Moree to Toowoomba via Goondiwindi

After our late arrival into Moree yesterday, we were ready to leave our hotel by 9.00 am to spend some time seeing the sights of the town. Moree promotes itself as the “Home of Artesian Water Country” and as “Australia’s Artesian Spa Capital” because since 1895 it has tapped into the hot springs of the Great Artesian Basin and promoted them as healing waters attracting people seeking healthy spa water. We understood this but our focus was on the city architecture rather than the pools and other spa features.

Right across the road from our hotel was the Max Wales Memorial Park. Private Max Wales, a Moree local, was killed in the Battle of Long Tan in Vietnam. The memorial park celebrates his life and includes 18 rose bushes which represent each of the 18 young soldiers killed during that battle. 

Around seventeen buildings in the main street are built in the Art Deco style of architecture. This design style of visual arts, architecture, and product design originated in Paris in the 1910s and flourished internationally during the 1920s and 1930s. It is characterized by geometric shapes, bold decoration, vertical lines, stepped forms and ornamental motifs.

I found a mural oppposite the War Memorial Hall that shows soldiers dressed as they were from WW1 through to the present day. I thought that the soldier third from the left was a very good representation of an Australian infantryman on patrol in Vietnam.

We then headed towards Goondiwindi (pronounced Gundawindy) on the Gore Highway. It was the roughest road that we have driven on in this entire trip. The undulations and bumps didn’t allow us to do any cruise-controlled relaxed driving, it was hard work all the way tor the first 60 km as we tried to find the smoothest part of the road which was often on the other side of the centre line.

Many of the fields that we passed looked to be huge and laser leveled as cotton is one of the crops grown in this area. There was a lot of evidence of wind blown cotton along the roadside.

We also noticed regularly spaced ‘camps’ a little way off the road. We couldn’t see any evidence of structures and we spent a lot of time trying to guess what they might have been.  In the end, we concluded that they could have been drover’s camps, perhaps around an artesian bore, where they might have rested as they were moving cattle or sheep across the country .

The town of Goondiwindi was larger and more sophisticated than I might have imagined. As we crossed the corner by the Post Office, I caught a glimpse of a man who I thought to be Ross Stiles, a fellow 85 Transport Platoon Veteran who I know lives in this town. I stopped and said hello but it wasn’t Ross, just some other man who looked very much like him. This man knew Ross and said that he is sometimes mistaken for him.  

An old iron bridge across the Macintyre River is the official boundary between Queensland and New South Wales. It was built in 1914 to replace a timber bridge which had been built in 1879 and managed to survive the devastating flood of 1890. The bridge took 16 months to build and consists of two steel spans and lattice girders. It replaced a punt and, in turn, was superseded by a concrete bridge in 1992.

Just by the bridge is the old Customs House. This authentically restored building and its cottage garden are now home to a rich and colourful collection of historical items. This was one of 14 border posts established before Federation to maintain tariff walls between the colonies. Customs duty was an important source of revenue and the need to establish these posts reflects the increase in the movement of goods along inland routes as pastoral development occurred in the west of Queensland. Goondiwindi was a major border crossing.

Goondiwindi has experienced some devastating floods. Every few years, the floods would arrive causing havoc and loss. Often, the only area completely free of water was the sandhill in front of the Catholic Church. When heavy rain was reported up river, residents and visitors to the area would gather under the Tree of Knowledge by the river bank to read the river height and get the update on the estimated heights and times the flood peak would arrive in town. There is also a plaque to a man named Edward Redmond which reads: “In 1956 Edward Vernon Redmond, engineer to Goondiwindi Council, submitted a flood prevention scheme for the town. He and his foreman Bill McNulty had survived the flood by boat – marking the height on trees. The levee banks that he designed have saved Goondiwindi from major flooding ever since.”

In the same hiatoric area near the bridge across the Macintyre, the Gunsynd Statue commemorates the famous ‘Goondiwindi Grey’ – a racehorse that was bought for a measly $1,300 by 4 partners with the aim of winning a local bush race. The horse was the subject of a 1973 Tex Morton hit (it reached Number 5) titled ‘The Goondiwindi Grey’. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the horse had 29 wins including the 1971 Epsom Handicap and the 1972 Cox Plate. It came third in the 1972 Melbourne Cup.

Back in town, the most outstanding bulding in Goondiwindi is the VIctoria Hotel. It is a beautifully preserved, and highly original Queensland country pub with wide verandas and an unusual tower which makes it look more like a wedding cake than a pub. The wide verandahs today are still unchanged and are a superb vantage point for street processions. There are stories of horsemen, in the old days, riding into the bar and lassoing bottles from the shelves. It is certainly true that a customer took his boat into the bar during the 1956 floods. The crowd loved it!

We bought a sandwich at the bakery and enjoyed eating it for lunch in the park by the river. It was a popular place with many other people using the other picnic tables in the area.

The last part of our trip for today was a 232 km drive to Toowoomba. There is nothing much to report about this section of our journey other than it was very remote and flat. Along this 2 1/2 hour drive, we passed only one little town as well as many farming properties with enormous canola and grain fields. It was a popular route for road transports.