Mundubbera - Biloela

We've now come inland to central Queensland. Mundubbera is the centre of a citrus growing region, the nearby town of Gayndah has a 'big orange' and Mundubbera itself has an 'Enormous Ellendale' (a type of mandarin), however as 'big' things go neither is particularly big. We spent a couple of days here, long enough to have a game of golf and visit the nearby Auburn River National Park. We decided not to tackle the tough trail at the national park that descended into the gorge and back up again, instead we strolled along the cliff top to a moderately scenic lookout. The peregrine falcons that were supposed to nest in the cliff opposite must have moved on, as we couldn't spot the  'whitewash' marks that were supposed to be the tell tale sign.

From Mundubbera we moved a couple of hundred kilometres north to Biloela. On the way we stopped at the RM Williams Centre in the small township of Eidsvold. This has only been open for 18 months, and celebrates the life of the famous bushman who spent the last part of his life in the area. The entry fee was only $5 each, reflecting the rather sparse display, but we saw as much as we needed to.

We were quite busy in our couple of days in Biloela. We firstly visited Mt Scoria, a volcanic plug featuring many sided basalt columns. Supposedly it is known locally as the 'musical mountain' because the basalt columns at the top ring when hit with another rock, however climbing of the mountain is now discouraged, so we just did the short walk around the bottom.

Like so much of Queensland Biloela is host to a mine, in this case a coal mine just outside town. A significant part of the output is sent on a conveyor belt to the adjacent power stations, which supply around a third of Queensland's power needs. A steep road from the edge of town leads to a good lookout over both the huge open cut mine and the power stations.

We picked Biloela as somewhere to stay as it is the closest town to the Kroombit Tops National Park, however when we got here we found that there is no road to the park from here, and in fact we would have to go over 100km to access it. So instead we decided to visit Cania Gorge National Park, still a good 80km back southwards down the road we came here on. The gorge is eroded through sandstone, but the creek is now dammed above the gorge so there is very little flow. Gold was discovered in the gorge in the late 1800s, and there are still remnants of the mining operations scattered through the hills. The 'easy' 1.4 km walk around the old mine workings was a lot more uphill than we had expected, and so we probably shouldn't have been so surprised when the 'pleasant, easy' 6 km walk turned out to have something like 1,000 steps to negotiate. It was, however, still quite pleasant, visiting several caves, lookouts and rock overhangs. However, we abandoned our plans to also tackle the 'easy, scenic' 1.3 km circuit walk, particularly given the description of it 'meandering upwards'!