After Crows Nest, the plan was to check out Charlotte's Shed at Cabarlah, but Charlotte appears to have abandoned the shed. The rain, which had been threatening all morning, came down hard. In five years of Op Shop Road Trips, this is the first time we have driven through serious rain.
I turned the car towards home and down the range past Spring Bluff. In fine weather, we would have stopped to look at the flowers at the station, but not this time. There was one more op shop to visit, the Lifeline opposite the Big Orange (which isn't really; the proper one is in Gayndah). I had driven past it many times, but this was my first visit. It is a very big shed, with quite a lot of furniture. If you peek out the back door, you discover you are actually on the edge of a typical Lockyer Valley veggie farm. No one bought anything, but we did find what may have been the loveliest bit of bling of the whole trip: what we used to call a cheongsam in my younger days, and oh, so sparkly.
Avoiding the highway, we headed north-east through Lowood, noting the location of the Blue Care oppy for future reference, and then proceeded to the bakery at Fernvale for the serious business of pie-eating. Jan and Jo were starting to clock watch as they still had to drive home to the Sunshine Coast, and the pies were rather slow to arrive. They were worth waiting for, though.
If you've read the whole story of this trip, you will remember that there was a competition happening for the book with the best title. Michael says that when we arrived home, three wild-eyed women burst through the door, arms laden with books, shrieking "Which is the winner?" Books were hastily arranged in front of him, with no clues as to who bought what, and he had to choose.
I thought Jo was a sure winner with Arsenic in the Dumplings: A Casebook of Poisonings in Suffolk, but she couldn't find it amidst all her stuff. Michael was quite taken with my Stormy Omartian offering, but then Jan gazumped us both with How to Make Your Man Behave in 21 Days or Less, Using the Secrets of Professional Dog Trainers. She posed with her winning offering, and then it was time for the girls to head home.
I dithered about, showing Michael my brilliant purchases, and so it wasn't till about 45 minutes later that I spotted a familiar handbag on the floor. Sadly, it was Jan's, containing purse, phone, the lot. I figured they would be halfway home by now, but rang Jo's phone. It turns out they were stuck in a massive traffic jam at Bald Hills, but with an exit close by. Back they came, retrieved the bag, and we suggested a better route north. Jo made it home to Imbil at about 7pm.
So Op Shop Road Trip Number Five was over. We visited 24 shops and left out heaps. We visited four digger war memorials and soaked up lots of history. My total spend was $118, not including the honey, accommodation or food My favourite buy was a double-sided cryptic crossword jigsaw, which I have already completed (both sides). Roll on 2019.
We chose The Nest coffee shop closest to the New Creation op shop, which was supposed to open at 9am, but didn't. It is also a mini art gallery, and Jo decided she was going to buy a painting. The car was already chockers, so this presented a bit of a challenge. We squeezed it in nervously.
Next door to The Nest is Crows Nest Soft Drinks, one of the reasons I put this lovely little town on our agenda. I believe they make the best creaming soda in the world, and it was time to get me some! I also decided to try some of their mandarin flavour and it was rather yummy too.
The op shop was now open so in we went. There were bargains galore but my best find was a pair of Italian lace-up patent and leopard skin shoes. They were divine, but were too narrow for me. I showed them to Jo, and bam! they were sold, with Jo's daughter Anna the lucky recipient. I think they cost $3. This little shop doesn't have EFTPOS, so it was off to the IGA for cash. They had no local honey.
I asked the woman back at the oppy where I could buy local honey and she pointed me in the direction of the hardware shop at the other end of the main block. I tramped up there to discover that yes, they do sell local honey, but only in bulk so I would need my own bottles. Where would I find some? They pointed me in the direction of the op shop I had just left. So back I went, found two Moccona bottles for sale, back to the hardware shop, and finally I had some honey.
We then decided to explore the lovely little town square, where the wisteria vines were either just starting to flower or just finishing. There you can see the real Crow's nest, a hollow tree in which an aboriginal man known as Jimmy Crow used to live.
Then guess what we found? A beautiful digger war memorial. Near my home, at Westfield, is the Corporal John French VC memorial bridge. Why it is at Chermside, I have no idea, as Jack French was a Crows Nest boy, and the first from that town to enlist in the Second World War. He was killed at Milne Bay. Anyway, this is his local war memorial so I was rather chuffed to have found him.
Our final stop was the butcher to buy some local smallgoods which smelled delicious. As we drove off, we spotted the town's elusive second (Nazarene) op shop which appears to be tiny. We didn't have the energy to drive around the block and find another park so we kept going. As we drove out of Crows Nest, we passed the caravan park which previously had been run by our lovely hosts at the Nobby pub, before they took over earlier this year.
Jo and I were up first, keen to investigate the pub kitchen. While we made our tea and coffee, we watched a plover and her tiny baby just outside the window. I have hated plovers ever since I was attacked by one in the University of Queensland carpark when I was a student. I had to fend it off with my briefcase. However, this one was on the other side of a pane of glass, so she was acceptable.
We didn't need to bother about breakfast as we were planning to eat somewhere in Crows Nest, but not before I showed the girls Swinging Bridge Park, where Michael and I had free camped in May. I had only walked as far as the bridge back then and not beyond, so had missed the little grave that lies there.
According to the accompanying news article, five-year-old Ethel Tebbs died in Back Creek, Cooyar, in 1905. Her mother was collecting water from the creek and Ethel ran ahead. Presumably she slipped, fell into the water and was submerged when her mother arrived. The mother, not seeing any sign of Ethel, decided that she had changed her mind and gone to play with the neighbour's children. When she reached the neighbour's house, her daughter was not there, so a search ensued and her body was found in the creek. Artificial respiration was tried, unsuccessfully.
We were pondering little Ethel's fate, when a man with a couple of dogs came past. "Did you enjoy your night at the pub?" Small towns! Actually, I think he was sitting outside the pub with his dogs when we arrived. He told us Cooyar was a great place to live, because there is no Telstra reception there and "it keeps the druggies out"
We told him we were having a great time, drug-free, and headed for the swinging bridge. Eagle-eyed Jo immediately spotted red-backed fairy wrens and blue wrens flitting about below us. Tiny and fast-moving, they were the devil to photograph!
By the time we wandered off the bridge, the dogs had moved on and the king parrots had arrived. The next stop was the memorial park to check out the flood height markers. It sure was a raging torrent.
We dropped in to the shop at the servo (the only business in town) because I was trying to buy local honey, as usual; and because of recent press coverage about honey being bulked up with corn syrup and the like, everyone was sold out. I had no luck there, because they sell take-away food and that's all. Cooyar people obviously shop in Yarraman or Crows Nest. And Crows Nest was where we headed next. It has two coffee shops, and two op shops. Perfect.
PS Did I mention that Cooyar has a lovely digger war memorial?
As we headed north-west towards Oakey, we could see a big storm building up to the south. The sky was black and there were flashes of lightning. It still hadn't hit us when we arrived, with time to do one op shop before closing time. Alas, it appeared the one we had chosen had moved. Then I remembered a vague flash of op shop in the main street down near the railway line when Michael and I drove through the town a few months before, and so it proved to be. Unfortunately, there was nothing we wanted to buy there, so we headed outside, to find that the rain was fast approaching, preceded by a dust storm. The photo doesn't do it justice. It was quite eerie.
The next stop was Goombungee, not on our direct route, but where we hoped to buy a coffee, and check out another war memorial. But first there was a trip to the showgrounds to find a tree that had been planted in memory of the father of one of Jan's friends, one George David Scarlett. We eventually found it, and Jan could report back that it is doing just fine.
The coffee shop was closed, but the general store sold coffees, so we were in luck. And it was almost right in front of the memorial. The name I wanted to see was C G Martyn, and he was right it the top. Charles George Martyn was in my father's battalion, the 26th, and he was killed during the Battle of Menin Road in September 1917. This was the engagement where Dad found four bullet holes in his haversack. Private Martyn's death was sad enough, but when the Goombungee memorial was opened in 1920, his mother sat up the back weeping through the entire ceremony and no one comforted her, or even went near her. Charles, you see, was aboriginal. I was sorry I didn't have a flower to leave for him.
Clutching takeaway coffee we headed north through the backroads towards Cooyar, surviving a scare from a wallaby that darted out in front of the car. We were booked in at the Cooyar Hotel, our most basic accommodation of the trip. There isn't a lot left of Cooyar, after a severe thunderstorm over the Cooyar Creek catchment in 1988 washed half the town away and two locals were drowned. In this photo from the balcony outside our room, you can see the memorial park where the missing buildings once stood.
The publican was away, so the woman behind the bar showed me our room, and asked if we would need tea or coffee in the morning. I said yes, so she took me into the hotel kitchen, showed me where everything was, and explained that we would have the place to ourselves when we woke up. Great. We lugged our bags upstairs, checked out the very basic facilities, and headed for the bar. Wednesday night is weekly Social Barbecue Night, which means most of the town comes to the pub; and once we explained what we were doing, we were welcomed into the fold. The woman on the barstool next to mine told me how localised the flooding was. Her family home was ten miles out of town, and they had had rain on the fatal night, but when they heard on the radio that Cooyar had been washed away they thought it was a mistake. It must have been somewhere else; Cooroy perhaps?
After our dinner, we retired to our room with its strange wall decoration, and I dug out our entertainment for the evening. At a Vinnies in Toowoomba, I had found a You Are The Weakest Link game, complete with a spooky cut-out mask of the late Cornelia Frances. There were all sorts of weird playing pieces, discs and dials but no instructions. What do you expect for $3? So we just used the question cards and had our own trivia night, before retiring for the night, to the sound of semi-trailers rumbling past on this last little northern stretch of the Cunningham Highway.
Day three of serious op shopping was about to begin and we had Toowoomba in our sights. However, the first stop was a brief visit to the Garden of Remembrance to visit my aunt and uncle who died within six months of each other. I had attended both funerals but not seen the grave with the double headstones.
The girls were a bit dubious about my ability to find the grave quickly but I drove straight there. It brought back wonderful memories of marching with my Grulke relatives in the Anzac Day march the day after Uncle Merv's funeral, wearing Dad's medals, the only time I have ever done that.
The first shop we tried to find, Metro Care, proved elusive, but we did manage to locate Drug Arm in Southtown. It had a lot of stuff in quite a small space, so moving around was complicated. Jo bought almost a whole dinner set there for $25. The next stop was Vinnies' Madonna House shop. The entry next to the car park was to a large undercover area, where we found the trip's Mystery Object. We worked out fairly quickly that you didn't cook anything in them, because they wouldn't take the heat, but after that we were stuck. A poll on Facebook eventually identified them as escargot servers.
I had noticed a strange absence of clothes at this place, but eventually spotted a door in a corner that hid a stairway ... to heaven! Upstairs was huge, and light and airy. It's actually S-shaped so this photo doesn't show the large area of clothing to the left, nor the section to the right at the end of the yellow wall. I tried on many things, but sadly nothing was quite right for my chubby body.
Our next stop was Queens Park Gardens. Last time we were in Toowoomba, on Road Trip No 2, it was the weekend after Carnival of Flowers, and we had done it again. We wandered around for ages, and eventually found another visitor who was happy to photograph us wearing our flowers, amongst the flowers.
As we did in 2015, we then drove to the big Lifeline Emporium in Ruthven Street. It was there that I made my most expensive purchase of the trip, a watch for $14. I was worried that the band on my Kmart watch would break at any moment, so I lashed out. As I write this five weeks later, the band is still holding together, but I like my new watch.
We found a nice little cafe nearby for lunch, called Milk and Honey, which meant we could stay in the Lifeline car park. Then it was off to the Orphans and Widows shop in Russell Street. In all my years of visiting my Toowoomba rellies, why did I never discover Russell Street and its lovely old buildings. I was particularly impressed with the public toilet built in 1919.
The Orphans and Widows shop is long and narrow. When you pass through the clothes and accessories and get right up the back, you find a door that leads to a second area exactly the same size as the first, that occupies the shop next door. This is where all the books and bric-a-brac were hiding. We had to be quick, as we only had coins for half an hour in our metered space, so I didn't find anything there, although the other two did.
Time was ticking away, as we needed to get to Oakey before the last oppy there closed. We had given up on the one that was only open till 2pm. Jo needed a couple of emergency groceries, so we headed towards Wilsonton. It was on the way, and the Lifeline there is in a large shopping centre. The shop is fairly small, but this time the results were reversed and I was the only buyer. Adding to the excitement was the large storm approaching us, according to the BOM radar.
Thus ended our second visit to Toowoomba, but there are so many op shops there, that I doubt if we have visited half of them yet. According to my research, there are seven Lifelines for a start. We'll be back...
We unpacked in the family room in Rudd's Pub and checked out the beautiful bathroom. It has a claw-foot bath, which I intended to try out later. However, our first task was to change into our second dress theme for our evening in the pub: the theme was BLING! Jo's top doesn't look much in the photo - just a silver square - but if you stroked it, the sequins flipped over and were white on the back. You could make pretty patterns.
We fronted up for dinner and are sure we raised eyebrows amongst all the other diners, who were free campers from their mobile blocks of flats parked over the road. We had fun though. Rudd's Pub is famous for its food, and we almost crawled back to our room, full of country cooking. And then into the bath.
Next morning, we were up early for our full breakfast, which was included in the tariff, and it was then that we really had a chance to talk to the (new) publicans. They used to run the Crows Nest Caravan Park. Gayle and Evan could not have been lovelier, and answered all our questions about the pub in general and Steele Rudd in particular.
Nobby's other famous resident was Sister Elizabeth Kenny, who revolutionised the treatment of polio. Michael and I had visited her grave in the cemetery but hadn't discovered the museum dedicated to her. "Here's the key", said Evan.
Well it's pretty impressive I have to say. There is even a framed letter sending congratulations on its opening from actor Alan Alda, who was once a polio patient treated using Sister Kenny's methods, which involved heat packs and exercise, rather than immobilisation.
We spent way longer in there than we intended, then returned the keys. We were dressed in our third theme which was FLOWER POWER. Gayle photographed us behind the bar - an offer we couldn't refuse - but we managed to find a better setting to show off our florals later in the day.
We were sad to leave Nobby. It might not have an op shop but it has a whole lot more going for it.
As we headed east towards the highway, Jan decided she had left her phone charger behind. Panic! Screech of brakes! False alarm.
Our next stop was the little town of Walloon, whose claim to fame is that it was mentioned in a poem by Henry Lawson. The Babies of Walloon tells the sad story of little sisters Mary Jane and Bridget Kate Broderick who drowned in 1891 when sent on an errand, presumably attracted by the water lilies on the water. Their dad was a railway worker, like my grandfather.
The memorial is in a lovely little spot called Henry Lawson Bicentennial Park, which even has part of the poem across the toilet block. You can read it in its entirety here: http://www.ironbarkresources.com/henrylawson/BabiesOfWalloon.html
Another section of this lovely little park is a Garden of Reflection welcoming every family who has lost a child; honouring Hannah's Foundation, a charity for drowning prevention awareness and support. So Walloon has created a little treasure that is way more than just a toilet stop.
Mind you, the peace was shattered when a couple of fighters from Amberley RAAF Base buzzed overhead.
Here are Jo and I attempting to replicate the poses of the two little girls. Jan's idea.
On to Rosewood where there are supposedly two op shops. We found Vinnies, a big, beautiful shop staffed by cheerful and ever-helpful Bruce, who told us the Blue Care shop was shut. Not sure if he meant just then or forever. He was happy to take a photo of us in our animal prints displaying more animal prints. We later voted it best shop of the day.
Onwards to Laidley and lunch. We found three oppies there plus a little gift shop that sold some retro stuff. The Second Chance Clothing one was first on the list and it was the best. It had an impressive foreign language section in its book collection, and a surfing selection amongst its DVDs! Next was the Blue Nursing shop and it was the worst (in Laidley and of the day). Around the corner was the more eccentric Pass It On op shop which fell between the two. Certainly the constant animated conversation that went on between the two young men behind the counter made it interesting.
After a bit of emergency shopping at the IGA, we headed for Gatton via Forest Hill, which has no hill. What it does have is a beautiful pub - The Lockyer - and an impressive war memorial. One of the names on it is C (Charles) Neilsen, Dad's mate 'Snowy' who was killed near Messines on 20th December 1917.
Next it was the op shops of Gatton, which we first visited on Op Shop Road Trip No 2, three years ago. The Vinnies and the Red Cross were as we remembered, but the Salvos had vanished. The woman in Vinnies told us a car had driven into their shop, so they were in temporary premises in the CWA hall around the corner in North Street.
We walked and walked without any sign of a hall, so I volunteered to go back and pick up the car. On the way, I discovered a completely unmarked little building with a CWA badge in the window. And it was closed. I rang the girls on the mobile and told them to stop walking.
The final stop in Gatton was the cemetery, where I wanted to show the girls the graves of the Gatton Murder victims.
If you don't know the story of this notorious unsolved crime, you can read all about it here. https://mypolice.qld.gov.au/museum/2013/10/15/from-the-vault-the-gatton-murders-26-december-1898/ The big surprise was the crocuses in bloom all over the cemetery. Unfortunately, there was a storm headed our way and at this point the rain started. This meant I couldn't show the girls the astounding Lights on the Hill trucking memorial!
It was time to leave the Lockyer Valley and head up to the Darling Downs. We drove up the lovely Heifer Creek gorge, where there was no water in the creek, but we saw a lot more patches of crocuses. The rain petered out by the time we reached the top, so not much drought relief there. We had hoped to make it to Clifton before its op shop there closed but we were too late. We'll get there another time.
Just up the road is the delightful village of Nobby, where we were booked in for the night at Rudd's Pub, in their lovely family room.
We unpacked our goodies, including my second and last entry in the Interesting Book Competition. I found this one at Vinnies in Rosewood, but after that I gave up, because Jo kept finding all the good ones. Once I had seen the author's name, I had to buy it! If you hop onto Youtube, you can hear Stormie's vocal efforts.
I had intended to drive past the old Ipswich Showground gates on our proposed route, where I planned to tell the girls the first of my interesting family history snippets. We didn't but I told them anyway.
In 1939, my father was to go fishing in Moreton Bay with a group of his mates. Unfortunately, my half-brother Roy had a really bad asthma attack, so Dad decided not to go; which was just as well because the boat and all on board were never seen again. You can read about it here. https://www.ipswichlibraries.com.au/the-fateful-voyage-of-the-nerita/
After we had changed into the first of our road trip outfits, we walked down the road to the Ipswich Jets Rugby League Club. We passed no 26 Downs Street, which is a beautiful old Ipswich house that I planned to photograph the following morning - along with the Jets Club, which is in a former Ipswich corner pub - but the weather had other ideas.
It turned out to be the weekly trivia night, but were a bit late and we were told that the room was probably full, so we decided to give it a miss and just concentrate on our food.
On our way back to the Motel Monaco, we walked along the eastern side of Downs Street, past Browns Park. There is a memorial fountain there, built in memory of one James Sangster, who died in the 1893 floods, while trying to rescue two women who were clinging to a tree. The interesting thing was that there were quite a few wreaths at the base of this memorial.
They were dried out, but not too old, so couldn't have commemorated the death of Mr Sangster who died in February. Several were Lest-We-Forget type wreaths, and we could see from the business cards attached that some had been placed there by local politicians. But this is not a war memorial. If anyone can tell us the story, we'd love to know. (We passed the Leichhardt war memorial next morning and there were no wreaths there.)
Next morning I woke early next to the front window and waited patiently for the sun to rise. It didn't happen. I took a better look and realised there was a decent fog outside. Like any good photographer, I hopped out of bed and wandered the streets of North Ipswich in my nightie, and was only sprung by one young man on a bicycle. The sleepyheads in Room 8 missed it completely.
Once they had roused themselves, we dressed in our animal print clothing and headed for Riverlink Shopping Centre just down the road, to have a cafe breakfast. This shopping centre is interesting on a couple of levels, one being that the railway line from the centre of town to the railway workshops at North Ipswich runs right through it, so it is the only centre I know that has a pedestrian level crossing in the middle.
The other is that many locals were upset that the development would overwhelm a historic old stone bridge, the Heiner Road Overpass, that was built over the short railway branch line to the wharves. The solution was to incorporate it into the design of the shopping centre as well. Nice work, Ipswich.
After breakfast and banking, we headed for Lifeline in the centre as soon as it opened. A nice shop, but only 50c worth there for me. It was also the only place on this trip where I found a serious spelling mistake. The sign on the change room said '3 ITEMS ONLEY'.
On the plus side, it has an upstairs level that is totally devoted to weddings. And I mean not just bridal gowns, but sets of bridesmaids dresses, flower girl and pageboy outfits, men's suits, table decorations... Ipswich is the place for a budget wedding, folks. And I happen to know that the Workshops Railway Museum just up the road is a great spot to get married.
We were a bit obsessed all day with animal prints, since we were wearing them, and one of the best we found was in this Lifeline store. Here's Jan with the animal-print mermaid number.
We drove back to the motel and parked in our allotted space, because the Red Cross shop was literally next door and it was now open. We were greeted by a rather flamboyant young woman, compete with floral headdress, but somehow I forgot to photograph her. Gobsmacked, perhaps?
I did, however, find my first entry in the interesting book competition: not just interesting but relevant to our home life, if you know our cat, Fang.
Now it was time to leave Ipswich, with half of its opppies still to be explored by us at some other time, but the Lockyer Valley beckoned.
As we headed west, I took the girls on one more little detour to see another site from my family history. We stopped at the Wulkuraka railway bridge where my paternal grandfather was killed in 1927, when he was hit by a train.
I turned the car towards home and down the range past Spring Bluff. In fine weather, we would have stopped to look at the flowers at the station, but not this time. There was one more op shop to visit, the Lifeline opposite the Big Orange (which isn't really; the proper one is in Gayndah). I had driven past it many times, but this was my first visit. It is a very big shed, with quite a lot of furniture. If you peek out the back door, you discover you are actually on the edge of a typical Lockyer Valley veggie farm. No one bought anything, but we did find what may have been the loveliest bit of bling of the whole trip: what we used to call a cheongsam in my younger days, and oh, so sparkly.
If you've read the whole story of this trip, you will remember that there was a competition happening for the book with the best title. Michael says that when we arrived home, three wild-eyed women burst through the door, arms laden with books, shrieking "Which is the winner?" Books were hastily arranged in front of him, with no clues as to who bought what, and he had to choose. 
I dithered about, showing Michael my brilliant purchases, and so it wasn't till about 45 minutes later that I spotted a familiar handbag on the floor. Sadly, it was Jan's, containing purse, phone, the lot. I figured they would be halfway home by now, but rang Jo's phone. It turns out they were stuck in a massive traffic jam at Bald Hills, but with an exit close by. Back they came, retrieved the bag, and we suggested a better route north. Jo made it home to Imbil at about 7pm.
So Op Shop Road Trip Number Five was over. We visited 24 shops and left out heaps. We visited four digger war memorials and soaked up lots of history. My total spend was $118, not including the honey, accommodation or food My favourite buy was a double-sided cryptic crossword jigsaw, which I have already completed (both sides). Roll on 2019.
