After a three day pause to allow water flowing over a road crossing to subside we resumed our journey only to arrive at the border between NSW and QLD to find a fence and a closed 6ft high gate separating the two states. I thought walls and fences between jurisdictions were an Iron Curtain era or Donald Trump kind of thing!
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| Welcome to Queensland (and don't forget to close the gate behind you!) |
As it happens, this fence and gate was in place well before the Berlin Wall was erected. In fact, it was installed in the 1880’s as a ‘Pest Exclusion Fence’. The pests to be excluded being dingos, dogs and rabbits, which posed a threat to flocks of sheep found in the relatively fertile south-east of the continent. It is one of the longest structures in the world stretching 5,164 km from the Darling Downs in Queensland to the coastal cliffs of the Nullarbor Plain west of South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula.
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| The fence stretches over 5,100km |
Today, the gate still needs to be opened and closed by everyone passing through it. Apparently there is a penalty of $1,000 for failing to close the gate, though I don’t know who would police it as the publican at the Hungerford Hotel, located about 100 m ‘inside the gate’, was the only living soul we saw while we were in town!
The Hungerford Hotel (established 1874), is officially licensed as The Royal Mail Hotel, and was once patronised by famous Australian Bush Poet, Henry Lawson, in the summer of 1892/93 during his trek (on-foot) between Bourke in NSW and Thargominda in QLD along the Dowling Track.
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| Royal Mail Hotel, Hungerford (est 1874) |
When we dropped in we had a beer and a chat with the publican and made a donation to the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS). The process is unique to bush pubs...
The donation is made by pushing a drawing pin or thumb tack through the centre of a bank note, folding the rest of the note back on itself and around a couple of heavier coins to give the assembly some weight, then throwing the projectile upwards towards the ceiling of the bar. If the pin sticks the note to the ceiling, your donation has successfully been made! If the note does not get pinned to the ceiling and floats back to the floor, it is forfeited and can be considered to be 'the price of failure' and deposited into an RFDS donation can placed on the bar. I am quite proud to let you all know that I managed to get the note to stick on my first attempt!
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| I managed to make my donation to the RFDS 'stick' |
After making our donation, the publican, Graham, duly autographed his page making it the 15th of 51 Bush Pubs in our book to be signed.
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| 15 down, 36 to go! |
Apparently Henry Lawson was not impressed by his visit to Hungerford (not necessarily the pub but the town) and later wrote:
‘Next morning we rolled up our swags and left Hungerford to the North-West’.
Although we had more fun than Henry during our visit, we too left Hungerford to the North-West shortly after completing our mission.
After overnighting at a bush camp at 10 Mile Bore, located (unsuprisingly), a distance of 10 miles NW of Hungerford, we got back on the road, now heading north east, and made a quick pit-stop in the town of Eulo. Eulo’s claims to fame include: Artesian Mud-Baths (we did not partake) and, having been home to the ‘largest known marsupial to have ever lived’. The beast in question was a Diprotodon (meaning “two forward teeth”), and was a member of a group of species collectively known as 'Australian Megafauna'. They were the size of a hippopotamus. The closest surviving relative is the wombat.
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| 'Diprotodon' is a distant (in time) relative of the Wombat |
The next town we rolled into 70 km to the east was Cunnamulla.
In Cunnamulla there is a twice life-size bronze statue of a stockman squatting on his bed-roll (swag) known as the 'Cunnamulla Fella'. It stands as a tribute to the young sheep and cattle station hands (and all hardworking stockmen), that have worked in the district since the 1860’s. These young fellows, many only 15 or 16 years old, worked long hard hours from sun up to sun down often 7 days a week mustering sheep, chasing ‘scrubbers’ (a scrub bull that had escaped castration early on in life that then grows up to be mean and rebellious), and breaking-in horses. In the boom days of the 1950’s and 60’s, large properties (hundreds of thousands of acres) employed many men. When they came to town the pubs would overflow and groups of these young 'fellas' could be seen squatting around the streets in the classical pose.
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| The 'Cunnamulla Fella' in typical squatting pose |
I was surprised by how large 'twice life-size' is. To provide a sense of scale for you, please see the photograph of me and 'my big mate' below.
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| This fella is a big unit! |
Saying goodbye to the Cunnamulla Fella we headed north out of Cunnamulla towards the next pub along our route - The Gladstone Hotel in the sleepy town of Wyandra. I think you know the drill by now: Introductions, have a chat, have a beer, take some photos of the pub, obtain publican’s signature (#16 in this case), move on to next camp site.
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| All smiles at the Gladstone Hotel in Wyandra, QLD. |
Now well and truly into our pub crawl route, the next few pubs would take us a couple of hundred km out west, then a couple of hundred south, then a couple of hundred west again, then north a bit, then east, then… WTF? - Where are The Farrows? are getting dizzy just thinking about it!
It was time to take a break for Easter. We were thinking 4 days off of the road relaxing by The Lake, but the usual clear blue skies began to cloud over on day 3…
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