Tonight We Are In Mundubbera

Before we get into today’s travel detail, I have two important things to report.

• Today is he first day that I did not need to wear a jumper since we left home. The weather is certainly getting warmer as we head further north.
• Today is the exact anniversary of me having to report for National Service. It’s 57 years since my first day in the army.

If you have never heard of the town of MUndubbera, don’t worry, neither had I until we started planning this driving trip. It is quite insignificant – even the tour guide finds nothing much exciting about this place, mentioning only the bicentennial park, a mural and a museum. We are stopping over tonight just because it is a reasonable driving distance between both Toowoomba and Rockhampton.

We left Toowoomba by 9.30 am this morning and started our drive to the town of Crows Nest. It is reputedly the only town in Australia named after a local Aborigine. Jimmy Crow was an Aboriginal who lived in a hollow tree in the mid 18900s. There is a statue of him in the Village Green. The shops and public buildings n the town are situated on the four sides of the village green – one of them, the ‘Nest Cafe’ made a very good coffee.

Further on, we came to a tiny spot called Cooyar that appeared to only have a pub, one house and a war memorial. It actually has a poulation of arpound 200 people but they stay hidden away from the main road.

I always keep my eye out for interesting scnery and I found an interesting cottage along , along with its catte yards, by the road near the town of Maidenhaill

Our next stop was at Kingaroy, the peanut capital of Australia. Its huge silos stand out at the end of the Main Street. They were built in 1938, 1948 and 1951 and reflect the constant growth of the peanut industry over those periods. The Kingaroy Peanut Silos are a striking physical sign of the Peanut Company of Australia (now owned by Bega) with the headquarters of the company located in Kingaroy, since 1927. The huge peanut silos are 42 metres high and capable of holding 16,000 tonnes.

Bega has recently announced that they will be closing their peanut processing operations here in Kingaroy and this will be a blg blow to the local community.

One of the iconic places in town is the Peanut Van. It has been operating from its current corner since 1969. it is a symbol of the town and they sell about twenty favours of roasted peanuts. .

Some may say that the biggest peanut to ever come from Kingaroy was Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen who was Premier of Queensland from 1968 to 1987. He was socially conservative, economically ambitious, perhaps corrupt and certainly politically divisive. He profoundly shaped Queensland’s governance and development. He dominated the National Party. 

Bjelke-Petersen was frequently detached from the formal processes of cabinet and Westminster governance. But his reliance on a capable and loyal bureaucracy resulted a distinct, if unconventional mode of operation. If this sounds like another dominant politician, you could be forgiven in likening him to Donald Trump. The main difference is that for all of politcal expediency, Joh was still a gentleman and compared to Trump he was less crass, more decent and with defined morals. He also surrounded himself with competent people.

For the rest of the afternoon, we drove through ‘Savanah’ like country with grasslands and trees, arriving at Mundubbera at around 5.00 pm. Cattle grazing is an important industry in tnis Burnett Region of Queensland.

Historically, Mundubbera claimed to be the Citrus Capital of Queensland. Once, the Mundubbera district produced over one third of Queensland’s citrus fruit and claimed to have the largest single citrus orchard in the Southern Hemisphere. Today the district has diversified with local orchardists producing mangoes, avocados, lychees, peaches, nectarines, watermelons, rockmelons and blueberries. It is now Queensland’s largest producer of table grapes.