It was a bit of a slow news day today, so I’ll likely pad this post out with extra photos so that you think you are still getting value for money.
We had a nice, quiet day in St George today. One of my work colleagues – Jay – is from St George, so he was my go-to guy to get the low down on the things to do here … and we got some good tips!
We started the day in the usual way – coffee (duh!) – and headed out to see the sights. We started at the Balonne River and looking at the Jack Taylor Weir. There has been some good rain out this way, so it was quite full.
Like any body of water there is a risk of drowning, so the local council have nailed a CPR sign to a tree, but I imagine that the CPR rules have been updated since this one was installed 🙂
From there, we took a drive of about 24km back towards Surat to have a look at the Beardmore Dam. It is a beautiful picnic area which – today – was completely deserted.
The next thing on Jay’s list of things to see was the Cotton Gin. Now I confess to not knowing exactly what a cotton gin does, but given the amount of cotton that you see strewn along the side of the road from the harvesting and transportation processes, I guessed that it had more to do with cotton than it has to do with gin.
Now I’m not sure if we Googled the wrong thing, or went to the wrong place, but where we turned up was certainly not a tourist attraction, was not open to the public, and the gentleman who was at the site office regarded us with a certain amount of skepticism … but despite that he was pleasant enough, listened to our (albeit unusual) story, and welcomed us to take some photos of the cotton so long as we turned around and immediately left the property.
Oh, and then he told us that he hoped we enjoyed our stay in St George and our ongoing holiday 🙂
We were feeling a little decaffeinated after our somewhat unsuccessful trip to the cotton gin, so we headed back into town to look for a coffee shop.
We were also told that we should take a drive out to the irrigation area – an area about 25km south-east of St George which comprises >100km of irrigation channels, and used to irrigate 10,000 hectares of land.
While it was a lovely drive, there wasn’t a great deal to see as it appears that harvesting had occurred relatively recently, and there was just a great deal of big, brown paddocks as far as the eye could see.
The final thing that we were told we should do was to visit the Riversands Winery, even though we are not wine drinkers. So, go and have a look, we did.
Despite not being drinkers, we had a bit of a taste test and selected a bottle of Sparkling Sisters 2020 – a “lower alcohol fragrant sparkling (red) wine”. I’m not entirely sure what we are going to do with it – maybe drink it?
They say that you should never be photographed with a drink in your hand, and I can see why 🙁
Home for a bite of lunch, and then we pondered what to do for the afternoon.
Not far from St George – about 40km – is the oldest pub in Queensland, the Nindigully Pub. There was mixed reviews about the Nindigully Pub. Jay (the local) said “don’t bother”, while Alan & Gaye (our neighbours) said “don’t miss it”.
So we decided that for the sake of a 40km trip, and probably the only chance we will ever get to see the oldest pub in Queensland, we would make a trip out there and decide for ourselves.
The publican – as we were warned – was grumpy and unfriendly in an unwelcoming kind of way. But he happily took our money for the soda water and coke after insisting that we had checked in and that we paid in cash.
Go figure.
You can camp for free outside the Nindigully Pub, on the expectation that you will eat at the pub. Seems like a fair deal, expect that there were lots of people who had taken up the offer and it was pretty boggy and muddy.
One of my sons – Sam – loaned me his drone so that I could try to get some aerial shots of some of the places that we visit and stay. While I got the 10 minute training course when he gave it to me the other day, I hadn’t had the chance to actually fly it myself … so today was my first flight. We found a nice open park area back near the Balonne River and gave it a try.
Not exactly award winning photography, but hopefully I’ll figure it out. If you don’t see any more drone photos, you’ll know that I didn’t 🙁
It’s been a big day so we thought we’d go to the local Cobb & Co Hotel for a Chicken Parmy for dinner. We arrived a bit early so went for a walk down the river front before heading for dinner.
Chicken Parmys were fabulous and highly recommended. Home after dinner to watch the finale of Masterchef and then we are off towards Cunnamulla tomorrow, staying at Charlotte Plains station which includes soaking in bathtubs full of their hot artesian bore water. Can’t wait for that!
I don’t think we will have any mobile coverage or internet access tomorrow night, so there might not be a post … but I’ll make it up the next day, I promise.
Ciao
Sounds like a nice relaxed trip you guys are enjoying