Darling Downs – Queensland Stories

Along Quart Pot Creek, upstream from Heritage Park, the wattle trees are flowering.

The path winds above the creek and under the railway bridge, across sloping granite to the creek and beyond. On the bank near the narrow footbridge, fairy wrens flit among the bushes.

In Stanthorpe this Spring when we visit, the water is cold. Not tempting. Perhaps in summer families come here to lie in the shallow pools and sunbake on the warm granite.

On this short trip out of Brisbane we are counting wattles. Leaving Stanthorpe, we drive over the New South Wales border to Bald Rock and then back home via the Bruxner Highway and Summerland Way, counting many varieties of wattles in bloom along the way. Green and gold everywhere.

In April 2023, I planned a fine road trip. It was the right time: the rivers were full but not flooding. The countryside was green. There was no threat of bushfires.

We would follow the inland rivers, from the Warrego at Cunnamulla, down the Darling to Burke and Menindee, to meet the Murray River near its mouth, at Gawler in South Australia. We would then trace the Murray upstream to where it meets the Darling at Wentworth in Victoria, then further east to Balranald, near where the Murray meets the Murrumbidgee. Following the Murrumbidgee to Wagga Wagga, we would then head north to the Lachlan River at Forbes; join the Newell Highway and cross the Macintyre back into Queensland at Goondiwindi.

We’d meet the Condamine River at Warwick, then drive east to Queen Mary Falls where the river drops forty metres down from the ranges. Past towering Mount Superbus, the tallest mountain in south Queensland and the head of the Condamine catchment.

In the right season, with plenty of rain and flow through the rivers, the water that plummets over Queen Mary Falls flows down the Darling and eventually ends up in the Southern Ocean at the mouth of the Murray, at the Coorong in South Australia.

What a neat trip that would have been. But life and illness got in the way, and we cancelled just days before we were due to leave.

That left us in Brisbane; but from Brisbane there are many interesting places to go for short trips. That is what we’ve been doing ever since.

In October last year we took a three-day trip to mainly new territory. A night in Dalby and a walk along Myall Creek in the middle of town, then up the Bunya Highway through Bell and Kingaroy to Murgon.

In Murgon there is a small but well set up Fossil Experience Museum called “55 Million Years Ago”. Local businesses, towns and shires seek for something that will encourage travellers to linger and spend. Federal, state and local governments support them. For places as widely spread as Murgon, Winton, Richmond, Hughenden, Eromanga, and even as far north as Chillagoe, Queensland’s finds of fossils and dinosaur bones attract visitors. Families plan holiday road trips to visit dinosaur sites.

From Murgon we drove through Goomeri, stopping at the elegant Wimberley & Co Bookstore, then turned south to spend the night at Highfields, north of Toowoomba.

Highfields has a wonderful park – the 4.7-hectare Peacehaven Botanic Park. In 2004 local dairy farmer Stan Kuhl donated the land for a public park to promote peace.

The world is as far from peace as ever; but wandering these paths and plantings, watching parrots in the fine old eucalypts, with the Bunya Mountains in the distance, I appreciated old Stan’s intention.

In the heat of February 2024, we took a three-day trip around the Darling Downs and out as far as Goondiwindi. The first night, we stayed in the humble motel behind the Pittsworth Hotel, “Pittsworth’s favourite hotel”. The only hotel in town as far as we can see, but its walls show a collection of photos of the many grand establishments that once existed here, only to succumb to fires, like so many old country hotels.

Country towns celebrate their sports stars, from Rod Laver, the “Rockhampton Rocket”, to Laura Geitz, medal winner and former captain of the Australian netball team, celebrated in a bronze statue in her hometown of Allora.

In Pittsworth, there is a memorial to Arthur Postle, the “Crimson Flash” – a local professional sprinter who won many Australian championships in the early twentieth century, even defeating a world champion.

On this trip we were exploring parts of the Darling Downs we hadn’t visited before, so I could look for old churches. My g-g-grandfather, James Matthews, was the Church of England Rector of Warwick between 1875 and 1886. In small farming settlements around the Downs, services in those days were held in inns or private houses; and James earned a name as a church builder. Perhaps he had the naming of them too, because at least one is dedicated to St James, and another to St Matthew.

It was hot in Pratten, a tiny town west of Warwick and north of the Cunningham Highway. St James’s Church is a small wooden building on a hilltop, with a simple bell tower beside it.

The town lay still and silent under the sun, until Con pulled the rope and the church bell rang out.

Still, nothing moved.

At the nearby town of Leyburn is another church visited by James Matthews. This attractive building was designed by architect Richard Suter, who designed Jimbour House, among many now heritage-listed buildings.

Leyburn has a pleasant pub, the Royal Hotel. Along with the Grand View at Cleveland, it claims to be the oldest continuously licenced hotel in the state. We were relieved to have our lunch in its air-conditioning.

Leyburn is known for motor racing. In 1949, seventy-five years ago this year, the Australian Grand Prix was held at here, attracting 30,000 visitors. The event has been recreated in the last few years as the Historic Leyburn Sprints, the main feature of a heritage festival with a motoring theme. The Sprints are held on a 137km route through the surrounding area, including Pratten. You wouldn’t have been able to hear the church bell ringing when the Sprint was running through town.

Royal Hotel, Leyburn, during the Historic Sprints festival

From Leyburn we headed to Goondiwindi to visit the Gunsynd Museum situated in the town’s elegant art deco council chambers. Another regional sporting hero, loved by Con.

Last May, for my birthday, we spent three nights on Minjerribah North Stradbroke Island. This place is a treasure; and so close to Brisbane. White sand beaches, clear water, gorgeous freshwater lakes and swamps (so fresh that Island water is pumped to the other Bay islands and the mainland); birdlife, headland views, and small town life, as well as a strong Indigenous cultural presence.

Sunset at Amity Point, Stradbroke Island

At the Point Lookout Hotel, perched above Cylinder Beach, I ate my birthday dinner accompanied by a beach stone-curlew that wandered among the terrace diners, searching for scraps with its huge, spooky eyes.

I’ve seen stone-curlews’ motionless forms and heard their haunting night-time cries from the suburbs of Brisbane to the tropics. Con tells me that on his first night at boarding school in Cairns he heard them and thought someone was being murdered.

We’ve made other out of town trips since our big trip was cancelled. Short trips to Grafton, Murwillumbah, Maryborough, Coolum, Toowoomba and Warwick.

We also went to Currumbin to enjoy the Swell Sculpture Festival.

What next? Out to Glenmorgan, to pay a return visit to the Myall Park Botanic Garden? The wattles and wildflowers out there would be beautiful in Spring.

And maybe, next April, we’ll set off on that fine rivers road trip. Unless the rivers are flooding, or the countryside is burning…

Main photo: Cylinder Beach, Minjerribah Stradbroke Island

My cousin Nadine and I are on a family history road trip. She flew in to Brisbane from Adelaide this morning, and we’re heading for Stanthorpe, swapping family stories as we drive.

Just south of Warwick on the New England Highway we pass a road sign pointing to the small town of Killarney.

“Killarney!” says Nadine. “Our cousin Helen – did she ever tell you this? – she was Killarney Show Princess in 1968. And then Queen of the Darling Downs. We’re related to royalty!”

“Yes, she told me. She’s still got the sash. And she’s says she’s still Killarney Show Princess because a tornado wrecked the Show pavilion, and the next year’s ball was cancelled, so she never got to hand over to the next princess!”

Helen grew up outside Warwick, in Yangan. She is a pretty woman with a dry sense of humour and a great fund of family stories to share. She loved the beautiful gowns she wore to balls all over the Darling Downs, as part of her duties as Princess and Queen. I liked ball gowns, too, and the long kid gloves, stoles, elegant mesh evening bags and corsages that went with them. I even loved the hair-does – teased up and rigid with hairspray.

We all danced in those days. In Grade Five at Nambour State School, I learned the Gypsy Tap, Pride of Erin and Barn Dance. As a teenager at ballroom dancing classes at the O’Connor Boatshed at North Quay, Brisbane, I practised more sophisticated dances: foxtrot, quickstep, cha-cha. The girls sat along one wall, boys along the other, and when given the word the boys would come across and ask a girl for a dance. The boy had to be brave and risk rejection. The girl took a greater risk: the humiliation of not being asked at all.

Every city and town had annual balls: Catholic, Anglican, Masonic, Highland, Show Ball or Race Ball. There would be a local band, and the dances would be a mix of modern, old time and jive, with covers of The Shadows, The Monkees or Normie Rowe for jiving.

“Did you know that Helen’s husband Keith played in one of the local dance bands?” I asked Nadine. “They’ve both always loved rock music. Helen went to see the Beatles in Brisbane, in 1964.”

“Lucky girl!”

Many of the balls were Debutante Balls. In the mid-‘sixties, when I lived in Jandowae, on the northern Darling Downs, I went to the Bell Anglican Deb Ball. Bell is a small town on the western slopes of the Bunya Mountains, and the ball was held in the public hall, its smooth timber dance floor improved by the application of Pops wax flakes, shaken from a cardboard box. Between dances, kids would go sliding across that slippery floor.

In the Progressive Barn Dance, at Bell and elsewhere, we would change partners as we went around the hall, and there were always a few unavoidable characters: the showy dancer with the tricky steps; the sweaty-palmed man who held his partner too close; the drunks.

The supper room couldn’t cope with everyone at once. While in the first sitting we were enjoying our sandwiches and cream-filled sponge cakes, the second sitting was pounding on the door to hurry us up.

Helen didn’t make her debut. She told me she thought it was out-of-date and silly. I didn’t, either. My friend Carol was a deb in Ayr, North Queensland. “I have no idea why, looking back,” she says. “We trained for weeks. We learned to walk, sit, curtsey. It was a big commitment, especially for the poor blokes we had for partners! We learned all the dances, too – even the Dorothea.”

“The Dorothea? I never heard of that one.”

“We had an arch covered in flowers to walk under, and a special cake to cut…”

Con and I went to balls from Stanthorpe to the Gulf Country, back in the day, but my elegant gowns are gone now. I’ve still got my long, white kid gloves, my stole, and my Glomesh evening bag. They’re quaint and retro now, and my granddaughters use them for dress-ups.

This article was written three years ago. Helen, princess and queen, teacher and nature lover, wife, mother and friend, died recently after a short battle with cancer. I will always miss her. Rest in peace, dear cousin.

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