Saturday 26th July 2014 – Moree to Thrushton NP – Cloudy some rain drops, then clear skies

  We left Moree at 7am for St George arriving at 10.30am to refuel and buy bread.

This is our Ipad set up using Bad Elf GPS attachment for live map tracking.

We passed through Garah which looked very old and neglected.  We were amused by the sign out of town which pointed to “old Garah”.  Obviously they moved the town to be near the railway but “new” Garah would be best described “old Garah”.  We crossed the border at Mungindi, there wasn’t a marker for the border which is obviously the river, but it would have been nice.  The Balonne Shire has done a lot of road works and we had nice new road all the way to St George.

On the way to St George

Thallon was the tidiest of the towns.  Nindigully is off the highway and boasts the oldest hotel in Queensland.  We arrived at St George, this isn’t our first visit and it was good to see the town recovering from the floods.  The river is full and it is the first time we have seen water down stream of the weir.  The drive from St George to Thrushton National Park is 101 klms.  It is listed as a remote park.

 

    The first gate of the trip.     Nearly missed the sign  

 

 

 

 

 

It’s risky being a Dingo

From St George we headed west for 51klms to an ‘un-named road” according to the national parks website-which is inaccurate.  The turn off at 51klms is Cynthia Plains Station, we got to meet the owner, who was very pleasant, and go back (4klms) to the turn off some 47 klms from St George which is named “Middle Road” and also points to Mitchell. We almost missed the very small sign to the park entry.   I would describe this park as well hidden -  They do say it is easier to approach from Bollon, but that entailed a lot more driving and doubling back for us.

 

 

 

 

 

This is our fine weather camp set up no annex, not needed. Quick to set up and pack up.

 We are spending three nights at Thrushton.  We hope to see a few birds that we haven’t seen before. 

We have camped at the Wool Shed.  There are two locations, the old homestead and the Wool Shed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thrushton has been a park since 1990.  So it has 24 years of regrowth.  It is hard to imagine what it was like as a sheep station.  The advantage of the extra foliage is the birds, but then you can’t see anything as the country is really flat.  Your view is the 20 to 40 feet in front of you.

 The Wool Press