Day 14: Moree > North Star > Texas > Stanthorpe

If I was a cheese, I wonder what sort of cheese I’d be?

Maybe something “rich, crumbly, and spicy” like a Pepper cheese? Certainly not rich though, not after all of the cheese we have bought.

Or maybe something “mature and full-bodied”? I’ll have to give that some more thought.

I’ve mentioned already that we stayed in the Moree Showgrounds last night. A beautiful spot – quiet, green, peaceful. If I’d had more time I’d have done the “pay 3, stay 5” special like all of the other lucky retirees. That would have given us more time to soak our weary bodies in the artesian waters, and go fossicking in the shops in town.

I probably don’t need to tell you that it was cold, but it was cold. 2 degrees that feels like -0.9 degrees. Cold enough to freeze the you-know-whats …

Now in case you think that we have an unnatural obsession with Op Shops, we don’t. We just enjoy poking around in little craft shops and Op Shops to see what bargains we can pick up. I particularly like looking for any autobiographies that are on the shelf, and you can get books so cheaply in Op Shops. $5.00 for 3 books is not uncommon … and it’s a bit of fun that also goes towards a good cause.

We woke to an absolutely stunning day today. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and all was good with the world.

Breakfast, showers, hooked up Percy, and we were on the road by just after 9.30am.

And what a road it was. Fast (110km/h), flat, smooth … everything that you could hope for on your penultimate day of travelling.

A tiger in the tank, all of the horses straining at the bit, MBW sitting up front with me. A bag of Minties to munch on, and coffee in my belly. A great day for a drive. And a great road for driving on.

We overtook a slow-moving road train and I found myself going more than 110km/h, but it all felt safe and secure.

The road we were travelling on takes you to Goondiwindi, and that’s not the way that we were going. We are heading to Stanthorpe, which is further east. It wasn’t long before – surprise, surprise – Dolly wanted us to do a right turn onto the highway to Stanthorpe.

Except it wasn’t a highway 🙁 It was another of those rough, bumpy back roads where you really don’t feel safe going faster than 80-90km/h for fear that you will rupture something internally, or you will be bounced off the road.

I’m pretty sure that I have put on a couple of kilograms during this trip, because it felt like there was an unnatural amount of shaking and jiggling and wobbling going on. I didn’t ask MBW if she felt the same way because … well, you don’t stay married for 38 years if you ask questions like that.

Certainly not a highway, but an OK back road so long as you keep your speed under control.

Until it wasn’t even that any more. It was worse.

Suddenly it was a wannabe road that was in desperate need of some good quality bitumen. I mean it was OK to travel on, so long as you slowed down just a bit more and took care not to get into a slide, and even more care not to shower Percy with stones.

Before long we came to a pretty little township called North Star (population “about 50”) and we had high hopes for a little coffee shop … that either didn’t exist, or we blinked and missed it.

And then? Yep you guessed it. Even the little bit of tar holding the potholes together disappeared and we were on a dirt road – albeit a relatively smooth, wide dirt road. We just had to slow down a little bit more.

And then, it barely qualified as a road. More like a track, or perhaps a driveway. Hmmm, maybe not even a driveway.

36km of dirt. 36km of not much fun. 50-60km/h tops, and if we happened to see something coming the other way – which we did a couple of times – we slowed to a crawl to figure out how we were going to pass each other.

Left turn, right turn, slow down for a rough surface, and then …. we finally saw it. Home.

The air was cleaner, the sky was bluer, the birds were chirpier, the cows were moo-ier, and the world was just a better place. A place where men are men, and we win the State of Origin.

Now to be fair, I had assumed that we we would hear a legion of angels singing as we entered into the Promised Land, but I think it was actually Kenny Rogers singing – for about the 20th time on this trip … “You gotta know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, and know when to run …” and “you picked a fine time to leave me Lucille …”

Over the Queensland border and we arrived in Texas, Queensland (population 790).

Texas is one of those places that I’d really like to explore some more, as it is a pretty little Queensland country town. And there is an AirBnB that I’ve got my eye on. I might surprise MBW with that one some day.

See the photo above? Definitely mature and full-bodied 🙂

The town’s coffee shop was closed, so we stopped at the little fast food shop promising “hot food” and “great coffee” and we purchased a couple of coffees that were … OK.

The roads from Texas to Stanthorpe were very different again to everything that we have experienced on this trip. Very hilly with lots of tight turns.

A slow trip. Not much other traffic on the roads, but lots of crawling up hills, winding around corners, and going over narrow bridges (hoping that nobody was coming the other way).

And constant reminders that there has been “15 accidents in the last 5 years, and counting”.

Staying tonight at the Top of the Town Caravan park. We were supposed to stay at the Stanthorpe showgrounds, but they called a couple of days ago to say that they (the people that manage the showgrounds) needed to go away for a few days and there was nobody available to manage caravan bookings … so we got a spot at the TotTCP instead.

And a very nice park it is too, with very friendly site managers. I’ll put some photos of the site up tomorrow. If I remember.

We set up Percy, and had a late lunch. Late lunches are becoming a bit of a habit for us. But that’s OK – when you are on holidays you can have breakfast for dinner, and lunch for breakfast if you want to … although we are pretty traditional. Breakfast, then lunch, then dinner.

Even if it means having lunch at 2.30pm because it is simply the next meal for the day.

After lunch, we went for a drive to Jamworks, a little place that we went to last time we were in Stanthorpe. Last time we were here, we stayed at Warwick in a HipCamp (someone’s back 40 acres) on a long weekend, and made a day trip into Stanthorpe.

The thing I particularly remember was that it was the middle of COVID and Jamworks only allowed a certain number of people in the store at the same time.

It was also in the middle of the great toilet paper crisis of 2020 – remember the toilet paper crisis?

So we asked Dolly to take us to Jamworks, only to find ourselves heading in exactly the opposite direction to where we thought we should be going.

But arrive at Jamworks we did, and … while it was Jamworks, it wasn’t the place that we were looking for. We were looking for the place that made and sold the cheese, not the place that made and sold the beautiful relishes that went with the cheese.

We did buy some relishes – Fig and Walnut, Apple and Walnut, Plum and Pecan.

It turns out that the place we were looking for – Stanthorpe Cheese – (the “Cheese” in the name is the giveaway) – was exactly where we expected it to be. So we did a quick dash to the other side of Stanthorpe arriving about 15 minutes before they closed, and did some cheese tasting.

And we bought more cheese. We do like cheese.

Back home to Percy for dinner of steak and salad and chips. We bought one of those handy dandy little air fryers for the van, and it did the chips to perfection. And I cooked the steak just the way we like it.

Tomorrow we pack it all down and make a final run for home, and back to reality.

There is a market here in Stanthorpe tomorrow (Sunday), and MBW does like markets. So we will see what time we wake and are packed to go. Elsie is already fuelled up.

That’s about it for today.

Coffee, Nelson DeMille and off to the land of nod.

This is what today looked like.

You can see the gross error in judgement that we made going to Jamworks instead of Stanthorpe Cheese … but hey, we got to both of them and made a small investment in both 🙂

Ciao

#RoadTripNSW2023