Day Two: Eidsvold to Duaringa
One step outside and the toes curled up instantly. It was cold this morning. Not sunshine coast cold, genuinely cold. Thongs were definitely not going to be the chosen footwear today.
The morning was otherwise quite the cracker. Once the sun warmed the air it was decidedly cosy sitting and chatting about nothing in particular. Richard demonstrated his newly acquired drone skills zipping about the camp site with some degree of aplomb.
We scoffed a breakfast of bacon and eggs, followed by a tour of the RM Williams centre then felt the need for a coffee at the corner café before heading out. Well the coffee was OK; the pie was OK, and the tea wasn’t.
At about 10.30ish we motored sort of westish towards Cracow. The road was brilliant, winding its way through bushland, over rivers and creeks before popping out at the City limits. Cracow is indeed a fun place to be. It is old, quirky and quaint all at once. History tells us it was a gold mining centre of note with a modern version still in operation.
The pub, being the centre of town, but not open Mondays, sits proudly opposite the mower tree just beside the most interesting directional sign to be had anywhere. We stayed for the time it took to take a few photos and test out the not too shabby public toilets. We always like to support local communities so made sure we made a deposit before we left.
Not long afterwards we were bearing down upon Theodore where we fuelled and found a nice little park to have lunch. Peter went fishing, catching a big one, but chose to give it kiss and sent it back.
Now in the early afternoon we pedalled a bit harder toward Banana then Baralaba. Cotton is the order of the day out here. There are cotton plantations everywhere, fed by bore drains beside the road, with road trains and B-doubles hauling the produce in huge round bails to wherever the local cotton gin may be. It was hard not to try to calculate how many t-shirts each trailer load would make in your average Chinese sweat shop. Possibly a lot.
With cotton comes the need for water. Ship loads of it. We were reminded of this when we saw a freshly made (well it probably took at least 12 months to construct) turkey’s nest amid thousands of acres of ploughed cotton paddocks. This thing was at least a kilometre across one side and equally proportioned on the other two sides we could see. We imagined there was a fourth side for if there wasn’t all the millions of gallons of water stored within would soon be without. How these massive above ground dams are filled just by rainwater is amazing.
The road narrowed. The cattle came out to say hello a few times, yet we skipped along. Soon enough we turned left for the short run into Duaringa for the night. We parked up and met Julie and Ron who we would travel with for the rest of the trip, save a couple of excursions.
The afternoon included settling in, fixing the inevitable things that need fixing and chatting about all things important. Top of list included our travels over the years, crocodiles and why Mr Trump put his ear so close to a speeding bullet. Coupled with new collective knowledge wealth, we sat by the campfire and continued our pursuits.
Denise delivered a spectacular pasta dish with just enough zing to start a sweat with a taste that had the buds dancing a jig. With full bellies and the temperature dropping by the minute it was time to grab some sleep.
