Mungungo — Yarraman
29 April 2016
Master Map
The gentle patter of rain on the tent woke me. It’s a pleasant enough sound, although not particularly welcome when one has to pack the tent and get on the bike. Luckily it was very light and didn’t last long.
Another look at the Waratah Hotel in the light of day confirmed the night’s suspicions: the place was run down and showing signs of benign neglect. The grass needed cutting; the equipment — like lawn mowers — looked in need of TLC; there was detritus around the property; generally, the place felt just a little sad. It was hard to know how they made a living. Mungungo is barely a hamlet 10 km or so outside Monto. I doubt there’s much local trade and the road didn’t seem at all busy to me. But the owner told me they were in for a big weekend with a couple of tours coming through, including a large group of motorcyclists who’d be camping there.
As usual, Pterodactyl and I followed a curious morning ritual — coffee for him, tea for me, after which we cooked our respective brews of rolled oats. Then we packed up and took to the road again. We could have made it Brisbane easily but decided instead to backtrack a little to take a look at the Cania Gorge just north of Monto. It was good to be back in country where there were at least a few twists and turns in the road and we had an agreeable sprint to Cania Gorge.
Riding into the gorge
There’s a dam and a couple of caravan parks. The one nearest the dam is substantial and offers a range of camp sites and recreational activities. It also sells food and wine, important considerations at the end of a day in the saddle.
We took coffee at the camp ground before heading on to the dam for a quick look. I was just easing the bike into a right hander when I saw an eastern brown snake making its way into the middle of the road. It gave me a bit of a start, but happily it turned and left the road in a hurry. I have no desire to be bitten by one.
Sitting down in the surrounding hills, the dam is very pretty and we took a moment or two to stretch our legs and take a photo or two.
We retraced our steps to Monto and refuelled for the start of the run south.
I’m the kind of bloke who rushes things. We’d say in Australia, ‘She’ll be right, mate.’ I’ll put my helmet down without worrying too much about how stable it is, because my poor tormented little head is racing on to the next thing.
Pterodactyl, on the other hand, is a careful man. He always takes an extra couple of seconds to make sure his gear is safely stowed before moving on to do the next thing. So, it was uncharacteristic of him to rest his helmet on the seat of the CB while he did something else. Of course it fell off. And off course — because what with tyres and malfunctioning headphones, some little things were not going too well for Pterodactyl this trip — the visor hit the ground first and put a huge scuff mark on it at exactly the point that Pterodactyl looked through it.
With remarkable presence of mind he cleaned it methodically; took to it with some Mr Sheen I had with me; adjourned to the hardware store and bought some very, very fine wet and dry sandpaper with which he tried to rub out the worst of the mark. Sandpaper, toothpaste, Mr Sheen, all made some improvement to the screen, but he was stuck with an ugly and inconvenient mark on his visor for the rest of the trip.
Cleaning the visor
Pressing on south through the pretty country of Queensland’s North Burnett region we rode past the town of Munduberra (Queensland towns have great names) and on to Gayndah which bills itself as Queensland’s oldest town. I confess to being underwhelmed as we rode in. All I could see was a service station/roadhouse/motel and an unprepossessing house or two opposite. Why they needed a motel in such a minuscule outpost defied comprehension.
We refuelled and bought some lunch at the roadhouse. Lunch, as I recall, was nothing gourmet or worth raving about, but neither was there anything wrong with it. It was wholesome and tasty. The woman who served us asked us to like the place on Facebook. I thought Pterodactyl would fall off his chair as he’d been looking at a review of the place on some website or another. It was so bad he’d been moved to read bits of it to me. Phrases like, ‘the worst service I’ve ever had’, ‘avoid like the plague’ stick in my mind.
Full of food and fuel we remounted, pointed our noses south, turned a corner, crossed the Burnett River and discovered a large and interesting looking town which offered an array of cafés and other places that may well have provided a much more interesting spot for lunch.
Ah, well, next time.
Looking south over the South Burnett region. This was the last road photo of the trip.
We rode on through Goomeri and back into country familiar to me — places I went occasionally on day rides from my former home in Pomona. The day got cooler and the cloud thickened as we rode on, and we were spattered with the occasional shower.
I’d decided we’d stop in Yarraman where there’s a caravan park from which we could walk to the pub for dinner. For no reason I can fathom, it’s never been my favourite place — I prefer Nanango a little to the north. My brother-in-law is very fond of Blackbutt, a town a bit further along the road from Yarraman, but I had in my mind that there was little more than a community hall in Blackbutt.
By the time we got to Yarraman I was getting cold and cranky. As we rode past it, the caravan park looked fit for mountain goats, and we were in the middle of a heavy shower. We refuelled and decided we’d go and stay at the pub.
There was parking around the back, beer, red wine and good pub food. What more could a couple of riders want?
