on “row 2” road to Charleville or start the transition up to the “row 3” road and stop at Augathella? Never been to Charleville, so Charleville. Straight into the servo, then across the road to the Rocks Motel. Any chance of a room? No. Hang on, yes we have one left. Done. A pleasant stroll into the deserted town included unexpected interaction with a roaming pack of wild West Highland White Terriers – only Cindy’s skills in neutralising small dogs with “over the top” patting and cooing saved us. Thanking our lucky stars that we escaped with only minor dirt stains on our lower pant legs from the relentlessly jumping up moppets, we entered the magnificent Carones Hotel which covers nearly an entire

block, and after the complex sign-in process was complete, beers were consumed.

Carones Hotel Charleville

The Charleville RSL beckoned for the mandatory third meal of the day, before finding our way under Warrego River flood channel bridges and back to crash on The Rocks.

Victory over Japan 1945 graffiti tolerated in Charleville

We had a collective perception of a quick day to Longreach heading north up the “third column” road from the left. Up at the normal time of 6-ish, the usual mucking about for two hours to ensure the night shift marsupials were home in bed, and away to Augathella. About then we realised we had a day of 515km, basically the same as the previous day so hitting Longreach museums in the afternoon was but an illusion. Augathella was a pleasant stop, filling with Gomads and even Sunshine and Gold Coasters heading to the bush in tiny little cars because they couldn’t go on their Princess Cruise.

Augathella Water Tower mural luckily sporting the only emu we saw that day

A push on to Tambo for the morning tea and re-fuel, where we saw that history does indeed repeat itself. A significant memorial sits right out the front of the service station describing the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 and 1919, and the death of the Tambo Station manager Reginald Barry who had worked tirelessly to help the sick of Tambo before catching the pneumonic form himself which was usually fatal.

OCTOBER 2020 Blackall was the lunch plan, and we achieved the plan for once. The warmth was creeping up as we headed north, with some zips actually opened for the first time in the new Klim suits. Having gotten across the details of when we could drop off our stock of Dingo scalps into the Blackall council office and collect the bounty, it was another 100km scoop out of the day up to Barcaldine. The town is famous for the Tree of Knowledge, birthplace of the Australian Labor Movement during the shearer’s strike of 1891-92.

Tree of Knowledge unable to compete with our Sea of Ignorance

The final stretch was the 100km to Longreach, but we just had to make a brief stop in Ilfracombe to get some photos of the mile of tractors, bulldozers, graders, and trucks. Arriving hot and sweaty into Longreach, first duty was to find accommodation and we were very lucky. The lack of travel options interstate and overseas had pushed a lot of Queenslanders around their own state, and until the previous week Longreach had been going off and getting a motel room was difficult. We found a good one right in the middle of town on the ground floor at the Longreach Motor

Ex-WW2 Stuart Tanks were bought for ₤5 and sold for ₤500 after installing a blade

Inn – always more pleasant for we poor motored cyclists than lugging awkward bags, helmets, gloves, and precariously balanced accoutrement such as the GPS and motel keys and the small complimentary container of milk up narrow stairs. We’d RSLed ourselves out in Charleville, so it had to be a pub this time, and the Birdcage Hotel satisfied our desire for some Contradiction to accompany the food and drinks, with social distancing signs up

everywhere in the totally packed bistro.

Cindy moves seamlessly from the Temperate Zone into the Torrid Zone

Next day we hit the museums. Firstly the Qantas museum which is extremely well done, I had seen it the previous May but was keen to go back again as I’d missed some of it. A notable addition was the roof over the 747 and 707 and the DC3, the sun is brutal in Longreach and the damage to the paint was going to make them all look very average in a few years. We were second in the queue at the opening at 9am, and straight into the WW1 flight simulator where the target wasn’t so much the Red Baron because that’s too

hard, but happily there were plenty of orphanages and baby animal petting zoos behind the lines to shoot up. Museum number 2 for the day was the Australian Age of Dinosaurs. The only problem was that it is in Winton, into a screaming head wind, and 179km away. Fueled up before leaving Longreach, we slogged north-west into the gale while watching the fuel gauge dropping like a lead whatever. Pulling onto the Jump-Up plateau perched over the endless black soil plains, luck was indeed on our side with a tour just about to start after a scoffed lunch.

Stopped whining about the wind when we saw this

The tour was quite good, it started with what the land looked like 95 million years back; a network of floodplains surrounding rivers that drained northward into an inland sea. The floodplains are the source of the black soil and it is not hard to understand how large dinosaurs became stuck, and why the most common parts found are the legs and feet because the scavengers couldn’t get at them in the mud. The black soil throws up bones on a regular basis, with most belonging to some very big sauropods, and a small meat eating dinosaur that looks very like those velociraptors from Jurassic Park. Some discussion after the tour on the way back to the bikes; with the following wind we should make it back without re-fueling in Winton, but when nearly in Winton one should at least see it. So we saw Winton, or at least saw the Winton servo. May have been a servo dimmie in the equation – I don’t remember. The trip back used only a sniff of petrol – travelling with the wind

Seriously bored looking dude in the background not helping drive up interest in Paleontology

turned out to be the start of a wind direction trend from Winton all the way home. A spanking dinner in the Longreach Motor Inn which turned out to be the best restaurant in town according to a potentially conflicted Longreach Motor Inn staff member, and we ticked off the heading of north west and prepared for the heading of south

and east.

Water tower sunset in the ‘Reach

Up the next day and heading south, we’d forgotten about the potential for more west so hit the Henge. Stonehenge that is. The plains leading up to it are impressive and while not as green as last year in May they still bring a Serengeti to mind without risk of being eaten by something. While doing a brew-up cup of tea in the relentless wind under the Stonehenge sports oval shelter, we struck a conversation with the local shire council gardener who was topping up his agent orange/ DDT spray pack from a tap nearby. He showed us his citrus garden bordering the sports ground and invited us to take a pink grapefruit from a tree if we could find one amongst the thick leafy growth.

OCTOBER 2020 Find one we did, and it was bedded down into the pannier before any hungry Gomads nearby could get wind of what was going on.

Loam, loam on the range

Into Jundah for a re-fuel, then onto Windorah where the green green grass tried to continue but was defeated by the over-supply of sand and lack of loam. Lunch at the Windorah servo in lieu of a celebration for reaching our most westerly point, and we continued on south toward row 2 again but with a new sub-direction – east.

Would like to, but no time

Eromanga had been a hopeful next stop but we’d had no response from phone calls or emails to the Cooper’s Country Lodge at the dinosaur museum. Risk being way out west in the late afternoon without certainty of accommodation? Not bloody likely, so we kept on east to Quilpie where some certainty existed – the Quilpie Motor Inn. While I was massively distracted for a while by a couple of blokes on an Africa Twin and a Honda CFR250L all kitted for adventure, Cindy managed to book two of the remaining spots at the Quilpie Club on the night of nights – schnitzel Wednesday. The range and depth of schnitzels was considerable, and the finally chosen schnitzel fungi (i.e. mushroom) was everything we’d come to expect from when we first learned there was a Quilpie Club and it was schnitzel night 10 minutes

earlier.

Do they really?

So back west into the wind to Eromanga, for the first time of the trip arriving at precisely coffee o’clock into the only place in Eromanga that sold coffee. Long discussion was held with the owner, until we inevitably addressed the elephant in the room – Eromanga claims to be the furthest town from the sea in Australia, so where is the closest sea? Turns out it is probably not the furthest from the sea, and so the claim tends to be moderated to the furthest service station from the sea. Kintore in the Northern Territory near the WA border is about 75 km further from the sea than Eromanga, but probably doesn’t have a service station. The closest sea to Eromanga at a tough 815km according to Google Earth is the Styx River delta north of Rockhampton – marginally closer than Port Augusta, South Australia. Around the western – southern – eastern loop which still had some dampness from the recent rains, we lobbed into Thargomindah on the bottom row at about late lunch. Ham and cheese and 91 re-stocked, it was back on for the easterly push, finally with the relentless wind at our backs which has a huge effect on fuel consumption. A side trip down to Hungerford to the south has always been a dream, but lack of time and staying

GO WEST the hell away from the border sort of ruined any hope.

Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads!

With only 200km to get to the overnighter at Cunnamulla, no matter how casually we rode we still trundled over the Warrego River with hours of daylight left. Plenty of time to allow a peculiarly dressed old bloke to inspect the bikes in the main street, find accommodation in an upmarket cabin out the back of the Warrego Hotel within 10m of the hotel bottleshop, and walk to the supermarket which is in a dodgy area nowhere near the CBD for some reason. A great dinner in the Hotel Cunnamulla, and the pre-penultimate day was done.

Land bridge much safer than a land-air or landwater bridge

The planned temporary end to our trip was Toobeah (just west of Goondiwindi) for the Cane Toad Rally on Saturday, and as it was only 450km to get there and only Friday we decided a leisurely breakfast and a short day was in order for once. Leisurely breakfasted, we poked along to Bollon where a great coffee venue was reached close enough to lunch to tick all the boxes. Getting into

37 St George before the normal motel check-in hour of 2pm encouraged one of us to decide on a road less travelled down toward Dirranbandi and the famous cotton growing Cubbie Station. Some high-quality dirt may be involved according to

Cindy’s service station map.

The service station map says these roads are all the same

The first “dirt” bit had a similar texture to Conrod Straight on Mt Panorama with some of the smoothest new bitumen imaginable. The next dirt bit was highly variable – tessellated clay pavers, smooth gravel, sketchy rutted two wheeled track, and sand. All precisely the same according to the servo map, once again proving adventure riding is always an adventure. Into St George and a call to Cindy helped locate the final prerally accommodation. I decided that we should be ready to leave early the next day, so took the bikes on a tour of St George service stations to check tyres and fuel up. Cindy’s bike had a small lie-down at the Caltex, luckily the attendant was a burly motorcyclist and was rewarded for doing the lion’s share of the lifting with a detailed lecture

from me on all things motorcycling.

OCTOBER 2020 The short trip to Toobeah was lengthened with random meanderings down south to see the Nindigully pub – too early for coffee unfortunately - and the magnificent Thallon painted silos – common in other states but quite rare in Queensland.

Thallon hardware nil stock on purple paint for some reason

GO WEST By now the howling tail wind was almost providing a carbon neutral ride, and with one more push we swung into the Cane Toad Rally with a win for Cindy in the longest distance award. A great weekend of reunions with friends from the BMWMCQ and even a 2019 Alaska ride mate from Roma and then back to Brisbane with over 4,000km of riding fun completed, all

The sweetest victory of all – a bottleshop voucher worth 1/10th the cost of the fuel used!

without getting anywhere near a border.