Western Qld - Chinchilla to Muckadilla

 Day Two - Sunday 7th September, 2025

Farewell Charley's Creek it's been a pleasure and we'll be back.

Righto, today's destination is the Muckadilla Pub, I've read so much about this pub on the Facebook group "Country Pub Camping" that I was keen to do a pub stay here since we were going right past.  During our travels today, I think it was today we saw what we called the Brolga Farm (there were just a ton of Brolga's altogether in one area, so looked like someone was farming them 😆) and also Emus.  Sadly there was plenty of roadkill from birds, roos, pigs to not sure what that was.

Pretty sure we arrived at Muckadilla Pub around 12.30pm, you just pop into the bar to "book" into the free camping in the paddock next to the pub or they have powered sites for $25/night.  There is 24hr access to toilets and showers.  The lovley Lass came out from behind the bar and asked how big our van was which I just pointed cross the road and then she showed me where to enter the paddock and just pick a spot.  Since we were the first to arrive, we setup next to a couple of trees with the western sun to our back, so that Barney had some extra shade to play in.

After setting up we decided to head to the pub for some lunch (completely forgot about it being Father's Day) and wondered why the pub was so busy 🤦‍♀️.  Owner explained Barney was welcome on the veranda and beer garden but we only had a couple of tables to choose from due to reservations.  She also explained there are 2 pub dogs which are red cattle dogs, one is profoundly deaf and getting old, the other is young.  

Before we even found a seat the older deaf dog came over to check out Barney.  Barney was very respectiveful and just stood still while she did this, then out of nowhere the deaf cattle dog just attacked Barney latching onto the side of Barney's face, he yelped and jumped back and hid behind Craig's legs.  We shooed the dog away and checked Barney was okay, (the next day we noticed he had a few teeth marks on his face and one just under his eye and little bits of fur missing, hopefully that doesn't scar him because he's just such a friendly little man).  When the owner came out to say hello to Barney, I did mention to her that the deaf dog attacked him and she said the dog could be grumpy.  Next time the deaf dog came past, poor little Barney was scarred and just went straight down on the ground with his head between his feet.  At least the owner told the dog to go away from us and made sure it stayed away for the duration of our lunch.  It was quite interesting watching her give instructions to the dog with sign language.

Barney did get a number of pats from adults and children, which made him happy.

The beer garden is really pleasant.

After lunch had been consumed, we went back to camp to relax, perhaps some of us had a nap.  Craig also had to fix one of the stabliser legs on the van, it had lost the little clip thing inside so he couldn't wind it up and down.  Craig pulled it apart, worked out the problem then fashioned up a replacement clip out of the metal bucket handle and put it back together - IT WORKS!

Headed back to the pub for dinner, this time sitting in the beer garden.  Pub dogs were kept inside the pub, which was great for Barney.

Craig had Pork Chops for dinner and of course I tried their Parmy.

We had 4 other campers join us in the paddock tonight and a big van was directed down to back paddock through the other driveway past the powered sites.

We had showers in the van and then retired.  The evening was very peaceful in the paddock and we enjoyed our stay at the Muckadilla Pub.