Last weekend was a long weekend in Queensland due to that the queens birthday was celebrated on Monday. No her actual birthday is not that day but since there are no public holiday during the second half of the year the Queenslanders have decided to celebrate in October! Hmm
Anyway, we decided to use the extra day to do a roadtrip to the metropolitan cities, sorry, towns of Dalby and Kingaroy, about 4 hours from Brisbane.
The intention was to see some typical small cities and also encounter some wildlife. It actually became a little bit too much of the latter which I will come back to. We also had the aim of seeing the southern hemisphere stars from a dark spot.
The journey started around 10am on Saturday and our first stop was in Toowoomba for lunch. Toowomba i a quite big and very green city about two hours from Brisbane. It's called the garden city and well worth a visit. However we were aiming for the small ones so continued straight after lunch. Two hours later we entered Dalby. This town has actually got its name from immigrants from Isle of Man between UK and Ireland who in their turn got that name from Swedish Vikings! Felt like coming home... :)
Since it wasn't really time to check in at the Tourist park cabin we drove on to Lake Broadwater national park, aiming for a nice bird watching trail. We easily found the car park, turned off the engine and opened the doors. And everything turned dark... What happens? What is this? The car was totally filled with mosquitoes in two seconds. Bloody Hell, what do we do? We had seen a Kangaroo mob 100 m before we stopped so we decided we at least need to take some pictures before leaving.
Probably the most stupid decision taken this year. We were literally covered by mosquitoes during the five minutes photo session. I counted 30 bites on my body that night. Luckily the kangaroos were at least willing photo models.
On the way back we saw three black snakes, almost driving over one of them. Research showed that red bellied black snakes are common in the area so that's our guess although they didn't introduce themselves properly. Yes, of course they're deadly!
Back in Dalby we found our cabin and then had a Chinese Smorgasbord. Yes you read it correctly. Chinese Smorgasbord, funny crossover kitchen. For the non swedish speakers, smorgasbord is originally a swedish word literally meaning "sandwich table" and normally a buffet of light cold dishes and bread. It's said to be one of only two swedish words in official english. The other is ombudsman.
After the meal it was dark so we just drove 10 minutes out in the middle of nowhere to watch the stars. Really beautiful and so worth it. A good nights sleep and then off to Bunya Mountains and Kingaroy
To be continued
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