Day 86 Wednesday, 3/8/2016, Jondaryan, absolutely freezing 9 degrees (ambient temperature 3 degrees) and more rain. Surely you can hustle up some snow! We don our winter woollies and gum boots and join a bunch of Japanese school kids, teenagers, … Continue reading Like a Rollingstone, Day 86 – A lesson in ovine plurals
Day 84 Monday, 1/8/2016, Kingaroy to Dalby, 2-24 degrees It’s an interesting drive down to Dalby on the very flat Darling Downs. The farms change from small paddocks of red soil in the hills to vast acreages of black soil. … Continue reading Like a Rollingstone, Days 84 & 85 – The Darling Downs
We drive south through the ranges and on to an old favourite the Jondaryan Woolshed on the Darling Downs. As we pull in Woody notices that we’ve lost the end from our pole carrier (tube) and we’ve lost half our annexe poles and one awning deflapper, about $300 worth, bugger. I’ll bet some Queensland bloke has rushed home to his missus and said “Look what I’ve found!” We pat the animals, cook Kilcoy steaks on a new griddle and the sun sets warm and late over the paddocks. The smell of sheep shit lingers in the air. Aah we’ll sleep … Continue reading An Old Favourite
The town of Jondaryan on the Queensland Darling Downs has a remarkable working farm museum with hundreds of pieces of farm equipment. Staff and volunteers work passionately to ensure that your visit is memorable and it certainly is when a drover and his sheep pass your window. Not Your Average Caravan Park My Father was passionate about his windmills of which he had many over the years. Thus I grew up under the shadow of one of these tireless machines and can still hear the sound of it the clanking as it pumped water up to the tank. The tank that … Continue reading The Windmills of Jondaryan
At Jondaryan Woolshed on the Darling Downs of Queensland we don our winter woollies and gum boots and join a bunch of Japanese school kids, teenagers, for a sheep shearing demonstration using hand shears. The poor old sheep is being shorn for the first time and doesn’t utter a single baa. Interesting to us is that all discussion by the teachers is in English and there is a bit of English instruction bandied about “one lamb, two lambs, one sheep, two sheep, no S.” Then we learn that if a sheep is shorn with wet wool the wool will self … Continue reading A Lesson in Ovine Plurals
The Jondaryan Woolshed was built between 1859 and 1861 and was once part of the Jondaryan Estates pastoral empire which in the 1890’s encompassed 300,000 acres and was the largest freehold station in Queensland. Nowadays it’s a working museum run … Continue reading Not Your Average Caravan Park
