After a very welcome sleep we were picked up at 7am from the caravan park in Quilpie by the 80 year old "Mailman" Dave. Two other passengers, Marion & Dennis Smith from Tatura in Victoria made up the full compliment for the twice weekly mailman run. Our vehicle for this excursion was a 4 door Toyota Hilux 4WD with tray back. The small canvas mailbags were carried in an old chest freezer on the back, together with sundry boxes, cartons, rolls of fencing wire etc for delivery to the various outlying cattle stations we would visit.
It was not very long before we left the bitumen, travelling for most of the remaining 500km round trip on dirt roads and property tracks. One of our first deliveries was to the homestead of a very isolated cattle and sheep station where the two young children were eagerly awaiting the arrival of a carton containing next months school lessons. Because of their isolation they do "Distance Education" via satellite. The boy was in year six and the girl was in year two. They do not go to boarding school until year eight. They had just spent 4 days at Charleville (300km) doing activities with their other class-mates who they only see once per term.
A number of other very large stations were visited, some as far as 85km from their nearest neighbour, before we arrived at "Trinidad" where we were greeted by the owner Margaret Pilliger who is a widow of ten years. Margaret runs the property of 650,000 acres in conjunction with her daughter and son-in-law who live in another house on the property. She treated all five of us to the best morning tea imaginable. Freshly baked scones, biscuits and walnut cake. She has the most magnificent green garden surrounding the modest house. Fruit trees with the biggest mandarines, oranges and grapefruit you can imagine. We were iinvited to look over the sheds, workshop etc before I helped her pick mandarines using a step ladder to reach the ones out of her reach.
In all we visited about eight homesteads, however three stand out for various reasons. "Araluen", a station of approx 210,000 acres is of special mention as here we were almost persuaded to fill the vacancy of resident caretakers. The young female owner is also a road train driver, bush pilot and also operates a very successful quilt business, "Quilpie Quilts". Consequently she has little time for looking after the homestead and garden. It was while we were here that the greatest coincidence occured. Our travelling companions of the day, Dennis & Marion mentioned several times that the temporary caretaker looked very much like their brother-in-law. When they mentioned the resemblance to the man, he answered yes to all their questions re their relations, name, nickname, previous hometown etc. It was in fact their brother-in -law who they had lost contact with 15 years ago when he divorced his first wife - the sister of Dennis.
His curent wife, (the mother of the property owner) and he had arrived at the property one week ago to fill-in as caretaker while the daughter took a roadtrain to Brisbane. The two men, Dennis and Vince had played footy together for years in Shepparton. Beat that!
Another property of mention was one where the resident was a professional roo shooter. I was able to find out a great deal about his profession. On a good night he shoots 70 kangaroos on the 25,000 acre property. At 80 cents per kilo, with the average roo around 30 Kg gutted, it's no wonder both he and his wife drive the very latest model Landcruiser utes.
The final property also worth mentioning was "Thylungra", currently due to be sold by auction on 9th Sept in Brisbane. This 695,000 acre cattle and sheep station has absolutely everything. Look it up on the internet.
Our very long and most interesting day concluded at 5pm when we were returned to the caravan park.
Kevin and Gail.
View a small sample of our trip photos at:
www.picasaweb.google.com/kevinh055
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