Pub Crawl thru Queensland Begins

Regular readers will already know that last year, part-way through our travels, WTF? - Where are The Farrows? stopped at The Prairie Hotel in outback Queensland.  While staying behind the Prairie Hotel we met their resident pet water buffalo ‘Buffy'.

'Buffy' taking a piece of bread from my hand (21 June 2018)

The pub has plenty of Bush Pub character and is one of the 51 hotels featured in a book they had on the bar that was titled 'Australian Bush Pubs'.  We decided to buy a copy and have the publican sign their page and date it with the day we called in.  Right there and then we resolved to visit all of the bush pubs in the book and get each publican to sign and date their respective pages so you can expect to read about our progress so far as knocking each one off of the list during our travels!

To visit all 51 pubs in this book has become our Quest!

From the time we purchased the book on 21st June 2018 (and ‘gave meaning to our lives’), up to this point in time, we have obtained 10 signatures.  A key phrase in the opening paragraph of this blog is ‘… part-way through our travels…’.  It turned out that we had actually visited 6 of the featured hotels during previous road trips.  The 6 pubs in question are:

The Imperial Hotel (QLD), some 10 - 14 years ago, while we were living in Townsville between 2004 and 2008, and the other 5 (listed below) during our ‘Darling River Run’ adventure in 2017:

• Tilpa Hotel (NSW);
• Glengarry Hilton (NSW);
• Hebel Hotel (QLD);
• Nindigully Pub (QLD), and;
• Silverton Hotel (NSW)

As these visits were prior to us having decided to embark upon our quest we would simply have to return to each of those pubs!  I never said our mission would be completed without having to make some tough sacrifices!

With the pre-amble now out of the way, I come back to the here-and-now…

Of the 51 bush pubs featured in our book, 22 are to be found in Queensland.  Our 2019 Pub Crawl  route through western Queensland is intended to enable us to gather signatures for 11 more of these along with 2 others actually located actually in northern NSW but relatively close to the Queensland border - we thought to ourselves, ‘Why not?, while we are ‘in the neighbourhood’’.  A brief review of our route indicated that by the time we departed Queensland and entered the Northern Territory our ‘Pub Crawl’ would have covered more than 4,500km!

The first three that we came across were all ‘repeat visits’, namely (and in order);

1. The Nindigully Pub (QLD);
2. The Hebel Hotel (QLD), and;
3. The Glengarry Hilton (NSW).

Back at the Nindigully Pub
Home of the 25kg / 50lb burger (we did not order one)

I got a lick in the ear from the Hebel Hotel's dog (top right & above)
A very friendly but deaf Blue Heeler pup!

Always fun at the Glengarry Hilton in the Lightning Ridge Opal Fields!

With signatures from the 3 repeat visits now literally ‘in the book’, WTF? - Where are The Farrows? turned westward to visit the Warrego Hotel, located on the bank of the Warrego River in Fords Bridge (population: 3).  The ‘River’ was a river in name only due to prolonged drought in the region - there has been no flow in the channel (river bed) for a couple of years and only dirt and dust to be seen in it while we were there.  The publican, Peter, was, as is the case for many of them living out in the bush, an interesting old bloke.  He had plenty of stories to tell about droughts and floods and fires and the neighbours - all told with the same smile on his face, so you never knew which were true, false, exaggerations or otherwise.

Enjoying a yarn with Peter (the Publican) at the Warrego Hotel

Just as we were leaving the Warrego Hotel a work crew stopped in to grab something to eat.  They had been further ‘up the road’ and said that recent heavy rains (2 or 3 weeks previous) up in  Queensland were just making their way across the border (about 120 km up the road).  We were advised that the road we had intended to use to get to our next pub had, “just gone under” at Cuttaburra Creek - they then proceeded to show us pictures they had taken a couple of hours ago.  A detour route was available but it was far longer and was, in their words, “the road of last resort” and was “as rough as guts!”.  “You would be better to wait a couple of days for it to pass through”.

With that information and advice WTF? - Where are The Farrows? decided to continue towards the water but rather than attempt to push through the flooded crossing we would take their advice and sit it out near by.  There just happened to be a Camel Station 20 km from the crossing that allowed camping on their property!  We thought, "Why not?"...