Capella — Mungungo
28 April 2016
Master Map
The morning dawned clear, dry, but overcast. We were up reasonably early and began the business of dismantling the camp. At about 7.20 am Pterodactyl’s phone rang. Andrew had reinstalled the wheel which meant he’d either worked back the night before or been up pretty early that morning.
I gave Pterodactyl a lift to the tyre shop and then we headed back to the caravan park to finish the clean up, sort ourselves out and get on our way.
At some moment while I was tidying up I realised I’d left the ignition switched on when I got back from the tyre shop. I pressed the starter. G-r-r-r-r, g-r-r-r-r, g-r-r-r-r, g-r-r-r-r, click.
Other than a slight incline to the entrance to the caravan park the place was as flat as a billiard table. I figured that if I pushed the bike up the hill with Pterodactyl on it, we might just get it started. I thought it only fair: Pterodactyl is older than me. He accepted the offer to do the starting without demur. By the time I got part way up the incline, I was puffing and blowing like an ancient steam train.
‘Mate, I might be a bit fitter than you. Why don’t you get on the bike and I’ll push it?’ Pterodactyl said nonchalantly.
‘OK,’ I wheezed.
He pushed me effortlessly, the bike started on the second attempt and that debacle was behind me.
After I’d recovered enough breath to pick up a camera
Of course, when I got my breath back, I realised he’d had me push uphill while he pushed downhill. Clever bloke, Pterodactyl. But he is fitter than me, nonetheless.
The death of the tyre had proved a blessing in disguise. Pterodactyl had to be back in Sydney by Saturday night — preferably earlier. The plan was for him to leave his bike with me in Brisbane and fly back to Sydney. Had we rumbled on, the ride from Augathella to Brisbane would have been a pretty mighty day and Pterodactyl would have been very late indeed back to Sydney. The decision to pull out meant we could more easily stage our detour and arrive in Brisbane at a civilised time on Saturday morning.
We set out south for Emerald where we would turn east for a time before turning south. We planned to spend the night at or near Monto. Pterodactyl’s where-should-we-camp app had thrown up a pub just out of Monto that offered rooms or a place to pitch a tent which sounded OK.
The road east along the Tropic of Capricorn is unmemorable. Straight and reasonably flat, it carries a good deal more traffic than we had seen for much of the ride to date. It does, though, have a reasonable speed limit and we were able to make pretty good time over the 200 or so kilometres to Duaringa. We passed through Dingo. In a country that calls a town Banana after a cow, I guess Dingo is an OK name for a town.
We also spent a fair bit of time riding alongside the railway line that carries the output of central Queensland’s mines to port.
There are plenty of very long trains running parallel to the road
A rare curve looms in the distance
Just before Duaringa, the clouds that had been vaguely menacing all morning gave us a brief shower. It was a good time to stop for fuel and something to eat. As we walked out to our bikes, it started to pour down so we moved them under the cover of the service station’s awning while Pterodactyl dug his wets out of the depths of the bag he’d packed them in. We also tried to find a way to mount his GoPro on my bike so we could get some action shots of Pterodactyl. That was a miserable failure too!
By the time we’d done all that, the rain had passed and we set out again. I recall another couple of very brief showers during the afternoon, but nothing to get excited about.
I'm afraid it was more of the same country until a little after Biloela (where we refuelled again). Then quite suddenly, it seemed, the road became more undulating, slightly less straight and the vegetation changed. There were more and larger trees. It was country much more to my taste.
Back in a more agreeable landscape
We passed the turn off to Cania Gorge, which had looked like a good place to camp, but kept going through Monto to Mungungo where we found the Waratah Hotel. Mine host pointed us to some level ground to put our tents and invited us to use the hotel’s facilities provided we took a drink in the bar.
We obliged, taking more than a drink. We also took a meal, home cooked and tasty. We had the place pretty much to ourselves and passed the evening chatting to the owner and his wife before retiring to our tents. Curiously, even though the sky was crystal clear, we failed to spot a single satellite.
