Moura to Cania Gorge

Today, Tuesday, I headed off to Moura and Biloela, the most north that I will travel, and then onto Cania Gorge.  I will stay at Cania Gorge for 4 days and it will be good to have a break from packing up and driving most days.  I have to say most of the roads in Queensland have been crap, I thought Victoria’s rural roads were bad but Queensland’s are worse.  They have the same system of putting up signs “rough road” rather than fixing them, as is done in Victoria, but the roughness is worse and there are massive undulations that have the car and the caravan bucking wildly.  Hopefully the journey back down the coast will be better.

On the positive side I bought a punnet of Queensland strawberries today and they were great, red right through, the first time in years that I have eaten strawberries that are not white in the centre, delicious.

I woke up about six after going to bed early and I was on the road by 7.15, my fingers got a bit cold packing up in 3 °C, but the day has been perfect, clear skies and sunny at 19 °C.

The water tower at Moura was very well done, but the main feature was facing a green shed, not sure why they did that.  You can just see the corner of the shed roof on the left in this photo which is why the tower is off centre.

The detail on this tower is excellent and the colours are vibrant.

The back of the tower is just as vibrant but with less detail.

On the journey to Moura I passed several massive coal mines and a train of coal wagons about one Km long.  The country was very dry with little grass and the dams were mostly dry.  The next town was Biloela where the town has created artwork on a water tank.  The painting is very colourful with lots of detail and is very well executed.  It shows the development of the area on three panels of the water tank.  The first panel is of the Jurassic period.

The next panel is of the period that aborigines dominated the area, the Jurassic period panel is on the left.

The last panel detailed the European settlement of the area which faces the road.

This photo shows the whole tank with the aboriginal panel on the left and the last part of the European settlement illustration on the right.  The only way I could get it in one photo was to do a panorama on the camera.

So on to Cania Gorge which looks just the same as when Marg and I were here, I have good memories of our stay here.  Given that I have been following a public art trail it was a surprise to see lots of art on the cabins and toilets in the caravan park.  The toilet mens and ladies signs were good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cabins in the park are all named after Australian birds or animals and are painted with artwork that matches the name.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Wednesday I had a bit of a lazy day, spent a couple of hours talking with my neighbours and then went on a walk to Giants Chair Lookout.  It was a steep 900 metre climb with about 400 steps the forest I walked through was delightful with hundreds of grass trees dotting the landscape.

The gorge is about 100 metres deep and runs for about 10 km.  The view from the top is good but not spectacular.

 

Another view of the gorge.

On one of the rock faces there was a staghorn fern growing that looked to me to be 30-40 years old.

Tomorrow I will drive into Monto, the nearest town and have lunch at a cafe, Marg and I did that on our last visit here and maybe another walk in the afternoon.  It may be a few days until I have enough material for the next blog.