Toowoomba

On 10 January 2011, we took a train from Brisbane to Sydney, a trip of thirteen hours. All day we travelled through beautiful country, lush and green after a summer of plentiful rain. At our hotel in Woolloomooloo, we turned on the television.

On the screen was a vision of brown, surging floodwater pouring through streets, cars floating and tumbling and people clinging to trees waiting for swift water rescuers.

“Scenes of disaster in a flash flood in Toowoomba”, the commentary said.

“Toowoomba? That can’t be right. Toowoomba doesn’t have a river. It’s on top of a mountain range,” we said. That’s what everyone said.

Days of heavy rain had brought a wall of water rushing down through the Toowoomba CBD. Four people died. A YouTube video shot by a local shows the power of the flood. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCEs0kpF1Z8

We’d driven through Toowoomba many times, down James Street and across East Creek, a minor creek running down a concrete channel through mown parkland. Now, a woman had been washed off that crossing in her car and drowned.

James St at East Creek, scene of the catastrophic 2011 flooding

Two creeks run through Toowoomba: East Creek and West Creek, converging in the central shopping area. For much of their length these creeks run through concrete channels and culverts, and it’s easy to forget that this was once swampland. The first town established here was not Toowoomba but Drayton, on higher ground to the southwest.

“Drayton Inn”, first established in 1847; now restored owned by the National Trust of Queensland *Photo: State Library of Queensland*

Toowoomba itself was originally called The Swamp.

Toowoomba, 130kms from Brisbane on the Warrego Highway, is where the West meets the Coast. It’s known rightly as the Garden City. People drive up from the humid coastal strip to enjoy the cool air and the beautiful temperate climate gardens.

Looking east from Picnic Point across Table Top Mountain

When I was young you could buy cans of “Mountain Air” at Picnic Point, where the view down towards the coast is often obscured by a haze of humidity.

Cans of mountain air. Photo: Facebook: Remember Toowoomba When

Old Toowoomba streets are lined with camphor laurel trees bringing a distinctive charm.

The camphor laurel is an invasive species that has taken over Brisbane creeks and much of the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales. In Toowoomba, with its cooler, drier climate, these huge old trees are treasured.

An avenue of camphor laurels runs through the middle of Queen’s Park towards the Botanic Garden, and when an old tree dies or is removed it’s replaced by a young one. There must be a nursery for camphor laurel trees here, specially raised for the purpose.

The famous formal floral displays of Queen’s Park Botanic Garden bring crowds every spring to the Carnival of Flowers.

The Toowoomba district puts on a beautiful face for the Carnival of Flowers, including parks and private gardens and nearby villages and towns. The gardens of Spring Bluff Railway Station, fifteen kms from the city on Murphy’s Creek Road, are beautiful at any time of the year.

At Spring Bluff, the Westlander train line from Brisbane to Charleville curves up the steep range and past the long-closed station. Flower beds surround the buildings, in full bloom during the Carnival of Flowers all the way up to the old station master’s house, now a café. Further up the hill is a lonely cricket field and a wonderful 1907 timber dance hall, unlit and open to the breezes.

This line also services the coal mines north and west of Toowoomba, and when you visit the station, you’ll likely hear a long coal train rumbling up the track with empty wagons or hauling a full load past the station and down towards Brisbane and the port.

Coal train going down the range past Spring Bluff Station

Toowoomba sits on the rich farmlands of the Darling Downs, and expansion of open-cut coal mines across the farmlands causes endless controversy.

Queensland’s regional cities have always been places where western people come to retire. Here they can access facilities for which they have had to travel long distances in their earlier, working lives: shops, entertainment, social groups and health services.

For the farm and station children further west, primary schooling can be had at a local state school if they’re close enough to town; or at home via the School of Distant Education if there is a parent or employee to help them with their lessons.

When kids reach secondary school, many families choose boarding schools in Brisbane, or in the regions: Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton, Yeppoon or Southport. Herberton, Charters Towers, Warwick and Toowoomba in particular are famous old boarding school towns, situated as they are in high country west of the coast.

The Glennie School, Toowoomba, ca.1925. One of the many long-established boarding schools of Toowoomba. Photo: State Library of Queensland

Toowoomba has more boarding schools than any other regional city: eight of them, according to my quick search.

The University of Southern Queensland, also in Toowoomba, provides online courses and residential colleges, and the city is a popular place for summer schools and conferences, drawing participants from many areas, cultures and climates.

Campus of the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, showing its beautiful Japanese Gardens. Photo: univerlist.com

I recently heard a story that says a lot about regional Queensland.

There was a woman from a cattle property at Morven, the small town between Mitchell and Charleville, 530kms west of Toowoomba along the Warrego Highway. At the time the country was in a severe drought. There had been no rain for many months.

Enrolled in an online course through UniSQ, this woman travelled to Toowoomba for a live-in seminar. It was school vacation time, and she was accommodated in the male boarding house at Downlands College.

She was woken up in the night to the sound of running water.

“It’s raining!” she thought with delight.

It wasn’t until morning that she realised that her room was next to the boys’ bathroom, and the rain she’d heard was actually the sound of the urinals running all night.

This old Queensland city of country people, conventional streetscapes and temperate climate parks has also been designated one of Australia’s many Refugee Welcome Zones. Local and federal government, volunteers and refugee leaders have supported thousands of new arrivals here, from South Sudan, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as Yazidi refugees from Iraq and Syria. The TAFE provides English language classes, and local organisations support these people dislocated from their homelands as they work at integrating into Australian society.

Recently we took a drive up to Toowoomba. The weather was bracing and sunny as we walked through Queen’s Park and admired the flourishing seedlings in the Botanic Gardens, timed for maximum flowering for the Festival in September.

Flower beds in the Botanic Gardens, planted for the Carnival, with an old bottle and gigantic kauri in the background

We marvelled again at the old bunya pines and hoop pines, and the mighty kauri towering above them all, then went to cosy and welcoming Fitzy’s Hotel for dinner.

Cosy bar at Fitzy’s Hotel. Photo: https://www.fitzys.com

We ate breakfast at the Picnic Point Café, where I was a little disappointed that they no longer sell cans of mountain air; admired the view down towards the coast, then drove to Boyce Gardens, where the daffodils are flowering beneath towering tallow wood trees.

Boyce House in Boyce Gardens, with tallow wood trees and the rainforest gully

In the gully below, a rainforest is flourishing untouched, a rare remnant of the vegetation that once flourished in all the local gullies.

Not all of Toowoomba has native vegetation; and in some areas the non-native common myna bird dominates the streets and gardens: those destructive brown birds that lay their eggs in other birds’ nests.

The native birds are there too, though. Kookaburras, magpies, butcher birds, lorikeets and cockatoos can be heard in the tall eucalypts of Queen’s Park and the old tallow woods of Boyce Gardens; and whipbirds and bower birds in the forest gullies that sprawl down the range to the coastal plains.

With a population of just 113,000, Toowoomba doesn’t have all the facilities of a major city, but this is a beautiful part of Queensland, and it’s easy to understand why people come here: from the West, from the Coast, and from far, far away.

August 1, 2026 1

Beach Houses

“Why don’t we have a beach house?” Lizzie wants to know. “Our families used to have beach houses. Currumbin, Maroochydore, Alexandra Headland, Yeppoon. Where did they all go?”

That happens with real estate. Life changes and financial situations get in the way.

“If only they’d held on to that house/that piece of land – it would be worth millions now,” we say.

Queensland has 13,347 kms of coastline, including its 1,955 islands, and 715 recorded beaches. (ozbeaches.com.au)

Over 70% of the population lives within twenty kilometres of the coast.

We go to the beach a lot.

This said, much of the coastline is lined with mangroves and mud, isolated, and infested with crocodiles and stingers, and because it is sheltered by the Great Barrier Reef and the islands has no surf. Great for fishing; not so great for swimming.

These days, owning a house near any actual sandy surf beach along the Queensland coast, from Yeppoon to the New South Wales border, is for the wealthy.

Last century, development along the coast was nothing like it is today. My mother’s father, Fred, was manager of a sheep station outside Barcaldine, 620 kms to the west, and he bought a house at Yeppoon. According to my aunt, who remembered it from her early childhood, it was a traditional timber house on the side of the hill, looking out over the sea, with a steep path down to the beach.

Like many Central Western Queenslanders, my mother’s family regularly holidayed at Yeppoon and nearby Emu Park. They took the train from Barcaldine, changing trains at Rockhampton and continuing down to the coast. Today, the railway line to Yeppoon has gone.

Emu Park, 1910s. My grandmother Phyl at the back, with her step-mother and sister

Now Yeppoon is a modern beach resort town, with spectacular houses and apartments listed on Airbnb; many of them, no doubt, occupied still by holiday makers from the Central West. Fred’s old family house would have been demolished years ago.

Fred and Phyl ended their lives back at the seaside, with a house on the hill at Currumbin Beach: a nice house with a three-bedroom flat under it for visiting family, and a fine view down to the sea and Elephant Rock, where we used to play and climb.

My grandparents’ Currumbin house, now gone

When Fred and Phyl died, the house was sold and demolished. Townhouses were built on the block.

Our earliest family beach house was built in the early 1900s, at Bribie Island, on the Pumicestone Passage side (now known as Bongaree), not far from where John Oxley had moored his small ship just eighty years earlier, and Matthew Flinders before him. The family would travel there on the excursion boat “Koopa”.

My great-grandparents’ house at Bribie Island, early 1900s

The house was built by my father’s grandparents, who loved boats and the seaside, and spent time sailing on Moreton Bay.

The old man, my great-grandfather, was descended from a ship’s pilot from Kent.

These things go down the generations. Maybe that’s where Lizzie’s love of the water comes from.

Lizzie and Buster loving the water at Agnes Water

My father’s parents had a north-facing house on Alexandra Headland from the 1920s or earlier, when the Headland was almost bare of buildings but covered in coastal scrub.

The Coast House, Alexandra Headland, around 1920s

The Alexandra Headland house, known to the family as the Coast House, had timber shutters propped out by struts instead of windows, a dunny out the back and a cold shower under the tank stand, and a view along the beaches as far as Noosa Heads. I remember lying in bed in the little verandah room, with a row of shells on the windowsill and the sound of waves crashing on the rocks below. Lizzie would have loved it.

With my cousins at the beach, early 1950s

As a teenager my father was a member of the Alexandra Headland Surf Club, even leading the club team at surf carnivals. Many family get-togethers happened on that beach, up until my grandmother died in the 1970s and the house was sold. An ugly brick apartment block occupies the site now.

We still visited Alex for our holidays though, camping in the Caravan Park.

At Alexandra Headlands Caravan Park in the early 1960s. My mother packing up the tent

In the 1950s my parents bought an old timber house on a dirt road running along the Maroochy River. It had two bedrooms and a sleepout, an enclosed verandah, and a kitchen with an ice chest. Dad concreted under the house and installed a cold shower down there. The dunny in the back yard was sheltered from view by an enormous purple bougainvillea, and there were possums in the ceiling. We called that house Toad Hall, and we loved it.

Toad Hall, on Maroochy River, with my brothers in the old boat. My mother in the water

We swam in the river, jumped off the jetty, and went sailing in our new boat.

My mother made the sails, and dyed them red, to go with the popular song: “Red sails in the sunset, way out on the sea, please carry my loved one home safely to me…”

After working all week, my father would complain about having to spend half of Saturday mowing the lawn at Toad Hall. That’s the downside of owning a beach house: the maintenance.

Toad Hall was sold when we moved to Brisbane and it survived for many years on Bradman Avenue before progress came along and the house was demolished. Apartments were built on the site.

One Christmas I went searching for a family holiday house to rent, on the coast, in the southeast corner, and I had to go as far north as Agnes Water before I could find one that would fit us all. It was a couple of blocks back from the beach, with “ocean glimpses” from its verandah.

In the resort towns on the Sunshine and Gold Coasts, there are fewer waterside holiday houses now. It’s nearly all apartments.

Where would Lizzie have to go, to buy a beach house with ocean or water views?

And what would it cost?

February 21, 2026 2

Crocodiles: a repost from Qld Museum’s blog – important information if you’re near the water in NQ

Australia’s crocodiles: Freshwater vs Saltwater – What’s the Difference?

December 26, 2025 0

Road Trip to Thargo

In late September I take a two-hour flight from Brisbane to Charleville to meet my son Joe and his family.

Rex Airlines is subsidised by the government for regional flights like this. In a two-prop Saab 340 with seats for about 30, with only a dozen or so passengers, I fly west over the ranges. Smoke from bush fires rises from the forests below.

We’re told we can pick up our checked luggage from the carousel in the terminal. There is no carousel in the tiny Charleville Terminal. The bags are lined up on the floor.

I remember the Burketown airport, years ago, where a small tractor drew up outside the terminal and we grabbed our bags off its trailer at random. Joe tells me of a regional flight in Russia when their bags were tipped out unceremoniously in a pile in the snow.

Outside the terminal I’m greeted by Danny and Pete, aged 11 and 9. With Joe and Isabel they’ve driven 1,325 kms from their home at Babinda, south of Cairns; equivalent to driving from London to Edinburgh and back, but with less traffic. And fewer people.

They’ve spent nights at Charters Towers (pop. 8,040 in the 2021 census according to Wikipedia) and Blackall (pop. 1,365), with stops at Torrens Creek (pop. 46), Barcaldine (pop. 1,540) and Augathella (pop. 328).

This school holiday weekend, the Mulga Cup is being held in Charleville. Two hundred under 11 rugby league players in twenty-two teams, from as far away as the Gold Coast, are in town, with their families. Accommodation is hard to find.

The teams for the 2025 Mulga Cup in Charleville *qrl.com.au/news*

In western Queensland, towns are far apart. We can either backtrack to Augathella, 84kms to the north, where there is one room available in the motel behind the pub, or head out to Quilpie, 211kms; but the whole of Quilpie (pop. 530) is booked out because there’s a wedding in town this weekend.

Before leaving Brisbane, I’d rung my list of Charleville motels again, and found a lucky cancellation. We get to stay here and see the Bilby Experience, look at the stars and planets at the Cosmos Centre, and visit the Royal Flying Doctor Service Visitors Centre.

At the Visitors’ Centre I give Pete a fifty dollar note to post in the donations box. He looks at me in surprise, but I’m remembering the two Flying Doctors emergency flights I’d had out of Burketown, years before. The RFDS is vital in the bush.

Then we’re off to the west.

90 kms out on the Diamantina Developmental Road to Quilpie, we stop at the iconic Foxtrap Roadhouse. This is a place with many stories to tell.

Foxtrap Cooladdi Roadhouse *Tripadvisor*

While we’re there, a man and a woman in work clothes come in and settle on stools near us. They’re from the cattle station across the road, and they smell like hard work and horses.

“I’ve been mustering and branding all morning”, the woman tells us. We have an interesting conversation. As a tourist it’s not often that you get to really talk to locals. It turns out that this little roadhouse, seemingly isolated, is the centre of a local community of station people and workers, and not lonely at all.

Much of western life is invisible in the towns. It lies down those unsealed side roads, marked sometimes by a sign, a mailbox and a cattle grid, that lead to the homesteads and outbuildings of cattle stations; or the roads leading to mines or gas fields.

People from the stations go to town only occasionally – for council meetings, the pub, the rodeo or the races, the doctor, or the school if they’re on a school bus route.

From Quilpie we turn south on the road to Thargomindah (pop. 220), with white and yellow wildflowers carpeting the verges and spreading across the paddocks in every direction. It’s springtime, and this country has had more rain than usual.

White paper daisies and other wildflowers that spread across inland Australia in Spring *ausemade.com.au/flora-fauna*

In the Thargomindah Explorers Caravan Park we stay in comfortable units built high enough to have avoided the flood that almost wiped out the town in mid-April 2025. Much of the Park looks as if the rushing water swept it bare.

Thargomindah caravan park under flood water, April 2025 *The Guardian*

What the locals call Thargo is on the banks of the Bulloo River, and it was the Bulloo that did the damage. According to news reports, every business in Thargo and 90% of homes were inundated. Most of the population was air-lifted out of town, with some staying on higher ground at the airport in cars and campervans until the water went down.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-14/outback-floods-thargomindah-levee-river-gauges-water-levels/105170880

Isabel visits the town swimming pool with the boys, but it’s closed, being cleaned for the third time to get rid of lingering mud.

Thargomindah town pool being cleaned of mud, with clouds reflected in the water *Photo: Alexandra Knott*

Instead, we walk down to the river, and she and the boys go swimming in that milk coffee coloured water. For children who’ve grown up in the pristine creeks of Far North Queensland, swimming in water you can’t see through is something new. At least out here in the west they don’t have to worry about crocodiles.

Swimming in the Bulloo River, Thargomindah *Photo: Alexandra Knott*

There are new houses and functioning businesses in town, and a sign-posted Heritage Trail, but to the boys, swimming in the river is the only interesting thing about Thargomindah.

Danny asks me, “Why are we driving all this way to places where there’s nothing to do and nothing to see?”

I try and explain.

“This is home for the people of Thargo. They need visitors like us to come and support their town after the flood. They’re Queenslanders like you, and they’ll be supporting the Broncos tomorrow night, just like you will be!”

The following night, the Brisbane Broncos meet the Penrith Panthers in a National Rugby League preliminary final. As Broncos supporters we must not miss the game.

At Eulo (pop. 94), 67 kms west of Cunnamulla, I book cabins behind the Eulo Queen Hotel.

The pub closes at 4pm on a Sunday, before the match is due to start, but the publican offers to take a television out to the shed. The new owners are from Tasmania, and I don’t know if they appreciate the importance of rugby league to Queenslanders. AFL would be a different matter.

There’s nowhere else in this tiny town to watch the game, except for private houses, so a number of people join us in the shed – the pub cook, a few travellers from the cabins, and a bloke from off the street. A fisherman, one of many heading out to catch yellowbelly in the brimming western rivers, comes along with his young son. It’s an exciting match, and to everyone’s delight the Broncos win.

From Eulo we pass through Cunnamulla (pop. 1233) to St George, a pleasant town (pop. 3130) where we stay in an old house restored as Airbnb accommodation. The boys and Izzie miss their anticipated swim in the Balonne River because there are brown snakes in the muddy water around the pontoon.

After Texas (pop. 790), on the New South Wales border, the road takes us through hilly sheep country to Stanthorpe (pop. 5286), the biggest town on this trip since Charters Towers.

Fine old towns like Barcaldine, Charleville and Cunnamulla were built on the wool industry, but these days it’s cattle across most of the state, and the towns have suffered. Fewer people, less money coming in.

In picturesque granite country, surrounded by orchards and vineyards, with a beautiful national park nearby, and within an easy drive of Brisbane, Stanthorpe has more obvious charm and prosperity that any of the other towns we’ve visited.

Maryland St, Stanthorpe *granitebeltwinecountry.com.au*

Con has come up from Brisbane to meet us, and next day he and I drive home together while the family heads further south.

Joe and his family have driven 2621 kms from Babinda to Stanthorpe, equivalent to driving from London to Prague and back. They’ll need a few days of rest before heading back to Brisbane, then starting the 1645km slog up the coastal Bruce Highway to their home.

Queensland has an area of over 1,700,00 square kilometres and a population of under six million. According to Queensland Government statistics, only 2% of Queenslanders live in the outback; and in the southern outback region that includes Thargomindah that number is dropping.

Queensland’s population by Region 2023 *qao.qld.gov.au/reports*

Flood, fire and drought can and do hit everywhere in Queensland. It’s just that much harder in the isolated western regions. It’s great that more and more people from coastal Queensland are taking their caravans, campers and kids to see what lies out beyond the coastal ranges.

While they’re there, they should donate to the RFDS.

Main photo: Sunset over the Thargomindah Caravan Park photo: Alexandra Knott

October 28, 2025 3

Cricket and The Gabba

Back in the day, spectators of cricket matches at The Gabba were allowed to climb over the boundary fence and walk on to the field at lunch to “inspect the pitch”. Con and I did that during a Sheffield Shield match one day. I was heavily pregnant at the time.

When the call came out that play was about to resume and everyone should leave the field, I couldn’t get back over the fence. It was embarrassing. Con got over the fence and tried to help me. I, big as a whale, was the only person still on the field.

Eventually I got there, but that is all I remember of the day’s cricket.

Con has been playing and following cricket all his life. His brother and father taught him to bowl in the back yard in Innisfail, and he played at primary school, with a tennis ball, under the school buildings while it rained outside.

Con has lots of cricket stories from across Queensland. In the 1970s he joined other cricket lovers around Burketown, driving long distances to play.

“At Gregory Downs (120kms away) there was no cricket pitch, so we played on the road. We dragged out mats for the pitch.

“It was the same at Donors Hill (185kms). There, we played on the airstrip.”

He played in the Rosewood team in the Ipswich area, with away matches at towns like Haigslea and Marburg, old German settlement farming areas.

“ I once played a team with every player’s name starting with “z”. Even the dog!” he tells me, making a good story of it, “and the field was on top of a hill. You couldn’t see the bowler until he’d nearly finished his run-up!”

That wouldn’t have been a problem in Burketown, where the game was played on a salt pan behind the school. One of the players, a council worker, would bring the grader round before the game to clear the field of broken glass.

Cricket on the salt pan, Burketown, back in the day…

For Queensland, the sacred site for cricket has always been The Gabba: the Brisbane Cricket Ground at Woolloongabba, world-famous among cricketing nations. Overseas, we’ve travelled in cabs driven by Indian immigrants, and when the driver asks, “Where are you from?” Con tells him Brisbane. “We live ten minutes from the Gabba.”

“The Gabba!”

It’s on. Cricket talk all the way to the destination – especially if we’re in the USA, where people from the subcontinent are starved of their national passion.

At Buffalo, N.Y., in pouring rain, we took a cab to catch the midnight Amtrak train. The Indian driver demonstrated Tandulka’s cut shot as he drove.

In a Boston laundromat, a West Indian man, stiff from the day’s play, described the strong local cricket competition, with over twenty teams made up of immigrants from cricketing countries.

In a small restaurant in Florence, four businessmen from Chenai, in the leather trade, were delighted to talk cricket to someone who understood.

Beside the schoolhouse where we lived at Rosevale, on top of a rise in the beautiful country southwest of Ipswich, there was a huge Chinese elm, and beyond it a field of long grass.

The school had a ride-on mower and soon after we moved there Con used it to mow the grassy field. To his delight he found a long-forgotten cricket pitch in the middle of the field. From above, that pitch is still faintly visible.

Faint outline of the cricket pitch still to be seen beside the old Rosevale schoolhouse *earth.google.com*

Wherever in Queensland you look on Google Earth, from cities to the smallest towns, certain features show up clearly on the satellite images: the straight line of an airport or airstrip; the racecourse and showground; and a cricket pitch.

From above, the fields may be brown with drought, or green and lovingly tended; but still the pitch show up clearly: a straight line, either concrete, or hard dirt pounded by players’ boots over many years. There are not a lot of entertainment options in bush towns, but sport has always been strong.

Birdsville, with airport and cricket pitch *earth.google.com*

Some local cricket competitions have died out; but the pitch remains. At the tiny Barwon Highway settlement of Weengallon, west of Goondiwindi, the tennis court is abandoned and overgrown with long grass and prickly pear, but on the oval across the road, the shadow of a cricket pitch can still be seen.

In December 1960 I went with my family to The Gabba. I didn’t know what an historic event that was to be: the Tied Test, Australia vs the West Indies. We sat on the grass of the Hill, under the old scoreboard. Both long gone now.

Climax of the tied test, The Gabba *Getty Images*

Now they say the Gabba will be torn down after the 2032 Brisbane Olympics. A new stadium, built for the Olympics, will be the venue for important cricket matches.

It won’t be the same.

As I write this, I can hear a familiar, peaceful sound: the “thock” of a cricket bat hitting a ball. In an old tennis court in the street behind our suburban house, every weekend afternoon someone practises batting. He wears pads and helmet, and he is serious about his training.

Perhaps he first learned to love the game as many other Queenslanders do, including my grandsons: playing with family and friends on a beautiful beach, somewhere up the long and beautiful Queensland coast.

Main image: from Facebook

October 10, 2025 4

Searching for Matthew Flinders

I’m always intrigued by place names and how they came about. Queensland places have had their names and their stories for tens of thousands of years; but when Europeans arrived, they knew nothing of ancient local cultures. For their maps and charts, they named places after important people and sponsors of their voyages, or their friends; their hometowns; dangers, accidents and incidents; places of home.

James Cook was the first to sail up the east coast. Among many other places, he named Queensland’s Glasshouse Mountains.

Matthew Flinders was next. He named Skirmish Point, at the southern tip of Bribie Island, because it was here after some trading of articles that the locals, laughing, tried to steal his hat, then threw a spear when the visitors were rowing away. That’s when the muskets came out, and locals were wounded.

Flinders, on his extended mapping voyages along the coasts of Australia, had several positive encounters with locals, but when it came to a disagreement, conflicts were decided in the usual British military way, with guns; and that is what happened at Skirmish Point.

Bungaree, or Bongaree, after whom a suburb of Bribie Island is named, was a member of the Garigal clan of the Broken Bay people from north of Sydney, and he was recruited by Flinders for the voyage in the Norfolk, as well as the later Investigator voyage and others. Bungaree was respected as a person, and as an interpreter and diplomat, making positive contact with local people even though they mostly spoke different languages. Often, these were the first encounters between Europeans and Indigenous Australians.

“Bungaree”, by Augustus Earle *australian.museum*

This has been a Flinders year for me. In May, I visited the charming holiday town of Victor Harbor, in South Australia.

Victor Harbor sits on the shore of Encounter Bay, named by Flinders, near where in April 1802, as commander of HMS Investigator, Flinders met up with the French scientific and mapping expedition under Nicholas Baudin, commanding Le Géographe and Naturaliste.

Model of Flinders’ encounter with Nicholas Baudin’s expedition at Encounter Bay *National Trust Museum, Victor Harbor*

The Investigator expedition, under Flinders, had been mounted by the British government for the “complete examination and survey” of the coast of New Holland, mainly to make sure the French didn’t lay claim to it, so this meeting was a tricky one, although friendly.

The National Trust Museum at Victor Harbor tells the story.

Flinders had already mapped the southern coast, across the Great Australian Bight, past Kangaroo Island and Port Lincoln and many other points all named by him. He had climbed a mountain in what were later named the Flinders Ranges. Australia itself was named by Matthew Flinders, and it’s said that his map of the continent was still being used until the mid-twentieth century.

During the arduous voyage in the leaky, unfit Investigator, ultimately circumnavigating Australia, Flinders named places in what would become Queensland. He named Bowen, and in exploring the Gulf of Carpentaria, named Mornington, Bentink and Sweers Islands.

It was Flinders who named the Great Barrier Reef(s).

In 1799, three years earlier, Flinders had been commissioned to sail north from Sydney looking for rivers – potential harbours and ways to reach the unknown inland. Sailing through Moreton Bay in the tiny HMS Norfolk, he mapped and named several Moreton Bay islands and Red Cliff Point.

Model of HMS Norfolk *Bribie Island Seaside Museum*

The mangroves and sandbars of Moreton Bay hid from him the Logan, Brisbane and Pine Rivers, but he gave Pumicestone Passage its name, calling it, hopefully, Pumicestone River.

Anchored off the southern end of Bribie, Flinders went seeking a lookout point, heading for the nearby Glasshouse Mountains.

Flinders anchored near this spot, off the southern end of Pumicestone Passage

From near today’s Donnybrook, with Bungaree and two seamen, Flinders reached Beerburrum and climbed it. Tibrogargan, a little to the north, was too difficult, and the group camped nearby beside Tibrogargan Creek.

The Glasshouse Mountains, as seen from Wild Horse Mountain. Beerburrum on the left, Tibrogargan the high mountain second from the right

There is now a cairn commemorating the expedition in the Matthew Flinders Park Rest Area near their campsite.

Cairn in the Matthew Flinders Park Rest Area

In August 1803, Flinders left Sydney for England in the Porpoise, to arrange a better ship for survey work. 450 kilometres off Keppel Bay (Emu Park) the Porpoise and companion ship the Cato were wrecked on the reef still known as Wreck Reef. The survivors were marooned on a sandbank, including Flinders and his cat.

Trim, the cat, had been born on HMS Reliance in 1799, during its voyage to Sydney with Flinders as master’s mate. Trim and Flinders were companions during their voyages on the Norfolk, the Investigator, the Porpoise and the Cumberland. Wherever you find a statue of Matthew Flinders, his cat will be with him.

My favourite statue of Matthew Flinders and Trim, at Euston Station *AP Photo*

Matthew Flinders statue outside the Mitchell Library Sydney. Trim stands on the window ledge behind him

Flinders wrote charmingly about Trim, his account published in the little volume “Trim”, which I bought at Bribie Island Seaside Museum.

Stuck on a sandbank and expecting no rescue, Flinders with a crew of thirteen set off in a cutter to row and sail the 1100 kilometres back to Sydney for help. In less than two weeks they arrived there, and headed back in the small, barely seaworthy Cumberland, with two other ships, to rescue the stranded men, and the cat, from the sandbank.

Determined to get back to England and arrange his ongoing explorations, after the rescue of the marooned crew, most of whom returned to Sydney, Flinders headed north and west in the Cumberland, eventually landing for repairs at the French colony of Mauritius, not knowing that the French-British wars had broken out again. He was taken prisoner, and spent six and a half miserable years there before being allowed to return home.

It was on Mauritius that Trim was lost.

This long imprisonment contributed to Matthew Flinders’ death at the age of forty, in July 1814. “A Voyage to Terra Australis” the book that summarised his life’s work, was published the day before he died.

In the splendid O’Connell’s Bookshop in Adelaide I got to see a valuable copy of this work, the result of so much adventure, pain and determination.

In O’Connell’s Bookshop, Adelaide, being shown a copy of Flinders’ “A Voyage to Terra Australis”

Matthew Flinders was buried in a London church graveyard, but the site was redeveloped in later years and his grave was lost. In 2019, archaeologists undertook a survey of the old graveyard, near Euston Station, prior to construction of a new branch of the London Underground, and found the lead breastplate which marked his grave.

It was exciting news. The “Matthew Flinders Bring Him Home” group began to work towards his reburial in his hometown of Donington, Lincolnshire.

In July 2024, 210 years after his death and with full military honours, Matthew Flinders was laid to rest in the Church of St Mary of the Holy Rood, Donington. As well as descendants of the Flinders family, two descendants of Bungaree were at the ceremony.

Matthew Flinders gravestone in the Church of St Mary and the Sacred Rood, Donington, UK, includes a mao of Austrlia and a picture of Trim *Photo: “Matthew Flinders Bring Him Home” Group*

Shad Tyler and Laurie Binison, descendants of Bungaree, at Matthew Flinders reburial *Photo: pittwateronlinenews.com*

The name of Flinders now appears all over Australia, including on major streets in both Melbourne and Townsville, and on Flinders Parade, Sandgate, where my great-grandparents lived a hundred years after the little Norfolk sailed by on its way up the bay.

I’ve walked the track to the top of Beerburrum, and climbed Tibrogargan (the western, easier side); and I’ve also been to the top of a peak which can be seen to the south-west from many of Brisbane’s high points: Flinders Peak. It was a scramble in places, but worth it for the view.

In 1799 Flinders spotted the peak from the sea and named it “High Peak”. When John Oxley sailed this way twenty-five years later, searching for a suitable place to build the convict settlement that would later become Brisbane, he renamed it Flinders Peak.

Of course, like all of these places, it already had a name: Booroong’pah. Like all of these places, it already had its own long-established stories.

The Matthew Flinders story is just another story of Australia, and of Queensland; but it will always be a story both inspirational and moving.

About Matthew Flinders

“Flinders: The life, loves and voyages of the man who put Australia on the map”, Grantlee Kieza, 2023. Excellent biography, based on primary sources
“My Love Must Wait”, Ernestine Hill, 1941, my first introduction to the story Of Matthew Flinders
“A Biographical Tribute to the Memory of Trim”, Matthew Flinders, published 1977, from the archives of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
“In the Footsteps of Flinders: Memorial to great navigator unveiled,” article by Clem Lack for Royal Historical Society of Queensland, 1963, describing Flinders’ expedition to Beerburrum.
“Matthew Flinders’ Cat”, Bryce Courtney, 2002. A novel of Sydney, with Trim’s story vividly told.

Main picture: Portrait of Captain Matthew Flinders, RN, 1774-1814. Toussaint Antoine de Chazal de Chamerel. 1806-07, Mauritius Art Gallery of South Australia

September 1, 2025 12

Our fabulous huge insects, from Queensland Museum’s Blog

Meet the Giants: The Heaviest Insects in Queensland Museum’s Collection

August 1, 2025 1

Choosing Our Olympics Mascots

An alarm went off, late at night, and I heard terrible screaming. Leaving the light off, I went out on to the verandah to take a look. Walking across the street were the sources of the screaming – two bush stone-curlews. They had been stirred up by the sound of the alarm.

Bush stone-curlews are everywhere in Brisbane and up and down the Queensland coast. They are spooky birds, with huge yellow eyes and that piercing night-time shriek. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnK6B0T5yDw

They protect themselves during the day by staying perfectly still, camouflaged by their streaky grey feathers, under trees and bushes or even out in the open. Artists like them.

Stone-curlew greeting card by Brisbane Artist Ingrid Bartkowiak, from her Australian Birds Collection

Coochiemudlo Island in Moreton Bay is a favourite haunt of stone-curlews, and if you have a meal on the terrace of the Point Lookout Hotel on Stradbroke Island Minjerribah, or at the local bowls club, you’ll see them wandering among the tables.

Stone-curlews haunt the leafy campus of the University of Queensland, which celebrates them with signage and curlew shaped bike racks.

The birds live in parks and bushland reserves and often lay their eggs in the open, in patches of scrappy landscaping, in the midst of commuters and office workers; screaming and shaking their wings at anyone who comes too close. I love them.

Bush stone-curlew warning intruders away *Pic: townsvillebulletin.com.au*

People from the southern states, when they think of Queensland, think of crocodiles and stingers, cyclones and floods and strange politicians. A beautiful, wild place, unpredictable, and just a bit scary.

In our choice of how to present ourselves to the world at the Brisbane Olympics, through mascots, promotions and merchandise, we should lean into these perceptions of what we are: beautiful, but a little bit scary.

Bush stone-curlews would make a perfect mascot. Find out more about them, as well as other potential bird mascots like magpies, crows, bush turkeys and rainbow lorikeets, in Darryl Jones’s engaging book “Curlews on Vulture Street”.

Sydney’s 2000 Olympics had the platypus, echidna and kookaburra for its mascots.

Sydney Olympics mascots, Syd, Ollie and Millie. Also Lizzie, the frill-necked lizard, for the Paralympics *Pic: en.wikipedia.org*

The 2018 Commonwealth Games at the Gold Coast had a surfing koala.

Borobi, the Surfing Koala *Pic: en.wikipedia.org*

In 1982, the Brisbane Commonwealth Games had the red kangaroo as mascot.

Matilda the Red Kangaroo at the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games *Pic: National Archives of Australia*

For our Olympics we should avoid the obvious creatures and go for something wilder, living up to our reputation.

After all, one thing we Queenslanders, and Australians, love to do is scare foreigners with stories of our dangerous wildlife.

Please, let’s not choose the Australian white ibis for a mascot, the “bin chicken”. I can see the appeal – the bin chicken is a kind of anti-hero, likeable for its persistence and boldness around Brisbane outdoor cafes. There is even a Bin Chicken Trail to celebrate them. https://www.sethius.art/binny

One of Sethius Art’s “bin chickens”, on the roof of Meals on Wheels, Mt Gravatt

There are plenty of other interesting and worthy candidates to choose as mascots, though, and not only birds.

The Brisbane River curves like a snake, and our reptile emblem could be the beautiful and and useful carpet python, the creature that slithers through suburban houses and gardens keeping us free from rats, crawling along verandahs or coiling itself up behind stag horn ferns.

“Maiwar, Brisbane River”, by Charmaine Davis

To the Gubbi Gubbi people of the area north of Brisbane, Caboolture is the place of the carpet python: Kabul, the Rainbow Serpent. Schools and sporting teams proudly feature snakes on their logos and uniforms. That gives the carpet python a special significance.

It would look good on Olympics souvenir t-shirts, too.

The beautiful carpet python *Pic: seqsnakecatchers.com.au*

For a mammal, let’s choose the beautiful, shy and locally threatened squirrel glider, with its soft grey fur and black stripes, that lives quietly throughout Brisbane’s bushlands and wattle thickets.

Squirrel glider *Pic: Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland wildlife.org.au*

We might choose the fruit bats that hang squabbling in their noisy colonies all day, then fly out each dusk to feast on suburban gardens. It’s an iconic sight – hundreds of bats streaming across the evening sky. But fruit bats carry lissa virus, which gives them the potential for real danger.

To give that sense of harmless wildness, we could choose the blue-tongued lizard, with its hiss and the bright blue tongue it shows when threatened, or the ubiquitous water dragon.

Blue-tongued lizard (a type of skink) *Pic: abc.net.au/news*

Or the tawny frogmouth that looks like a piece of bark in the tree until it opens its huge, yellow mouth.

Tawny frogmouth *Pic: moonlitsanctuary.com.au*

And tawny frogmouths have the cutest of babies.

Tawny frogmouth fledglings *Pic: birdfact.com*

The scrub turkey that wanders the streets and back yards of Brisbane, scratching up gardens and building huge nesting mounds wherever it chooses.

Or the possum. Most evenings, a brush tail or rarer ringtail possum runs across the power lines to our verandah, stops to stare at us, then gallops noisily across the iron roof to jump into the lillypilly tree out the back. Possums will come inside if they get a chance, and you might find one nesting in the ceiling, or sitting in your kitchen sink, chewing on a Weetbix.

Ringtail possum *Pic: Michael Fox* https://pollinatorlink.org

Most of these creatures live in other states as well, and perhaps a crocodile or a cassowary would be more appropriate. Wonderful Queensland creatures, but a bit too scary.

My friend Mila told me of another potential mascot. It’s not a living one, but I think it’s worth considering.

Mila tells me that one day when she was walking along the river she noticed a female face on the Story Bridge and now can’t un-see it.

Mila calls her Bridget Story, and she sent me a photo.

As she says, Bridget Story has lots of potential for merch, and particularly for animations. Imagine the Story Bridge, striding across the city and the coast, welcoming people to the Games.

Bridget Story could even raise some money for the much-needed bridge repairs.

I love it.

June 23, 2025 4

Floods

Floods.

I’ve written many stories about many parts of Queensland on this blog, and so many of them describe floods.

Maryborough, Ipswich, Rockhampton. https://roseobrienwriter.blog/2024/02/06/maryborough/

Townsville, Bundaberg, Ingham, Charleville. https://roseobrienwriter.blog/2021/07/24/road-trip-to-ingham/

The Brisbane, Bremer, Mary, Burdekin and Flinders Rivers. https://roseobrienwriter.blog/2020/12/12/syphoning-petrol/

The Gulf Country, the Horror Stretch and the Cassowary Coast. https://roseobrienwriter.blog/2018/11/08/horror-stretch/

These are places I know well, and I feel for the people who live and work there; especially in the north. People wading through the ruins of their flood-damaged homes; cane, banana and beef farmers coping with the ruination of their hard-won livelihoods.

I remember the cattle farmers of the Flinders River catchment who, during the 2019 floods waited helplessly for the waters to go down as helicopters brought back images of mobs of cattle, including precious breeding herds and cows with calves, dead of cold and hunger, crowded against fences and on small patches of higher ground. It is estimated that 500,000 head of stock died in that flood.

And now floods have happened again – are still happening – in tropical Queensland. The State premier, an Ingham native, holds a press conference describing the community’s sorry situation: highway cut both north and south, houses flooded, no electricity, a breakdown in the water supply, supermarkets empty, and two lives lost. Further north, in and around Cardwell, houses flooded that have never been flooded before.

The Herbert River catchment of 9000 square kilometres has its headwaters in the Great Dividing Range near Herberton, and it collects a lot of tropical rain before it makes its way down to the flat canefields around Ingham. The Cardwell Range is steep and high and close to the town, so the catchment there is not nearly as big. But what is going to happen, when almost two metres of rain falls in three days?

The Burdekin River catchment of over 130,000 square kilometres is the size of England and stretches from north of Charters Towers and Greenvale to south of Alpha. Charters Towers has been flooding all week, and that water is heading for Ayr and Home Hill on the coast.

Burdekin River at Home Hill in the dry season, looking upstream from the Bridge

Burdekin River at Home Hill this week *Dale Last, Member for Burdekin. Facebook*

Sugarcane can be laid low by a flood, and recover, if the water doesn’t lie there too long. On the rich flood plains around Ingham, water has been lying for days, and still it rains.

An agriculturist, an expert in banana growing, told me that in the case of a cyclone, if a farmer lops the plants back they will survive and regrow. How would you go about that? It would take days, and a huge amount of work, and even with excellent modern forecasting, satellites and radar, cyclones are unpredictable. They can veer south or north or move back out to sea.

More heavy rain is forecast across North Queensland. The water will run to the coastal towns and farms and also to the vast plains of the inland, where rivers like the Flinders will break their banks and spread across the land, cutting the few sealed roads and the one railway line that runs east-west across the State.

In Queensland, rich in resources though it is – agriculture and mining in particular – we don’t have many people. The US state of Texas, iconic to Americans for its size, has an area of 697,000 square kilometres, compared to Queensland’s over 1,700,000 square kilometres. However, Texas has a population over five times the size of Queensland’s. That makes a huge difference when it comes to tax base and industry. It seems we don’t have the population, or the votes, to create better, more resilient transport infrastructure.

We also have a more extreme climate than Texas, especially when it comes to floods. Tornados are deadly, but they move quickly across the land. Rain depressions hang around.

Queensland has only one highway and one railway going along the coast, and because of shortage of population and extremes of climate, there are almost no entirely sealed roads west of the ranges linking north and south.

During this month’s major flood event in North Queensland, the one main railway line was soon cut in several places. https://www.railexpress.com.au/rail-bridges-submerged-as-floods-batter-north-queensland/

When the Bruce Highway bridge at Ollera Creek was washed away over the weekend, north of Townsville, Far North Queensland was cut off from the world except by air and sea.

Ellora Creek bridge washed away *Townsville Bulletin*

Ellora Creek bridge , as repaired by the army for emergency vehicles *mypolice.qld.gov.au*

Trucks carrying supplies to the Far North and people trying to return home faced an extra 1200 kilometres’ journey, travelling by western Queensland sealed roads, to reach Cairns. And these roads are under threat of closure at any time. Many are stranded. https://qldtraffic.qld.gov.au/

Alternative route to flooded Far North Queensland *Transport and Main Roads Department*, bigrigs.com.au

Stranded truckies parked up at the Puma Roadhouse in Charters *(Towers)* *Image: Deano Hutch* *bigrigs.com.au*

If the continuing flood rain results in damage to the railway and highway linking Townsville and Mount Isa, as happens all too often, transport and supply of essential goods may be affected for weeks.

For all sorts of reasons, including strategic concerns, the continuing and increasing vulnerability of Queensland’s transport routes is a major threat to our way of life and security.

People who live and work in the north and west of the State feel bitter that regions that produce so much of Queensland’s wealth continue to be so vulnerable to the weather. And as climate change deepens, it will only get worse.

It’s a worry.

In the southern states and Canberra, people have always regarded Queensland with a kind of affection as a weird, distant place, a place of extreme weather, crocodiles, bogans and dodgy politicians. Greater Brisbane makes up half the population of the State, and a lot of Brisbane people seem to be largely ignorant of regional areas. To them, north means Noosa, and west means Toowoomba.

So where is the will to sink vast sums into flood-proofing North Queensland for the future? Bipartisanship in politics would be a start.

It’s a start. Federal Labor Senator Jenny MacAllister, Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and LNP Premier of Queensland David Crisafulli, taling about recovery in FNQ *theaustralian.com.au*

I’m tired of writing about floods.

Main picture: Maryborough flooded at Sunset. 2022 Qld Reconstruction Authority

February 8, 2025 3

Doing the Washing

When we lived in Jandowae, on the northern Darling Downs, our clothesline was held up with a notched wooden prop.

Previously, we’d lived in houses with that backyard icon of the time, a Hills Hoist. It was efficient. The height could be adjusted, it rotated and it had lots of hanging space.

The Jandowae clothesline, perhaps ten metres long, was height adjustable too, in that you could stand the long prop up at an angle. It was unpredictable, though. A sudden wind gust could fling the drying sheets across to the other side of the line or drop them in the dirt.

A sudden gust will just send a rotary clothesline into a fast spin. Sheets and towels will flap wildly, but they won’t fall in the dirt.

21^st century Queensland backyards rarely have space for a Hills Hoist, or a prop line either, even though clothesline props are still being sold, in improved styles. The travelling clothes prop man is a thing of the distant past, and even rotating clothesline are becoming objects of nostalgia. Throughout the suburbs, and across the sprawling, grey roofed, close packed housing developments that surround so many country towns, there is scarcely room for plants.

Last Christmas, Con wrote his Christmas letter on a theme, as he does every year. This year the theme was “clotheslines”. He was searching for a subject more interesting than the usual screeds on family, travel, illnesses and renovations.

Replies to his letter were rich with humour and nostalgia.

One old friend has recently lost his wife of many years. He misses her. But there is a positive side, as he wrote, and it concerns how he hangs out the washing now she’s gone.

No more separate washing for whites and colours.
No more hanging tops from the bottom and bottoms from the top.
No more delicates.
No more taking pegs off the line and into the peg basket.
No more socks by the toes. No more pockets turned out.

Surely one of the small freedoms we can allow ourselves is to hang out the washing any way we like. Leave the pegs on the line, or put them in the basket? Hang the socks in pairs, or randomly? Wooden pegs or plastic? One peg, or two? Please yourself.

From my verandah I can look across the next-door backyards with their rotary clotheslines and I notice how they hang out their washing. The young couple next door hangs clothes entirely randomly, and not always using pegs. Next yard across, the retired couple hangs theirs out according to a strict pattern. Six white knickers in a row, six black underpants, six singlets.

It seems they shop for underwear in an orderly way too.

Our friend in Chicago responded to Con’s letter wistfully. In the depths of winter and living in an apartment, she has no chance of drying her washing in a sunny, breezy garden.

Queensland climate varies dramatically across its huge area. When we lived in Burketown and Townsville, I had no problem drying the clothes either outdoors, or if it was raining, on lines strung under the house. However, Townsville, as they say, is a “dry old hole” most of the time; and Burketown is almost desert for a lot of the year. In Burketown, I would hang my washing under the house in the cool of the evening, and next morning everything would be dry.

Things changed when we moved to Yarrabah, on the coast near Cairns, with a ten-day old baby, and pouring rain and a cyclone predicted. Faced with the thought of managing wet cloth nappies, Con came home from the local store with a tumble drier.

Con enjoys doing the washing. He has hung out clothes in Gulf Country heat at Karumba;

at the back of the old shearers’ quarters on Carisbrooke Station, west of Winton;

on the elevated clothesline behind a Silkwood farmhouse in Far North Queensland.

It’s a unique feature of elevated FNQ houses, a relic from the 1950s and ‘60s: a Hills Hoist mounted on the end of a concrete walkway leading from the back door.

Otherwise, hanging out washing in a wet, tropical climate is not easy. Taking advantage of the first good drying day following a week of downpour, you stand in rubber thongs in the mud, flinging towels and sheets across the line, hoping nothing drops or drags on the ground.

One North Queensland wet season we stayed with Con’s brother and sister-in-law at Balgal Beach, north of Townsville, for their wedding anniversary party.

On the party tables, Margaret had used all her beautiful old tablecloths. Next morning we washed them. The grass was still soaked from a downpour, and it was tricky, hanging out those gorgeous old cloths without trailing them in the wet grass and mud.

Hanging out those beautiful tableclothes

Washing moving in the breeze can be beautiful. It’s the fresh air and sunshine, the colours, patterns and fabrics. The sight has inspired many artists.

A feature of Queensland Art Gallery’s collection is “Washing Day at Éragny”, one of French Impressionist Camille Pissarro’s many beautiful paintings of women washing and drying clothes.

*Washing Day at Éragny*, Camille Pissarro. Queensland Art Gallery

Another of QAG’s treasured paintings, “Monday Morning” by local artist Vida Lahey, depicts a traditional washing day, with women scrubbing clothes, bending over the concrete laundry tubs that were once a feature of Queensland laundries and are now seen in the bathrooms of trendy pubs.

*Monday Morning,* Vida Lahey. Queensland Art Gallery

Another friend reminded us of the work that went on around those laundry tubs. I can still see my hard-working Mum dragging the boiled sheets out of the copper with the boiler stick, then on to the hand-turned wringer and out on to the propped up washing line, only to sometimes blow down into the mud!

My friend Marion, married to a vet, also responded to Con’s Christmas letter.

For the first time in my life I no longer have a washing line. For years I’ve joked that it was my daily exercise, carrying baskets of washing up and down stairs, bending and stretching to hang the washing in the open air.

My worst washing memories are of cleaning Malcolm’s overalls after he had done a messy calving case out in a muddy paddock somewhere. No washing machine, no hot water in the accommodation we were living in, in the dairy country of the Illawarra. Had to use the bath for a while until we bought a second-hand washing machine. The memory still lingers, particularly the smell of muck and blood. Lovely new calves came into the world though. Clever vet.

The harsh Queensland sun dries towels and sheets fresh and clean. The sun is a great purifier, a killer of germs and mould, although I had an aunt, a meticulous housekeeper, who told me darkly what she thought of this theory as applied to lazy laundry habits: “Some people leave far too much to the sun…”

I had a near-disaster one washing day.

Our cat had gone to sleep among the dirty clothes in the top-loading washing machine. Not noticing, I added powder, closed the lid and started the wash cycle. Seeing some clothes I’d missed I opened the lid again to put them in. The wet and terrified cat jumped out, disappeared out the door and was not seen again for hours.

Main picture: Swell Sculpture Festival, Currumbin Beach, Queensland. 2015

February 7, 2025 7

Queensland Stories