Balonne Shire

Well, today may very well be a record for the shortest number of kilometres driven to our next overnight stop - a total of 34km down the road from Thallon to the nearby Nindigully Pub.

We’d heard you could camp at the old pub situated on the banks of the Moonie River and we were keen to find a spot along the river bank and go to the pub for happy hour, some live music in the beer garden and a feed at this iconic pub.

While we didn’t eat the famous 5.5kg road train burger (said to feed at least six people) we did get through large serves of a parma and a chicken carbonara.

The Gully as it’s commonly called among locals, has the honour of being Queensland’s oldest continuously licensed pub since 1864. Prior to that the building was the original shearer’s quarters for Nindigully Station.

We found a perfect spot along the river, away from the big red dusty car park next to the hotel and spent the afternoon enjoying the sunshine and the tranquility of the river and chatting to some of our fellow camping neighbours.

I was in the mood to bake so after putting a pizza into the Weber I baked some choc chip chocolate muffins and a honey cake. Tomorrow is Jewish New Year and although we are far from home we feel that eating some honey cake tomorrow evening and some apple slices dipped in honey well help to symbolize the beginning of what will hopefully be a sweet new year - for us and for all people across the world.

Around 5ish we headed up to the beer garden at the pub with some of our neighbours and enjoyed some delicious white wine as we ate and listened to local artist Scott Troutman sing soulfully and play guitar as the afternoon sun faded away and was replaced by twinkly fairy lights around the garden.

And to cap off another lovely day on the road, as we were leaving the pub to walk back to our caravan down on the river, we looked up into the inky black sky and marveled at the millions of stars that were visible up above. Even the Milky Way could be seen clearly against the charcoal backdrop.

G’night xxLeia mais