Western Qld - Linville Railway Camp to Home

Day 21 - Saturday 27th September, 2025

That's it, the holiday is over and the only thing left to do is travel home, unpack, clean, wash clothes, mow the property and get ready to go back to work on Monday 😮‍💨

But first, after a nice sleep in and lazy morning in bed we need to do breakfast.  Staying with the theme of making it easy we headed over to the Linville Cafe a couple doors up from the pub.

Absolutely bloody good feed of bacon, eggs, toast, homemade local relish and good coffee.  Make sure you give it a go if you camp at Linville.  Made sure I grabbed myself a bottle of the tomato relish too which they sell in the cafe.

Only thing left to do, is pack up and hit the road.  As we drove out of the camping area, the people camped nearby all yelled out, "bye Barney" as we drove past 😂  think he got some fans there!

Travelled a total of 5,116Klms

Fuel:  869.66Lt at a cost of $1,713.22

Making our fuel consumption on average approximately 17Lt per 100Klm.

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed it and perhaps got some information from our trip.

See you on our next adventure!

Western Qld - Chinchilla Weir to Linville Railway Camp

 Day 21 - Friday 26th September, 2025

Last day of our holidays, tomorrow home and back to reality 😮‍💨  But first we have one more stop and tonight we're at the Linville Railway donation camp, we've been talking about staying here for ages and it's not far from home but we just haven't gotten out here.

Agreed on pies from the bakery for breakfast, stopped at a park to eat them.  We took some back roads from McAlister across to Kaimkillenbum to miss Dalby and stay off the highway and it wasn't a bad trip, mostly bitumen, little bit of gravel which was in good condition, way more interesting then travelling the highway and more scenic. 

No stopping at The Bun Hotel today 😮  but we stopped at Maclagan Butcher so Craig could go shopping 😆  He picked up a really nice slab o Rib Eye fillet sliced, some beef ribs and a good filleting knife.  That meat has maxed out the space we had in freezer after my excited buy up at the Mitchell Butchers.

Onwards to Linville, arriving about 12pm, perfect timing to have lunch at the Linville Hotel!!  Found a spot up in the corner and set up a basic camp, it was busier than we thought it would be but makes sense when we thought about with the Railway Trial and it being school holidays and all.  You have toilets, $2.00 Hot Showers, rubbish bins, campfires allowed and 2 x powered sites @ $5.00 extra/night on top of your donation which is fair enough.

Over to the pub for lunch, making our donation at the hall along the way.  Pub is dog friendly in the beer garden, so we found a shadey spot away so Barney settle and not be over excited thinking every human in the place is there to see him.

We ordered some the small plates lunch and poor Craig while carrying them back to our table went for a slide down the slope and pretty much all of our lunch fell onto the ground.  He hurt his back and shoulder in the process, so lunch was not off to a good start.

I took the dropped wings and stuff back to the bar and was going to re-order our lunch nd pay for them, when the owner just said to the young Lady I was talking to "just tell the kitchen the order and give them a new beeper and don't charge them".  I said to the owner I was happy to pay but he said "no, we will happily replace your meals no charge" - I thought that was really lovely of them and they didn't have to.

When our replacement meals were ready, I went and collected them, Craig was not game to have another go 😖

Lunch was very nice.......  eventually 😆

Back at camp Craig went for a nap, his shoulder he had surgery on was really hurting after his tumble, as was his back so hopefully he'll feel better later this afternoon.

Barney and I amused ourselves for that couple of hours, watching the new arrivals and the comings and goings.

Late afternoon we went for a walk to look at the old Railway Station building and carriages.  There is an information board with the history and also info on the Rail Trial you can walk, ride a bike or horse along.

Making our last night easy, we decided to have dinner at the pub - chicken parmy and beef & guinness pie, both were delicious and no tumbles happened due to sitting above the slope in the beer garden area.

We ended up leaving straight after we finished dinner because we were being smashed by mozzies and the same happened when we got back to camp.  So we jumped inside and decided we'd give Netflix a run on our TV but ended up watching Formula One updates instead 😄

In the middle of the night Barney woke up and started to growl, then woofed - our little boy is growing up and had his first night time guard 🐕🥰  Pretty sure it was the cows next door walking past, we got up anyway and wound the awning in to stop it flapping in the gusts of wind.

Very nice, quiet camping area and the pub is lovely serving delicious meals and friendly country vibes.

Western Qld - Mitchell to Chinchilla Weir

Day 20 - Thursday 25th September, 2025

Caught up with Renee before she headed to her new job.  We decided to just pack up and get pies from the Mitchell Bakery again for breakfast since they were good on the way up.  Visited the butchers which was next door and grabbed a few bits a meat too, and for some reason the pies just didn't taste as good as they did the first time.

Our destination today is Chinchilla Weir (with School Holidays in full swing, I convinced Craig the Chinchilla Brewery was not the place for us this time), we've never stayed at the Weir but our neighbours have on their trip last year and said it was a really nice spot.  First things first though,  we will need somewhere to stop for lunch.....  and that will the Dulacca Pub (the Pink Pub on the hill), never been there before so lets give it a go.

What  great pub, with powered and unpowered camping out the back with amenities, dog friendly covered deck at the pub and beer garden, complete with lawn bowls green in the beer garden - how cool!

The food was delicious and the staff were so friendly and helpful.  Recommend stopping in here.

Back on the road to Chinchilla to find the Information Centre to make our donation to camp at the Weir, well wasn't that a cluster puck trying to get to the Info Centre and get a park, we wanted to do the right thing and got there eventually, but holey moley I think Craig's patience was well and truely absent by then 🤐😖

That done, we headed out to the Weir, found  spot and set up.  Craig and Barney went for a sleep, because nobody likes a cranky Craig.  Once it had cooled down and the boys were up from their nap, we went for a walk around the entire camping area - WOW how great is it!  Great amenities, powered sites with fire rings, BBQ areas with seating, pontoon and boat ramp, just awesome!  There were still a few powered sites left, but it's very caravan park type set up and it's nice to have a bit of space around us.  Craig did announce "oh maybe we should have driven up here for a look when we got here" I certainly wasn't going to suggest that then and nor was I saying anything now 😄

Re-heated leftover Butter Chicken curry for dinner tonight, then early to bed.

Western Qld - Tambo to Mitchell

Day 19 - Wednesday 24th September, 2025

Later start this morning and we are parting ways with Doreen and Razzle today, who need to head back to Emerald to have their Ranger serviced before continuing on to Gladstone to meet other friends and we have to be home in three days.  We decided on breakfas at the other cafe in Tambo - Mary and Martha's Coffee House, so we packed up and said our farewell to Doreen and Razzle.

Breakfast we really yummy at the cafe and reasonably priced.  We ran into Doreen and Razzle coming out of the Tambo Teddy shop, she had to buy a teddy for their grandson.

Tonight's destination is a free camp just outside of Mitchell called Fisherman's Rest.  As like many places on this trip, we stayed here about 20 years ago and remember it to be a very nice spot.  We arrived at Fisherman's Rest around 3pm and it still looks lovely, right on the Maranoa River with a drop toilet and some rubbish bins.  There are a few people camped here and unfortunately the best spot right next to the river are already taken,  of course, so we found ourselves a little spot down the end that was a bit sandy so we just put our mat down. 

About 4.30pm we hear the roar of a V8 come in just near us and low and behold it's the Lady Renee who was camped behind us at Tambo, who is travelling with her two dogs, a pet snake (yep you read that right) in a Landcruiser 79 Wagon and kick arse caravan, really great set up for her home on wheels.  Renee is really lovely and her Beagle pup loved playing with Barney, but not so much the older and cranky chihuahua.  It was nice to see her again and I had told her last night we were headed to Fisherman's Rest today, although her destination was elsewhere Renee had received a call in Augethella this morning offering her a job around Dalby on a property, so she decided to head here instead on her way to the job.

A quite night with a campfire and some butter chicken, rice and popadoms cooked over that fire. 

Western Qld - Lara Wetlands to Tambo

Day 18 - Tuesday 23rd September, 2025

Today we are moving on from Lara Wetlands to Tambo and finally, we are going to the CHICKEN RACES at the Royal Carrangarra Hotel in Tambo!!!!!  

A straight through drive today, boring as really.  The Razzles stopped in Blackall to see the Wool Scour, they haven't been to Blackall before, as they really haven't done any travel through Western Queensland.  We continued on to Tambo, we don't need to be in each others pockets all day long.

We arrived in Tambo about 1pm, I had pre-booked two drive through sites for us already, so we booked into the Tambo Mill Motel and Caravan Park.  The lovely owner was so helpful, he showed us to our spot and explained that our friends will be in the site next to us and they can just drive straight in and we'll be facing each other - such a sweet man.

We got the best site with the only tree in the drive through area - nice shade over the caravan on what is a very hot day.  And, what a gorgeous bottle tree it is.

Thought we'd share the love around town and pop over to the Tambo Tavern for lunch, unfortunately they were not serving lunch.  We headed to the Royal Carrangarra Hotel to see if they were doing lunch, but no luck so we had a drink and I grabbed a T-Shirt and Stubby Cooler for the chicken races.  We walked through town, where we found a Furphy Water cart, then headed to Fanny Mae's Cafe for a light lunch, which was directly across the road from our park.

There was a bit of napping after lunch, while we awaited the Razzles arrival.  I am glad that I booked our sites, because as the afternoon went on every drive through site filled up.  These chicken races MUST be very popular 😄

Really nice facilites at this caravan park, it's a combo toilet/shower room and very roomy and plenty to cover the number of campers.  Also a laundry and dump point and everything in town is within an easy walk.

A few arvo drinks with Doreen and Razzle after they arrived around 3pm, we all got freshened up with a shower and put on our going out clobber, it's time to head to the Royal Carrangarra Hotel for these chicken races! Yay, I'm so excited 👏

It is very popular, even this late in the racing season which goes from April to October.  We grabbed a drink and headed out the back to find a seat in the Schnitzel Stadium 😆  The pub is extremely dog friendly, the only places dogs cannot go are in the two dining rooms inside and have two pub dogs themselves that roam around. The anticipation is high throughout the punters, the chickens are auctioned off for charity, so Doreen and I put a plan in place for our little syndicate to buy a chicken but we left the bidding to the boys 🤔  We did not get a chicken 🤦‍♀️

Barney's never met a chook, let alone even seen one before, so this could be funny

Blessing the girls before racing 😄

There may only be one chicken race, but you have the lead up commentary, then the chicken form information, which is like the race guide on which chook has won how many times, when and why (eg.  cheated). Now we move onto the form lap, so you can have a look at the chooks in action, then the shameless advertising to plug Ben's Chicken Racing merchandise (his words, not mine) 😆 now we start bidding on each chicken, then chickens are given some encouraging words from Ben and then we are racing - 4 laps and the winner was Sparkles the Chook!  The punter that bid on her, came away with a $429.00 prize pot - not bad for an afternoon's work at a chicken race, is it.

We had dinner at the pub which was packed, and the food was delicious, then strolled back to camp for an early night - all that excitment from the chicken races just plum tuckered us out 😄😄😄

Inside the Royal Carrangarra Hotel

The sunset in Western Queensland are just glorious