Outback Queensland Trip 2024, Day 18: tour’s end

In Turrbal country.

This day – yesterday – may have been our last day of the tour but there was still more touring to pack in. First, we went to Toowoomba’s Picnic Point, with its view over Lockyer Valley. However, although our tour leaders thought it was a lovely clear day, it was too hazy for a decent pic. However, it was a lovely park.

Then, we were off to Laurel Bank Park which, each festival, does a themed floral display. A recent theme, apparently, was marine animals. This year, however, it was obvious if you knew your Carnival of Flowers history. The theme was 75th Anniversary. The design featured tools of the gardening trade in the centre, with party-time designs in the surrounding gardens. It was a gorgeous morning – and we were there before the crowds – so we enjoyed walking around pretty flower beds. (Personally, I love Australian natives, but I can’t deny that these cottage garden flowers are cheery.)

Then, it was back on the road. We drove from Toowoomba through Gatton to Marburg, and were in beautiful soil, agricultural country. We passed through fields of salads/lettuces, and veggies like onions, carrots, beetroot, potatoes, corn, and chick peas. Apparently, University of Queensland’s Gatton campus is ranked 3rd in the world for agricultural studies (which includes veterinary science).

We had our last coach morning tea under the trees in a little park by Black Snake Creek, at Marburg. It was a little bittersweet. Do you behave like it’s any other coach morning tea or do you imbue it with the weight-of-goodbye meaning? Mostly we did the former.

From here it was a drive of about an hour to the airport where 11 of our party were dropped off, and then to a hotel in town, for the remaining 9 of us. This was around midday. Our tour leaders then hopped back on the coach, and drove back to Toowoomba (in readiness for driving it over the next two days to Outback Spirit’s Albury headquarters for service).

And that was the end of our 2024 Outback Spirit Adventure – but there is still more holiday to go as we are staying in Meanjin/Brisbane for a few days.

Now though, I want to do a little wrap-up of the highlights of our Outback Spirit trip. We:

• saw some special sights – of which Cobbold Gorge, the Stockman’s Hall of Fame, and Carnarvon Gorge were just a few.
• met some friendly, entertaining, passionate and/or inspiring outback people, from the volunteers (like at the Underground Hospital, the Dinosaur Sights, and the LSODE) and paid guides (at places like Cobbold Gorge, the Undara Lava Tubes, the Barramundi Centre, the Qantas Founders Museum) to the business owners who met us with huge welcoming smiles on their faces (such as at the Sand Island Sunset Cruise owners in Karumba, the Mitchell Grass Retreat in Longreach, and Smithy’s on the Thomson River)
• had some wonderful meal experiences – regardless of the quality of the food itself. Our meals may not have been three-hat quality – far from it – but dining at sunset on Sand Island, having a bush breakfast at Undara, dining outside as the sun went down at Karumba, having BBQ food cooked by the proprietors at Mitchell Grass Retreat, and eating our picnic lunch at Moss Garden all offered something that just food can’t provide.
• visited tiny, remote off-beat places like the Quamby Pub, the Blue Heeler Pub, and Walkabout Creek Hotel (where scenes from Crocodile Dundee were filmed).
• saw wild creatures like crocodiles, brolgas, a goanna/monitor, black-necked storks (or jabirus), wallaroos, wallabies and kangaroos, emus, eagles and kites, darters and cormorants, turtles, and some micro bats.
• saw such diverse landscape from rainforest to dry plains, from channel country floodplains to hilly ranges, from the sea to rivers, both flowing and dry.
• saw vegetation change as the landscape changed, from iconic trees like the figs, the coolibah and Queensland bottle trees to interesting plants like the quinine bush and gidgee (or stinking wattle), and learnt about introduced species and their impact on the land.
• learnt about human activity from mining (for gold and other minerals) and drilling for oil and gas to pastoral and agricultural, from exploration (failed and successful) to people with big ideas like John Flynn (and his supporters) and Hudson Fysh (and his team), but not enough about our First Nations peoples and their stories.
• were so lucky with the weather – we escaped the heatwave that had featured heavily the week before our tour, had no rain and were never seriously cold, making our sightseeing and outdoor coach meals easy to manage and enjoy.
• learnt that many people in the outback appreciate tourists bringing money to their communities, and that many towns have fascinating points of interest that are worth seeing, but that not everything (including chemists) will be open at the times we are used to in the cities!
• enjoyed our co-travellers, most of whom were very kind and sympathetic to us in our predicament, and are only sorry we didn’t get an opportunity to know many of them more. We were a cooperative group in that we were all always on time for every bus call. How good is that? And everyone worked out the daily coach seat rotation plan and followed it. How good is that too! (Most of us were repeat passengers, I guess, and knew the system, but no-one complained when it was their turn at the back of this bus. This does happen!)

Outback Spirit trips are seen as expensive, that is, as costing a bit! I don’t know just how comparatively expensive they are because I haven’t done the comparisons. We like what this company does, where it goes, the experiences it offers, the way it uses and gives back to local services and communities. It doesn’t offer a 5-star accommodation and gourmet food experience. Be real! They go outback to small remote communities and small-town regional Australia where life is challenging, particularly in terms of access to staff and consumables. Most of us who choose these trips understand that what we have purchased is an experience. Yes, we are on tour, and to some degree the experience is packaged, but overall, the experience of meeting real people running their own businesses in small places is real – and it’s a truly precious thing. Flexibility and a willingness to go with the flow (anything can happen in these remote places) are the key to enjoying Outback Spirit trips. Most people we meet on these trips are repeat customers, which, I guess, says it all!

Afternoon in Meanjin/Brisbane

We arrived at lunchtime, and as we were too early to check into our accommodation, we found somewhere for a quiet lunch – sitting outside on a deck overlooking a peaceful city street! Did I say peaceful? Let me backtrack. It was noisy with building works going on across the road, in addition to normal city traffic. Oh well, the meal was fine.

Then we spent the afternoon washing, washing, washing as it had been some days between laundry facilities! For our evening meal we got takeaway from a nearby Asian place, and collapsed.

BTW if you are wondering about the difference between the day count on the maps we include in our daily images, and the day counts in our post titles, it’s because the maps relate to the coach tour while the post titles relate to our trip all up.

Today’s images