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.
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.
