Family celebrations...

Last Friday most of the family headed off to Wandoan. We all had an engagement party to go to on Saturday night...what a wonderful excuse for the family to gather together. 

Two different cars but staying in touch through Facebook! Lol

Wandoan is a 6 hour drive from Brisbane, so we had a few breaks...

First stop was in Toowoomba at the Visitors Centre. Every year at this time, Toowoomba hosts the Carnival of Flowers, but with the 6 hour drive to Wandoan facing us, we knew there wasn't time to go around all the garden displays.  But the Info Centre had some lovely gardens for us to admire...

Because of the influx of visitors for the Carnival, the public toilets at the Info Centre were supplemented by a cute little temporary toilet block...

The next stop was in Dalby, where we lunched at the Coffee Club. 

The mid afternoon stop was in Chinchilla...

In recent years this pretty town has been flooded a few times, but was nice and dry at this time! 😉

Next stop was Wandoan, the town where DsD1 teaches.

5pm on a Friday and not much was happening...

We headed to the motel which was the meeting point for the weary travellers...but only DH, myself and our sister in law were actually staying at the motel.

As each carload arrived at the motel, the facilities of our room came in very handy for everyone.

DsD1 and her fiancé Dan live 60 km away on a cattle property and they came into town to pick up a few items and to lend DH and I one of their four wheel drive vehicles...

You see, some of that 60km of road to the farm is gravel and there are many parts where cars have to ford water...'Carlotta Camry' would not be able to do the drive safely.

So we used this car to do the 120km round trip on both Friday night and Saturday...nice and high off the ground. ( mind you, it was filthy with mud when we'd finished using it!) 

So when baby was fed and changed our convoy of 4 vehicles set out on the 60km drive for our family dinner on the Friday night.

DsD1 had asked everyone to bring something for the meal. She mentioned that she would provide spaghetti, so I offered to make a batch of my pasta sauce. Apparently she was expecting 27 of us to be having dinner together, so it was a rather large batch that I took. 

My little granddaughter had some of the sauce...

She ate the whole bowl full! 

It was quite cold outside; nevertheless most of the family moved outside...

In the photo above, we are actually sitting around a fire pit but we were still cold. Eventually DH, our SiL and I took our leave ready to drive the 60km back to town. We left the others to bed down in their tents or swags on the floor, on the property. More about our 'country break' in later posts. 

We've been gallivanting again...

What am I on about here ?? Well...the definition of 'gallivant' is...

Verb Go around from one place to another in the pursuit of pleasure or entertainment...

Yep! That's what DH and I have been doing...

Last Wednesday we drove down to the Gold Coast to Broadbeach. For our wedding anniversary (which was the week before) DH had booked a 'Room, Show and Breakfast' package at Jupiter's Casino. I had given DH a similar package for Christmas and the show that we saw that time was 'Tap Dogs'. This time the show was 'Lumi Air' and it was delightful with its clever circus performers. 

We stayed in a different section of the hotel to where we've stayed on previous visits. So we had a compltely different view..

From the window in our room...

The view of the foyer from our floor as we walked to the lifts...

I love the lights in the reception area...

DH walking back towards me after settling our account...

We came back home on Thursday morning...and then on Friday morning we packed some clothes and some food and headed off again...

Our journey this time took us firstly west to Toowoomba, then we travelled in a northwesterly direction to Dalby...here we experienced roadworks' hold ups as one side of the road was blocked off. Our line of cars waited while the traffic coming the other way used the road...

 Now it's our turn to use the one lane opened and the other cars are lined up as we go past...speed limit was reduced to 40kph so this added about half an hour to our trip...

At last we've reach the town of Dalby, and it's lunchtime...

lovely old brick church in Dalby

And some lovely old school buildings too!

 This lovely reserve beside Myall Creek is where we had our picnic lunch...

I found a friend...he walked waddled up from the creek...clever fellow! He knew that picnickers meant possible handouts! lol

he had no fear of humans...

He was rather portly so probably did quite well in cadging food from tourists and locals alike!

 Back on the road we continued in a northwesterly direction,heading towards Chinchilla and going well into 'mining country'...

And it wasn't long before we saw one of the long coal trains...

And the road actually goes under the coal loading chute for the trains. The big pile of coal is on the left out of range of the photo...the train moves up a wagon length as each wagon is filled...

A double-header

Part of the main street of Chinchilla

 Continuing westward we reached the town of Miles and from there we turned northward...otherwise we would have ended up at Roma! Our destination was Wandoan where we would be staying for the weekend...(and I didn't take any photos of the main street!darn!!)

This was our view from the front window of our accommodation...

 Yep! Our home away from home when we visit Wandoan...The Bushlander Motel
The last time we were here, (November 2011) there was a large open deck on this building but it has all been built in to make the restaurant larger with a functions area...

Since we were last  here, an L shaped block of new motel rooms has been built so that's why it was easier to get accommodation this time...you see this motel is 'home' to many workers in the mining industry and in 2011 there were rarely rooms left for tourists and visitors...I'm glad that's changed.

Our room in part of the new block was lovely :-)

So why were DH and I here??? I'll tell you all about it in another post! lol