We actually left a place reasonably early, 9:30am. That was a surprise to both of us let me give you the tip…
Whilst I was riding along minding my own business listening to my iPod, seeing the sights and enjoying the various country perfumes I was rudely snapped back to reality as we passed through Kilroy. It appears that there is a meat works there, and let me suggest that it really does smell. Now because I may have been in my own little world at the time it is possible that a cattle truck went passed and I didn’t notice it, either way it was a bad start to my day. At that point I wondered about the ways to combat the smell of cattle or sheep urine from passing trucks, my thoughts so far included. Stuffing cotton wool up my nose, I dismissed this option after I realised that would force me to breathe through my mouth. Now the thought of tasting the offending cattle/ sheep trucks nearly made me vomit inside my own Buff. So the only other option I came up with was the old school world war one gas masks that pretty much cover your entire face and have a hose coming down that has a massive filter on it. Now you know what I’m going to be looking for in my next shopping expedition!!!
We headed inland for some more Mountain riding, where two things happened that displeased me, the first was the road narrows to a single lane with gravel on the edges. Which in all honesty is fine so long as the car going in the opposite direction uses the shoulder, lets suggest the 4-wheeldrive didn’t… it’s an interesting experience to say the least.
The next annoyance was the gravel roads, for whatever reason here in Queensland they do half the road work and then leave it as a gravel road for awhile. Now firstly let me suggest that I bought a Harley for a reason, I wanted to ride on great country roads that also happen to be bitumen. If I wanted to ride on gravel I would have bought a chook chaser or a road trail. To say that my dumby was well and truly out would be an understatement.
On a lighter note I hit shall we say a rather large bump in the road which caused my helmet camera to fall off, luckily I have it strapped to my helmet as well so all did was dangle around my shoulder until I realized what had happened. But it’s okay we have the technology we can fix it…
The Bunya Mountains are also worth a look so long as you don’t have to go via the dirt roads. Don’t trust your map book, check with the local information centre as to the conditions of the road. The next stop was the Burton campsite, which is a pretty good place to camp if that’s your cup of tea, it also happens to have some of the weirdest looking Blackboy trees I have ever seen.
Kingaroy is a large country town which has a Harley Davidson dealer and MacDonald’s. Unfortunately their Wi-Fi was a tad slow, but what the hell it was free. (Hence I only got to update a bit of the blog)
My navigator then took me to a place called Ban Ban Springs, which is a natural spring that the local Aboriginals once used. For those of you who don’t know, Alan hates the heat and decided to go for a bit of a skinny dip in the springs (I could fore see a Wild Hogs moment coming up) but alas the world was saved by the young country family with several kids arriving before he got in, thankfully Alan chose to wear his boardies instead. After Alan’s dip he informed me that today was the first time he had a sore arse and then enquired if I was in anyway responsible. In case you’re wondering the answer was absolutely NOT!!! (It was probably all the gravel roads we were riding on)
The stop for the night was to be a nice easy hours ride into Childers, but alas it turned out that was not going to happen before we got to ride on some more gravel. I’m not sure what’s going on with this side of the country but road works seem to be the order of the day.
The scenery seems to be ever changing here as well, one minute you’re in a lush forest in the mountains that is so dense and green that you can’t see past the first row of trees. Then you’re in open farmland with lots of red dirt being ploughed ready for planting to long grass with an assortment of wild flowers, the colours are astonishing they go from purple to yellow and pink.
We got to Childers and found some accommodation, let’s suggest it was not the best choice we have made. Put yourself in my place for one moment and you will see why. The room is on the second floor so we have to cart our gear upstairs, the room is so small I can touch all four walls at the same time and yes there are two single beds in there. As for the locals one said “if we here our bikes starting in the middle of the night, don’t worry I’ll just be taking them for a spin”.
Question: how do you know it’s bad…?
You know it’s bad when the local mum says to her very young children, “she can dip her fish into $h!t and eat it if she wants’ too, it’s her fish”. Or you can hear some dude in the toilet next to your room.
In terms of a place to sleep we chose poorly on this occasion, but the food was good and it also has some really great old photo’s hanging on the wall.
My tip is stay at the Palace Motel (it’s just down the road) if you’re in Childers.
Cheers
a
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