3 November 2016 - Goondiwindi to St George

Today was another warm, fine day, perfect for travelling 200km to St George from Goondiwindi via the Barwon and Carnarvon Highways.

The drive was through river flats country, with grain farms along both sides of the road. There were many grain silos on the way.  The harvest must be good because there were many instances where the grain was being stored on the ground, under cover.  The road trains were buzzing around, bringing newly harvested grain to the storage sites. 

031116 Grain silos just outside Goondiwindi

031116 - On ground grain storage

031116 Wheat ripe for harvesting - on both sides of the road

As we neared St George, cotton farms came to dominate with acres and acres of flat land with raised water storage dams. Water flows from the on-farm dams through channels to the cotton fields.  

Some cotton statistics:

• To grow well, cotton needs a lot of water, 5.2 mega litres per hectare, but not as much as rice, which requires 10.1 mega litres per hectare. 
• 75% of Australia's cotton is graded as premium quality and Australia is the third largest exporter of cotton in the world.  
• The size of the average Australian cotton farm is 496 hectares and the average yield is 10 bales per hectare.  
• A cotton bale weighs 227kg.

One little town we passed through was Toobeah.  We have always wanted to know what it would  be like .......Toobeah Hotel.

031116 Toobeah Hotel - one hotel and four houses

Apart from farms, there were many straight sections of road.

031116 Scrubby bush on the roadsides in between farms

We come across some unusual sights as we travel.  Here is one.

031116 An unusual sight, a plane's vapour trail and
its shadow on the clouds

Given it is a light day for photographic content, we will use this opportunity to include the many photographs of flowers we have taken so far.  They were mostly taken in the Bald Rock and Girraween National Parks near Stanthorpe.  Beyond the attempt at the first photograph, they are not labelled, simply because we do not know their names - our apologies.

Maybe a donkey orchid?