All Aussie Adventures: TEXAS QUEENSLAND

So in order to escape the cold weather we need to make some serious kilometres north so we dove for around half a day, but after getting supplies we started running out of daylight. We decided to pull over and we found shelter in the Bellata Golf Club. Apparently it takes a lot of balls to play!

The golf course

Not far from Bellata we came across this cotton crop which is the first cotton crop I have ever seen. Heading into the area there were hundreds of cotton balls on the side of the road that looked a bit like snow in 25 degrees Celsius.

We needed fuel badly and LPG around this area is a little bit thin on the ground so we have to keep topping up the unleaded. We pulled into the Bonshaw which was like pulling into yester-year!

Even though these bowsers are from yester-year the prices certainly weren't! Even the dog can't believe prices we had to pay! What the.....!

but in the store they had all this fantastic memorabilia, from old petrol bowsers and fire extinguishers and to old barber chairs

The most bizarre of the collection was something you might find at a side show alley....

It was a 'Handy Grip Test'. You put a penny in the slot and test how hard you could grip the handle....

Unfortunately if you are either a Banker or Mason probably not a good idea to shake hands with a Farmer!!!! ;0)

I've always thought of myself as a good farmer hahahaha......

We arrived in little town on the boarder of Queensland and NSW called Texas and were greeted with a beautiful sunset!

The origin of the town's name is generally regarded as a reference to a territorial dispute. The land in the area was first settled by the McDougall brothers, who found squatters there on returning from the goldfields. Once their legal right to the land was recognised, they named their property in honour of the rather more famous dispute between the United States and Mexico over territory in Texas, USA.

Texas QLD was connected by the Texas railway line from Inglewood in November 1930. The line was closed in 1994.

Up until about 1986, tobacco farming was an important industry in the area and many Italian families settled the area to run and work the tobacco farms.

Today it is a beautifully kept little town

With some quite historic buildings

In 2011 the town was hit by devastating floods and this sculpture was put in place as remembrance

The next day at our camp site we heard the rumblings of cars screaming past and looked out to see the Variety Bash 2016 cars kicking up a bunch of dust

Variety Club is a charity that raises money and works with children growing up with disability, serious illness or disadvantage and need help.

Variety is the Children’s Charity.

Variety works with individual families and organisations to deliver five core programs that help children who are sick, disadvantaged or have special needs to live, laugh and learn.

More can be found at

www.variety.org.au/VIC

All of the cars in the bash need to be pre 1976 and are made up to look as zany as possible

Not very clear but this one has a dolls house on top.

Every car that enters the Big Bash raises at least $4000 for disadvantaged children :)

Also in this little town amazingly we also caught up with the riders of the GS 2016 World Tour

The GS World Tour consists of 3 motor cycle riders and one or two of their passengers riding BMW motorcycles with a fully equipped support crew. The riders are from France which is where they commenced their tour and to date have ridden from France flown to South America where they have travelled down through Bogota, Cuzco to Santiago.
From Santiago they caught a plane to Australia where they have travelled from Brisbane to this little town in Texas Queensland. We caught up with the riders and crew doing maintenance on their bikes and getting some much needed R & R for a day.

Speaking with them I found out they had been on the road since April of this year and expect to be home in France in October.

The fully equipped support vehicle has just about everything needed to perform repairs on the road.

One of the beautiful looking BMW machines the riders are using. Hmmm I want one!

Getting ready to set off on the next part of their journey

From here the riders will be making their way up through central Australia on their way to Darwin doing around 300 kms per day depending on whether they hit problems or not.

Off they go.

I wanna come!

They head off to the service station for fuel

From Darwin the party heads up through Asia, into the Middle East back into Europe and then home to France. We wish them well! :)

You can see Utube video of the commencement and other stuff by visiting their web site by copying the following into your address bar:

https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/france/photo/detail/P90212987/gs-world-tour-2016-organized-by-t3-03-2016

Texas Queensland also has some rich heritage and building to go with it

Wool gets the credit as Australia's most significant post-war export industry, but could rabbits be Australia's forgotten success story?

It is more than 20 years since the last rabbit was processed at the works, known to locals as 'the rabbit factory', but many still remember how significant the industry was.

Long-time resident Sally Ridgeway takes visitors on tours through the old rabbit works and tells them that - back in the war years - rabbits kept the town and perhaps even the country, from starvation.

"I think basically it was even bigger than the wool industry. They say Australia rode on the sheep's back, but I think for a certain length of time it rode on the rabbit's back too," she said.

"Everybody trapped rabbits; farmers, the locals who couldn't get work. Texas didn't suffer in the depression because there were so many people employed here."

The building has been well preserved

Lots of buildings aren't quite as well maintained though!

Not far from the Texas is a place called Goat Rock so we headed out to take a look.

I came across this rock that Karen thought was out of place. Where do you want it now Karen?