Longreach Trip – Day 3 – South East Queensland

Our arrival into the sunshine state brought with it heavy rain overnight.   By the morning, the rain had stopped, but a thick fog was over the region.   Visibility was down to only a car length or two in various sections.

I was quite keen to do the Mt Nebo road for our final crossing of the Great Dividing Range before we headed inland. Therefore, our first leg took us into the outskirts of Brisbane for Breakfast at McDonalds.  It’s not a real road trip without at least one meal at Maccas.

By the time we finished breakfast the fog had burned off and we were able to head out towards our first stop at Jolly’s lookout.   The view from the lookout was pretty amazing, and the road up and over Mt Nebo was well worth experiencing some Brisbane Monday morning traffic to get there.  As usual it was quite fun throwing a 5.2 meter long wheelbase around the tight corners.

On the steep decent, we could smell the brakes of one of the cars, but nobody noticed a soft break pedal or any issues.   We stopped for a break at Cormorant Bay Lake, Wivenhoe View.   The view was lovely and the weather had become really nice. 

Our next section was to drive to our lunch stop in Nanango.  We were on a major road (the A17) so traffic was medium level, and there were a lot of trucks and caravans to overtake.  The road surface was quite good and The scenery was rolling hills.   We passed through the town of Esk, where a long term owner of my 560SEC lived.

Along the way I got pulled over for a random breath test.  This ended up taking quite a while, as the highway patrol officer could not find my registration in his Queensland Police Tablet.  He also tried the VIN to no avail.  He told me he regularly checks NSW registrations using that tablet, but not sure if that extends to historic registrations.   After I showed him my logbook, certificate of operations, the entry in the Service NSW app showing the car as registered and the MBCNSW App showing I was on a club run, he accepted the car was registered, administered the breath test and I was on my way.

Our lunch spot was a nice bakery in Nanango.  I had a pie and mushy peas plus a Vanilla slice.  A couple of the guys had enormous lamingtons and the wraps looked pretty good too.   It was at that point our friend from Brisbane had to leave our convoy and return home.   It was great to have him along for a couple of days of the trip.

After Nanango, we turned off the main road.   It was only a short distance to the town of Kingaroy, but after that there was hardly a town for the next 300km.  This leg took me the furthest North I have driven in Australia.

We took the back way past Durong and experienced some great roads with almost no traffic at all.   The road surface was excellent, other than this one odd section with a very raised centre.   There were also a couple of sections where the paved surface was only one lane wide and you needed to put one wheel on unsealed road if there was oncoming traffic.   There was almost never oncoming traffic so it wasn’t really a problem.

This section was mostly bush, but there were a few farms along the way.  This section really highlighted how different road tripping in Australia is compared to most countries.   We were only a few hours out of the 3rd biggest city in the Country and we had hundreds and hundreds of kilometers of bushland, with the red dirt and unique Australian bushland.

We joined the A3 at Mundubbera.   The A3 wasn’t all that busy either, just a few more trucks.   It also had an excellent road surface.   This section of Queensland was mostly farmland.  We finally rolled into Monto, our destination at 5:15PM, perfect timing.   I had heard there was a good mural at a water tower in the town.   It was quite small and hidden behind a barbed wire fence, so we should have stopped at the silo we saw on the way in.  Instead of going all the way back, we took a few photos in front of the Monto sign.

We refueled and checked into the hotel.  I’m continually impressed how well the 560SEL is doing on fuel.  I’m doing a lot of overtaking, and i the morning with the Brisbane section, I got 13.8l/100km and this afternoon 12.9l/100km.   Total distance for the day was 630km.

While google informed us that the only thing open in the whole town was a coffee shop, the hotel staff told us the pub was actually open and we had a good dinner there.   It had been another great day of driving.  All the cars had generally behaved themselves.  The petrol blue 280CE had the odd issue with the sticky brake caliper, but it was otherwise manageable.  It also had a bit of a rough idle, but nothing that interfered with actual driving.   The silver 380SEC also had some issue issues, but again, nothing that interfered with the actual drive.