There’s a lot to see and do driving north on the Great Inland Way


By kind permission of On The Road magazine
Story and photography by PATRICK HAYES

Every year, more and more southerners head for Australia’s northern regions to avoid winter and enjoy the laid-back life away from city stresses.
What many of these travellers don’t realise is that the trip itself can be as enjoyable, or even more so, than arriving at their destination.
The trick is not to charge up the highway in a series of 10-hour marathon drives but to try travelling a route that is a bit removed from the traditional one.
If you think the coast road from the south along Highway 1 has a few too many curves, and that the Newell Highway is a bit crowded with a steady stream of travellers who are all after the remaining sites in busy caravan parks, it might be time to consider turning left at Gilgandra (just north of Dubbo, NSW) and heading up what is now called the the Great Inland Way.
It runs from Dubbo almost due north all the way to Cairns. On its left is the Kidman Way that joins the Mitchell Highway and becomes the Matilda Way and on the right is the Newell Highway. A quick glance at the map will indicate that there are some fascinating spots to stop along the way. If you are keen on gems a stopover at opal town Lightning Ridge would be a good idea.
On The Road headed for the middle of the Great Inland Way, Queensland's St George, Surat and Roma, and found plenty of good reasons to pause and spend a few days exploring. Experienced tourist Major Mitchell was a traveller here about 150 years ago and he gave the area a good rap.
St George, where commercial cotton growing started in 1957, is a place to relax for a few days, a town where nobody seems to be in a hurry and where we can take our time adjusting to a relaxing pace of our own.
St George has five caravan parks to choose from as well as a couple of free overnight campsites on the Balonne and Moonie rivers.
It's an easy drive out of St George to Rosehill station where John and Elaine Beardmore have built up the world's most complete collection of Australian parrots. John and Elaine have little trouble finding space for their rows of aviaries containing birds in a rainbow of colors because the property is 21,000 hectares (52,000 acres). During the drought they have been checking the state of their dams every day – a task that requires an off-road journey of 75 kilometres around the paddocks.
Rosehill must be one of the few stations to have its own liquor licence and can serve visitors to its aviaries a beer, if needed, along with Elaine's superb scones. Rosehill Aviaries are 50 kilometres west of St George and are open seven days a week. Bush camping (no facilities) is allowed at a hot artesian bore about 4.5 kilometres away.
If you are interested in Aussie oddities try visiting The Unique Egg in the Balonne Sports Store in Victoria Street, St George. There you will find a collection of handcarved emu eggs that glow in all shades of green when illuminated from inside.
Carver Steve Margaritis says the eggs have nine layers ranging from dark green to white and gently scraping away of different layers produces a stunning work of art.
No drive through country Queensland would be complete without a visit to a bush pub and the Nindigully pub, south-east of St George is a "must".
Built in 1864 on a Cobb & Co changing post, the Nindigully pub doesn't seem to have changed much since then. It holds one of the longest continuous liquor licences in Queensland. The town of Nindigully has a population of six, five of whom work in the pub, but there are plenty of customers flocking in from surrounding properties.
The pub is on the banks of the Moonie River and camping along the river is free. Campers are welcome to use the hotel's facilities (meals are served day and night and a shower costs $2 or $2.30 with a complimentary pot of beer).
The pub was featured in the movie Paperback Hero, but it has enough character of its own without any show business hype.
The bar is made from a couple of huge slabs of Australian bloodwood and the walls are lined with hundreds of battered hats donated by stockmen who stopped by to quench their thirsts.
If your taste runs to other types of alcoholic beverages, St George has its own winery, Riversands Vineyards, where a range of quality wines can be tasted and bought for quite reasonable prices at the cellar door.
If you’d like to spend more time in the past, cruise north another 118 kilometres and visit the little town of Surat that has a population under 500 and plenty to interest the visitor.
Cobb & Co’s last Australian coach route was from Surat to the railway station at Yuleba, 75 kilometres away. The coach stopped every 26 kilometres (10 miles) along the way to change the five horses (or seven horses if the going was wet and boggy). In the middle of Surat’s main street the old Cobb & Co changing station and store has been converted to a constantly changing museum showing items associated with the town’s past (Yes, there is a gleaming Cobb & Co coach).
Queensland's last commercial coach trip left Surat on August 14, 1924. It’s a date that tells us that, while Surat’s citizens were still travelling by stage coach, the newfangled Qantas airline was already flying passengers and mail around the state.
Surat has a central caravan park but as I rolled through the town’s outskirts I saw several caravans taking advantage of a free overnight camp on a fishing club reserve beside the Balonne River (farther on to become the Condamine). The locals say the river provides good fishing for cod, yellowbelly and other native fish that inhabit the Murray-Darling complex.
Another 78 kilometres on brings us to Roma. It sits in prime grazing country on the edge of the real Outback and is well worth a leisurely stopover.
The town has three caravan parks and all had spare sites when we called in in mid-July – the time when the rush away from the south’s winter has caravan parks on other northerly routes bulging at the seams. There is a less conventional fourth park seven kilometres out of town that charges $7.50 for a powered site; we’ll tell you more a bit farther on.
Roma is known as "the bottle tree town" for a reason that soon becomes obvious. There are 800 bottle trees scattered through the town’s streets and many more in gardens and backyards. The tree's fascinating shape is similar to that of the baobab tree found in the West but it is no relation; it is actually a relative of the kurrajong.
The bottle tree is also known as the "compass tree" because the sun striking its western side on hot afternoons leaves dark scars that make it easy to find the other points of the compass.
Graeme Godde of Bottle Tree Bush Tours takes visitors on tours of the towns historical spots.
Roma boasts of having Australia’s biggest cattle saleyard where more than 11,000 beasts can change hands in a day. It's worth wandering along to watch the auctioneer's frenetic action and to admire the variety of stetsons worn by the cattlemen and women.
Roma is also the cradle of Australia’s oil and gas industry. The first gas strike, in 1900, was the first significant oil or gas find in Australia. At the time the find was lamented because it occurred during a search for artesian water and it took about five years for its value to become known. After the gas had been flowing freely to waste for six years, Roma hooked up the hole to a gasometer and fed gas lights down the main street. It seemed like a good idea at the time but the gas well ran dry after 10 days and the street lights dimmed.
Although the street lights didn’t flare again there were many more oil and gas discoveries in the district to create a healthy industry and the council found water in the dry gas well, converted the gasometer into a tank and used it to supply the town's bore water.
While the water from underground is drinkable, fresh water is available for anybody who objects to the flavor of the bore water.
The mains water, fed from that first failed gas discovery, is "soft" and only a touch of soap is needed to work up a great lather in the shower. The water also has a built-in hair conditioner.
At night the Roma Council, assisted by the oil industry, puts on a "son et lumiere" show tracing the history of Roma’s involvement with the oil and gas business. It’s a good show with interesting special effects and a few oil gusher/fart jokes to break up the dates and figures and keep the kids amused.
For a taste of how life was for the well-off in Roma’s early days, visit Winnathoola, a grand mansion built in 1900.
David and Cherrie Taylor and friends, dressed in period costume, will greet you on the steps of the sprawling verandah and treat you to afternoon tea while a local historian Peter Keegan gives an entertaining and enlightening description of life at the turn of the 19th century. A tour through the house with its polished cyprus pine floorboards will bring pangs of envy to anybody keen to live in an early Edwardian house.
For another brush with the past, visit Mt Abundance station where Allan McPherson set up the first white settlement in the area in 1847 and built the cyprus pine and ironbark homestead in 1860. Unfortunately, McPherson did not get on well with the local Aborigines and after several of his men had been killed he sold up and returned to Scotland.
But the homestead is still there and the present owners Don and Pat Tite show visitors over the house, tell tales of a lifestyle that was unremittingly difficult and serve "smoko" on the wide verandah. Bookings are required.
Don and Pat have restored the homestead but they live at another farm about five kilometres away and that’s where the low-cost campsite comes in. They have converted some of the farm sheds into the Meadowbank Museum and farm camping area.
The museum has an amazing collection of old artifacts, tools, dolls, irons, horse-drawn vehicles and early cars, trucks and engines.
There are 12 powered sites ($7.50 a night) and numerous camping sites ($6.50 a night), pets are welcome and campers are invited to take an interest in whatever farm activities are taking place.
It’s just the place to spend a few days in a peaceful farm environment, well-insulated against the stresses of urban life.

FACT FILE
St George
Location: Queensland Western Downs, 869 kilometres north of Dubbo.
Visitor Information Centre: Corner of Roe Street and The Terrace, (07) 4620 8877.
Caravan parks:
Kamarooka Caravan Park,
56 Victoria Street, (07) 4625 3120.
Kapunda Riverside Camping,
12747 Carnarvon Highway,
(07) 4625 5546.
Pelican Rest Caravan Park,
12022 Carnarvon Highway,
(07) 4685 3398
River Breeze Fishing Lodge and Caravan Park, Lot 7, Surat Road,
(07) 4625 5892.
St George Caravan Park,
221 Victoria Street, (07) 4625 5778.
Surat
Location: Queensland Western Downs, 118 kilometres north of St George.
Visitor Information Centre: Cobb and Co Changing Station,
62 Burrowes Street, (07) 4626 5136
Caravan park:
Surat Caravan Park,
47 Burrowes Street, (07) 4626 5218
Roma
Location: Queensland Western Downs, 78 kilometres north of Surat.
Visitor Information Centre: The Big Rig, 2 Diggers Road, (07) 4622 4355
Caravan parks:
Roma Big Rig Van Park,
4 McDowall Street, (07) 4622 2538
Roma Aussie Tourist Park,
(07) 4622 6464
Villa Holiday Park, (07) 4622 1309.