The Wild West

Well, I've been far too busy gallivanting around southwest Qld to attend to mundane matters like writing blogs.  It's been quite the trip down memory lane, visiting the tiny towns, walking the little river walks, and remembering what it's like to work in an office with hordes of noisy people having conversations and making phone calls. I got out of the office as quick as I could and off we went, my colleague and I, to the wild west.

There were lots of pubs in the wild west.  Although this one was a once-was pub.  There were plenty of right-now pubs, but they weren't as nice to look at.

That was in Roma.  There was another pub (or two) in Charleville.

This one wasn't as pretty, but it was a right-now pub.  Which is a good thing if you're a pub person.

Of course we had to work, but we squeezed in a few things around the edges of the days, like going for a walk along the river where a man sat fishing on a log while smoke curled lazily from a fire lit to keep him warm.

The weather in Charleville was decidedly South Australian, all grey and gloomy and spitting rain, but at the edges of the day the sun showed up and delivered a short but adequate sunset.

That'll do.

West of Charleville we took a quick break at the Fox Trap Roadhouse at Cooladdie where, for the sake of wanting a sticky beak around the premises, I bought a breathlessly expensive snack and Colleague splurged on a fridge magnet for purposes of memorialisation (which may not be a word, but anyways...)

The Fox Trap and Cooladdie are one and the same thing, try as they might to be separate.  There was camping behind the Fox Trap, which would be perfect for persons riding bicycles west of Charleville.  Not that I know anyone who would want to do that, of course.

And then we were in Quilpie.

There was a pub (or three).  Of course there was.

We went to the pub for dinner.  "We've only got footy food!" declared the proprietor enthusiastically.

"Oh?" said I.  "Is there a football match on?"

He was horrified and appalled to the point of speechlessness.  "It's the first State of Origin match!" he managed to splutter when he had found his tongue.  I quickly abandoned my Queensland roots and claimed South Australian citizen-ship in order to claim plausible ignorance.  Pub patrons chimed in and educated Colleague and I on the finer nuances of Qld/NSW football rivalry.  We pretended to be interested.  At least she had the excuse of having been born overseas.

In the morning I went walking out along the railway line which in places resembled a suspension bridge without the certainty of supporting anyone who walked on it.

Quilpie had not seen a train for quite some time.

Careful for the spaces.

West of Quilpie we were truly in the wild west.  Teenage emus clustered under a tree, pretending to be bored as all teenagers do.  We stopped to take photos and they ran away, all but one who stalked toward us until he had sufficiently proved his bravado and then he ran away too.

Toompine lay on the road south-west of Quilpie.  It was a little bit like the Fox Trap except newer, because the old Toompine pub got all gobbled up by white ants.  The new Toompine pub did a good job of blending the old and the new, and we were served by an Irish lass who had arrived exactly 24 hours prior and who could blame her if she looked a little shell-shocked by the experience so far?

In Thargomindah we reached our furthest point, the wildest west we could get, the edge of the electricity grid if that's your measure of civilisation.  We had come so far, in fact, that I was half-way back to Adelaide. Not that I was going to drive back to Adelaide when there were perfectly good aeroplanes in the world even if I had to back track all the way to Brisbane to get on them. 

Half way home and time to turn around.

We turned our backs on the wild west and went east.  We stretched our legs in Bollon and said hello to a Diprotodon in Eulo.

 

A happy little medium-sized Diprotodon, with a cheeky smile.

 

Then we drove as fast as we could (deferring at all times to the speed limit, of course) to Cunnamulla, because we had heard that one could bathe in the warm waters of the artesian basin at the new spa in Cunnamulla and there might be just be enough time at the edges of the day for us to soak.  Alas, the lights were off at the spa when we arrived, and a single cleaner swirled a mop in lackadaisical circles on the other side of the fence.  My colleague, determined to partake of the waters, hailed her.  "When does the spa open?"

The cleaner screwed up her face and leaned on her mop.  "It opens at 9 tomorrow morning."

That was no good to us.  The starting edges of our day would be all used up by then.  The cleaner hadn't finished though.  "It shuts at 6 tomorrow.  Then on Saturday it opens at 7 and shuts at 7.  Same on Sunday except it shuts at 6.  And on Monday it's 10 til 4, and on Tuesday...." And on she went.  I don't think anyone in Cunnamulla knew when the spa was open for sure.  I certainly didn't, and I was standing right in front of it. Dejected and unsoaked,  colleague and I went off to the pub for dinner.

On the last day we drove home, which was the sensible thing to do, back to the not-so-wild not-quite-west. Not home to Adelaide, you understand, just home to work base: I had another week of pretending to be a proper office worker wearing proper office attire and feigning interest in office politics before I hopped on a plane to take the long way home.

And before that I had a weekend in Roma to busy myself doing Roma things, which is a story for another day.