18 - May 2018 - Chinchilla Weir - Baralaba - Bedford Weir

I stayed at Condamine for a couple of nights and went to the Miles Show while there (Tuesday 22 May).

I had spied a good-sounding camping spot in my Wikicamps App, called the Chinchilla Weir so early Wed 23rd I choofed off towards Chinchilla. I had nearly run out of food at that point so I went into Chinchilla to the Woolworths and restocked. I bought an eight pack of sirloins, each around 150 grams - very unimpressive if grilled, but an ideal size for my nightly protein and veg choppery. So with that meat and the usual brassicaceae and solanaceae (this is what happens when I have too much time on my hands and I go delving into Wikipedia) I had the fixins for eight meals and by the late afternoon I had set up camp and made up eight parcels of chopperied veg that went in the fridge and eight parcels of chopperied meat that went in the freezer.

With that finished I went outside to inspect my surroundings. I found I had parked well away from other vans and within spitting distance of a pleasant picnic table and barbecue area. Not that I would spit in public. At least not with anyone watching. All in all a very nice spot.

A very nice spit spot

So I made a cuppa and sat outside with my book. Soon enough one of the locals came along to inspect and make conversation.

A friendly local

By then some other neighbours had arrived. Two on my left - the road side - and one directly behind me on the other side of the fence. I said hello and they were quite chatty - one was QUITE CHATTY - and very nice and made my stay at the Weir a pleasure.

I extracted myself from the friendly verbal embrace, saying that I wanted to get some shots of the Weir (which I did, so it was A Convenient Truth) and wandered down to a newly constructed pontoon close to the boat launching ramp.

There were hundreds of little birds swooping on midges in the air above the water (click on the image to make it larger so you can see the little birdies).

Can you see the little birdies, in their birdie land?

I sat watching the swooping birds for a while until it was their bedtime and they flew off to roost in the reeds on the other side of the Weir. It was getting darker, and the pelicans started returning to their nests just around a corner of the Weir behind the reeds.

Quiet time for the pelicans

I waited a little longer and got a nice subtle pink glow in the clouds …

Peaceful pink clouds

Then got a more dramatic shot as the sun went down …

It's that Rorschach character, again

The next morning I got up with the Kennedy birds and watched the pelicans wake up and get into their groove before heading off to their secret daytime fishing spots.

"Hello. I'm Pel. Meet my family up the back there. Elli, Elli, Elli, Elli, Elli and Can."

Went to the Chinchilla Show on Friday (a two-day show). It was a local holiday. Most shops and schools were closed, and that more or less guaranteed a decent crowd. I have wrtten about the Chinchilla Show in a separate post.

I had packed up the caravan and towed it to the Chinchilla Show so I was able to head north after I had finished.

As I headed north the vegetation changed. The forested areas were taller and greener …

Taller, greener, bluer, straighter, bumpier ...

… although there was evidence that the usual numpties had been around, either ignorant or deliberately destructive - or both.

There was a still-smouldering log in the background

Further on and the landscape changed again. There was a bright golden haze on the roadside.

Roadside haze

There was a bright golden haze on the paddock.

Paddock haze

The grass was as high as a wallaby’s eye

See any wallabies? That's 'cause the grass is tall.

And the hills in the distance reached up to the sky …

It was a rather nice morning!

After a while I reached Banana, the administrative centre of Banana Shire.

Banana milk and Chocolate milk. My favourites.

I bought some diesel. The EFTPOS was down (courtesy of NAB this time) and the only other business in town wasn’t making hay either. (Sorry about the poor resolution. It says Banana Store i.e. general store)

Yes. We have none.

Most towns around this area support the mining industries - coal, coal seam gas. Miles, where I had been to the show, has been financially ruined by involvement with Origin Energy and its industrial partners. No doubt a great deal of local greed but it appears that corporate promises and implications did not eventuate. Plenty of stories describe what happened. [for example this story]

I left the north-south Leichhardt Highway and headed west to Baralaba, a small village directly west of Gladstone on the Dawson River.

The village maintains a camping and picnic area next to a Weir on the river and allows campers to stay, asking only for a donation. This is a very peaceful place, just perfect for contemplating and letting the imagination go. I watched a very nice sunset …

Just another very nice sunset

Then cooked, ate, watched a bit of TV, and turned in.

The next day I sat under a shady tree trying to read a book. The there was a light breeze making the trees and grass rustle and whisper, and the clouds were rather interesting and distracting.

Interesting clouds, trees, whispering grass

They built up and turned grey. A few drops fell but stopped after a few seconds. The clouds parted again and changed from dark, sombre, and threatening, to fluffy white puffs gliding across the sky.

I began to contemplate the duality of clouds: either they will cry, or they will not cry.

There seems to be an inflection point in reality after which a cloud will either cry or not cry, and there must be a tree of conditions on either side of that inflection point - one tree containing all the preconditions that must be satisfied before the cloud will cry, and the other tree containing all of the consequences flowing from that inflection point. Did it rain? Then take the green path of wet binary consequences. Did it not rain? Then take the brown path of dry binary consequences.

Each consequence is in itself a complex set of possibilities. If it rained did it rain hard? Continuously? For a long time? For a very long time? Are you in a floodway? Have you thought about getting out of here rather quickly?

But if it rained for a long time and not a VERY long time it could be that the worst consequence is getting bogged. Unless it rained for a very long time somewhere else and that else happened to be upstream in the catchment that has as its outlet the very campsite that we are occupying.

My brain started to hurt at that point and I noticed a tiny bird no larger than my index finger. It was fossicking in the thready grass collecting a beak-full of strands and flying away only to return a couple of minutes later. 

Thready grass but no finger-bird 

I was immediately distracted from the clouds. Why was the bird collecting grass? To build or repair a nest? Was this a speculative nest build in the vain hope of of attracting a “to-be” mate? Or was it a refurbishment of an existing nest precipitated by a fickle “already” mate? Even more imponderables than the binary clouds.

I looked down at my book in desperate search of simplicity and order. Instead what I noticed was a scurry of ants across my clever 12-slat fold-up table.

Twelve slats joined at the ends. 

Sitting on a folding braced trestle of aluminium tubes with a bung blocking each end.

The ants were racing along the slats either looking for food or looking for a way out from their great anty maze. (Not to be confused with Great Aunty Maise, she of the furry top lip)

Every so often an ant would find a black bridge across the end of two slats, and would discover a whole new aluminium slat world for exploration. Then it would increase its scurriness until it found another ant. Then it would pause, have a little antenna chat, and afterwards would not scurry about quite as quickly. 

Now what little bit of information caused this little ant to slow down? 

Was it simply 

“Hello, I am from the same nest as you”? 

Or was it more profound?

“I know you think you have found an exciting new world of possibilities. So did I when I first arrived. But let me just say, mate [they were Australian ants, after all] that I have been here over 65,000 milliseconds and - mate - there is nothing of interest. Here. Anywhere. Now, if you’ll just tell me the way home I would be very grateful”.

Or was it a more reflective discourse?

“I’ve been reviewing. 
Our situation. 
This new place is more complex than it seems. 
There are twenty. 
Shiny new worlds. 
And a black bridge that connects them at each end. 
And the worlds are all identical, 
the spans connect adjacent worlds, 
and underneath the worlds there’s more, 
the worlds sit on two giant logs, 
and those logs sit on four tall trees, 
and braces sit diagonal, 
to brace the trees ‘cause they could fall, 
and every end has a black cap, 
to block the hollows in the trunks, 
but what if there are ants inside, 
with no ways out at all in sight  … 
I think I’d better think it through again.” 

[apologies to Lionel Bart]

Hmm. Another imponderable.

I looked up again with beetling brow and spinning brain. The neighbouring caravanners had done some laundry and had hung out to dry a large 2m by 2m towel. As it was hanging guiltily from the laundry rope (why else would it be there?), ripples emanated from the towel's centre in some sort of morse code. Dot. Dot. Dot. Dash. Dash. Dash. …

No sooner had I contemplated this new possibility of sentient towels sending messages in a 19th century binary code, than I saw my little finger-birdling friend hop over the top of the towel and down the face to about the middle. The bird started to peck again at the towel, presumably to extract threads. When he had enough he flew off, then returned a few minutes later to repeat the performance.

Which raises a question. Was the towel pure cotton? Was it a cotton-synthetic blend? Or was it a quick-dry micro-fibre item so useful when camping? Why is that important? Well, the answer could have been critical to the domestic happiness of my little finger-bird friend. If, for example his now-well-settled-in mate was politically green-wing [although they all seemed to be brown-winged from where I was sitting] then they could have had this type of supper-time exchange … “I hope you brought back some natural fibres for the nest extension. I’m not having any of that artificial micro-this or rayon-that in my new kitchen. I don’t care what your no-good mates say down at that so called watering puddle. I want natural fibres or I might just have to get more acquainted with that nice single finger-bird in that tall tree over there. I know he only collects natural fibres for his nests …”

[Why is our protagonist a “he” bird? Because I’ve been watching too many David Attenborough shows, and whenever a bird is building a nest it is almost always a male. So blame Mr Attenborough]

The thread-collection continued for quite a while but was interrupted when the clouds finally got upset enough to cry a little more. Perhaps over spilt milk? Ever seen a cloud indulge in a Cappuccino? Ever wondered why? Someone spilled their milk.

There were a few more drops of cloud tears which prompted the neighbour to take in the still-damp towel. Did I detect a smug expression on the towel’s flat face - a hanging sentence cut short by a few cloud tears? Did the towel spill the milk that made the clouds cry? Did the whispering grass know? Did the grass tell the trees? Cause the trees really didn’t need to know! We may never find out exactly what happened that day.

By this time the scattering of cloud tears had frightened away the ants and brought out a couple of mossies so I retreated inside, which is probably a lesson for aspiring politicians and their lobbyists:

“Two mosquitoes have more influence than the combined effects of binary rain clouds, a scurry of ants, a fingerling bird, and a devious criminal towel!”

As I retreated I did have a little bit of good news. I found the last of the three-cornered jacks from Pilliga. The bad news was I found it when I took off my boot and stood on the caravan floor!

I did emerge later, prepared, pre-armed and pre-legged with mosquito repellent, to watch the sunset.

Another. Just like the other. But rather addictive.

The next morning I packed up and was about to depart when a neighbour (not the neighbour with the unrepentant towel) suggested I head for Bedford Weir just north of Blackwater, on the way to Emerald. So I called in to the local store to get some soda water and olive oil. And stopped at the local café to get a fortifying flat white, and off I went.

The road to Bedford Weir

And an hour or so later I arrived at Bedford Weir. 

I was sitting, contemplating, ("someone’s gotta do it" as my neighbour-without-the-towel said) when there was an almighty screech just behind my head. A peacock, apparently scrounging for food. I hit my head on the sky and with that I hurried inside to put the evening's choppery on to cook.

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