Day 30 & 31
Crossing the Bulloo River heading
east along the Bulloo Development Road, we then branched north onto the Quilpie
Thargomindah Road. This was mostly
sealed, however, several kilometres of unsealed rocky road tested Colin’s
nerves. Crawling along these sections at
barely 60km/h be the time we got to Toompine, we stopped for a break and a nerve
calming bevvie.
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| Bulloo River |
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| Quilpie Thargomindah Road Turnoff |
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| Toompine Hotel |
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| Toompine Hotel Drinks |
The remaining leg along sealed
blacktop was fairly straight forward however the unfenced road saw its fair
share of curious animals.
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| Quilpie Thargomindah Road |
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| Road Side Cows |
Approaching Quilpie, Sal and Col
veered off the main road and headed into the Baldy Top lookout to take in the
vista.
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| Baldy Top Lookout |
View Towards Quilpie From Baldy Top Lookout
Into Quilpie, Col and Sal divert
yet again. This time to replace one of
his disintegrated tyres. Now he has
three different branded tyre on his van as well.
We setup camp at the Quilpie
Caravan Park and Spa…. Yep, they have
three spa baths here each filled every morning with fresh artesian water at
around 35 degree. Even with the -10
degree chill factor, Col couldn’t resisted jumping in to wash the dust off,
inside and out.
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| Quilpie Cavan and Spar Park |
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| Col’s Gets Freshened Up |
A quiet evening in with caravan
fare, the next day was dedicated to laundry and site seeing around Quilpie.
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| Laundry Day (we all have them) |
Col being a slack arse, left
Sally in the laundry and ran off to see the Amy Johnson Memorial and then to
the Quilpie Power House Museum. How Amy
Johnson wound up in Quilpie was and interesting story. Sighting the railway she proceeded to land
believing she had reach Charleville. Her
map was out dated and line now reached Quilpie.
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| Amy Johnson Memorial |
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| Powerhouse Museum |
Later, Sally and Colin went back
into town. We saw St. Finbarrs Church
Opal Altar.
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| Opal Altar |
Sally went shopping for supplies
while Col checked out the Quilpie Military Museum and then the Railway Heritage
Centre.
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| Military Museum |
The last cattle train left
Quilpie as recently as 2012 with the last passenger service running back in
1994.
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| Railway Museum |
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| Railway Yards |
That evening, we were entertained
around the park campfire before adjourning back to our camp for dinner and a
quick game of 500 to see out the day.
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| Park Camp Fire |
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Quilpie Sunset
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