We're at St George

 







Cattle being driven on the road
 west of Goondiwindi

Scattered cotton beside the road

What a great second day on the road! Yesterday we left Goolmangar in drizzling rain, very depressing, but after heading west through Casino and Tenterfield we eventually ran out of rain. Then we noticed what looked like snow on the sides of the road, just the sides  . . .  and then realised it was scattered cotton. We’d seen some harvesting further back beside the road. The cotton trail continued all the way to the turnoff to Texas to the north and even slightly into Goondiwindi, across the border in Queensland, where we spent the night.

The owner of the caravan park we stayed at there told me the cotton gets blown off the sides of those compressed bales as it’s transported.



Grain silos at Bungunya

Cotton stacked after harvest

Broad-acre farming of cotton,
 with stacks in the background

It was a longish drive, so today we just ambled along, stopping to look at stuff and have reached St George, lovely little town beside the Balonne River, and we are tucked up in a caravan park. We’ve just had afternoon drinkies, wonderful music is playing on the iPod, it’s slightly raining outside but we are warm and snug.

We had our lunch at a tiny village called Bungunya, mostly wheat silos beside a railway line that goes west to Dirranbandi. Between there and St George were broad acres of mostly cotton. It’s all harvested now but there are large compressed bales beside the paddocks, all covered with tarps, waiting to go to the nearest cotton gin. There’s one in St George, we saw as we entered from the south-east. Apparently in a good season, the Balonne Shire can grow 70,000 hectares of cotton.



Prickly pear fruit

Something else we stopped to investigate was prickly pear, growing in clumps here and there. One batch, just outside Talwood, another tiny grain depot, was in fruit. I remember that in my old Qld school recipe book used for domestic science, there is a recipe for prickly pear jelly. After I took a pic, I thought I’d pick one for John to taste  . . . but the fruit had prickles so I decided that was a bad idea.

Roadkill we’ve seen includes an emu, a young feral pig, a few kangaroos, and something fairly flattened being feasted on by a feral cat.

We are extremely happy and relaxed and tomorrow head for Mitchell, only about 200km.