Day 37 Monday 11/7/2022 Theodore to Goovigen, chilly 2 – sunny warm 21

Another chilly morning and we’re anxious to get to the coast and a little warmth. We’ve brought our Yeppoon booking forward by 4 days even though we will have to stay on an unpowered site for 2 nights.

As we head north towards Banana, we see more cotton and duboisia. To our left is what appears to be a flat-topped range but it is the tailings from the massive Moura mine.

We turn east at Banana, there are now mixed crops and cattle. The flowering roadside grasses are a delicate glowing pink. As we near Biloela the land becomes more productive, the Great Dividing Range is an imposing blue ridge in the distance.

Biloela is a modern town and it feels strange to be back on divided roads with traffic lights. It’s a warm sunny morning and it’s a pleasure to have a stroll around the shopping precinct.

It’s a short 25 or so Kms to Jambin however the GPS wants to send us down dirt lanes. This is the Callide Valley and we stop for bridgeworks at Callide Creek. The RV camp behind the Jambin hall is adequate but doesn’t have the right vibe. It feels as though those who got here first are happy to have it to themselves, that’s fine. Following M & D’s advice, we drive 11kms west to Goovigen. You may not have heard of it, but you now know where it is.

Goovigen is a tiny town with no commercial businesses left but 200 plus residents in neat homes. The police station is unmanned, even the clergy seem to have scarpered and don’t do the rounds of the district. This was once an important railway town on the Callide Valley line though the station is small. The RV camp, on the other hand, is thriving and when we pull in at noon there are only a couple of powered sites left. We choose to go unpowered as there are some pretty sites near an old wooden fence.

A walk around town is in order, it is a warm afternoon the best we’ve had, and it reveals the Catholic Church which is of the same design as the one in Theodore. There’s an old School of Arts hall, a pioneering slab hut, and a war memorial with a moving poem to the Waler horses who served in the Great War.

The RV camp is neat and well mowed and situated between the football ground and tennis courts. The toilet and shower block is spotless. There’s an open-air camp kitchen, and a large fire pit. And a large flowering shrub, Tacoma Stans ‘Yellow Bells’ grows beside the toilet block.

“Potholes on the Bruce Highway between Rockhampton and Gladstone, are being fixed.” Says a TV announcement. The potholes have been caused by the wet weather.

We turn the diesel heater on as the outside temperature drops, it runs for 15 minutes then puffs out a diesel smell and stops while flashing its lights. It seems like a repeat of the Lockhart issue. And dinner, that’s fried rice.

We love this place so much that we decide to stay 2 nights.

Accom: $5.00 ($10 powered) power, water available, toilets, showers

Towing Kms: 144kms