Day 2 Millmerran to Dirranbandi 20/09/2022

Up early

Beautiful sunrise

On the road by 7 am after a quick cup of coffee in the special mugs that Heidi gave us

Checked out the murals in the town first. I remembered these from the last time we were in Millmerran for the camp cook festival many years ago. 

We didn’t see this one last time we were here

Travelled on the Gore Highway towards Goondiwindi enjoying the beautiful yellow flowering acacias either side of the road under a clear blue sky

Took the turn off along Wyaga Rd to the Cunningham Highway



Came across an impressive art trail of metal sculptures that we just had to check out. Spent quite some time there as there were a lot of interesting pieces

Each sculpture has it’s own explanation and significance



Eagles Nest



Mad Dog

The Hanging

Pulley Place

Ned Kelly

Prickly Situation
Spiralling out of Control 

Took us a while to work out the wording - very clever

Our next fabulous discovery in Goondiwindi was the Natural Heritage and Water Park.

We ate our breakfast here

Before heading off on the trails

We started on the Natural Fauna trail first where we came across lots of kites flying above us

Some Pretty flowers

and Roos bounding around

We then carried on along part of the waterside trail





Moving on we drove through the centre of Goondiwindi to check it out

More sculptures by the Macintyre river to check out



On the road again, heading for Hebel. Firstly on the Barwon Highway via Talwood

Turning off the highway to go on the Talwood Mungindi rd

Lots of cotton beside the road so obviously a cotton growing area nearby.

Here we took the turn off to Daymar following the route planned earlier using google maps.

What we hadn’t realised was that the road was unsurfaced, nevertheless a pretty good road

Not much on the road except this B-Double kicking up a bit of dust

and the occasional stray cows

This was the only other vehicle that passed on this road

Soon onto surfaced road again at Daymar, heading to Thallon

We joined the Carnarvon Highway at Thallon. We weren’t going to stop in Thallon as we had explored the town on a previous trip but came across these amazing metal sculptures beside the road that we just had to stop and look at

So clever and such amazing detail

Found this behind one of the sculptures so looked it up

Found out that the sculptures have only been installed recently



Each sculpture helps tell the story of the towns history and are located in the respective spots their real life models may have worked

The end of the line…

Of course had to get a photo of the magnificent famous painted Silos, although we have viewed them before from the viewing platform

Leaving Thallon we turned onto the Noondoo Thallon Rd 

Crossing the flooding Moonie  River



Lots of flooded areas beside the road





Turned onto the Castlereagh Highway to Dirranbandi







Stopped off at Noondoo to use the windy loo

Found this information board with interesting facts about the area

Lots more water lying around beside the road 



Then we came across this sign where we realised that we weren’t going to get any further!!!!

Arrived in Dirranbandi - the land of the croaking frogs

More metal sculptures in the local park 

and a statue of the famous barefoot runner

Having realised that we were going to have to stay somewhere in Dirranbandi we checked on Wikicamps to see if there was anywhere that we could stay - found a spot down by the Balonne 

We drove down there to check it out

Found another couple there that had been there the previous night having had their travel plans disrupted. They had been watching the river level and had observed it going down

Bill placed a stick at the waters edge so that he could observe the levels

We decided to drive back into town before setting up camp, for a drink at the pub and a bite to eat. Had a drink at the local pub, but decided not to wait till 6pm for a meal but went across the road to the amazing bakery run by a Russian family

As well as buying some delicious home baked pies that we ate there, we also bought one of these delicious pretty looking Pryanick honey breads

which we broke into when we got back to the campsite and after setting up.

On the way back to the campsite we passed this turn off that would have taken us to Hebel

This is the sign on the road to the campsite where the road to Bollon is also closed but open as far as the campground

As usual we tracked our route for the day on Hema maps as shown here

We also had tracking set on the SPOT so that others could log on and see where we were and where we went. Although tracking was on, unfortunately it didn’t seem to be recording  the actual journey. Fortunately Harry had been following us and told us that he hadn’t seen us move from Millmerran although we were at Goondiwindi, so we reset the SPOT and it seemed to work after that