St George

Wednesday, 13 June 2012


It was a beautiful morning in Lightning Ridge, not as cold as previous mornings, and the clear skies stayed with us all day. Once we crossed the Queensland border, the temperature immediately rose to 20 degrees! Today the short sleeves came out, and someone even found a pair of shorts to wear.

The road today from Lightning Ridge to St George was still on the bumpy side, but nowhere near as bad as south of the Ridge, thank goodness. He who makes these decisions, decided to wash the caravan before we left this morning, so once we were hitched up, it was down to the car wash to give the van a quick, and much appreciated, shower. Of course, what did we run into on the drive north? Road works!

Today we saw many, many emus and a large mob of kangaroos – we even had a fox do a quick dash across the road in front of us. Lots of wheat paddocks and plenty of cotton plantations on the way; St George seems to be the centre of a large cotton growing area. We heard a couple of truckies talking and one was taking about 60 tonnes of cotton seed to Brisbane.


We are staying at the Pelican Rest Tourist Park in St George, which is a very nice park with large grassy sites and lovely shade trees. There is even a supply of clean bath mats in the amenities for use in the showers.

This afternoon we visited Stavros and his carved emu eggs – quite an experience to listen to this man from Greece! He only carves the eggs, doesn’t paint them and would have well over a hundred on display. At one stage, I thought we were never going to get out of his sports shop (where else would you find an emu egg display?). We enjoyed a lovely walk through the park along the bank of the Baronne River and discovered the local council had installed exercise equipment along the way. Of course, it had to be tried out – the rowing machine required some degree of effort and someone thought the shoulder press would show off his six-pack (I think it was still in the caravan frig!!!).