Augathella
Before we left Mitchell I took this photo of the Courthouse Hotel which was owned and run by our friend's family many years ago. It seems to have stopped trading in 2017 and is for sale for $110,000 plus GST.
We bought lousy coffees from a depressed-looking cafe and continued along the Warrego Way. It was a slow trip as we got stuck behind a fifth wheeler that took up too much road for us to safely overtake. At Morven we refuelled at a truck stop where the price of diesel was 10 cents per litre cheaper than at the Gold Coast.
We are parked at the back of the Ellangowan Hotel with power, water and a dump site for $25 per night, with a $10 meal voucher we used having dinner at the pub. The house nextdoor would have once been a lovely Federation home.
Augathella is a town of about 400 people with a small supermarket open 5.5 days and a busy butcher employing four people today. There is a post office which is for sale, two fuel stops, a pharmacy and not much else. The locals have done a nice job decorating buildings with murals.
The war memorials show nearly 200 men from this town and surrounding stations died in wars from WW1 to Vietnam.
The park next to the memorials has a quirky statue of a meat ant made by Amanda Feher from steel, bronze and copper. This is scaled up to 300 times the size of local meat ants. These creatures can devour a carcass within a few weeks leaving bare bones.
Our pub meals were well cooked and generous so Blue and Tilly shared leftovers. The entertainment for us was observing the young woman working behind the bar having to tell people they need to wear masks unless sitting down eating or drinking. Most people complied when reminded but this is the first time outback Queenslanders have had to wear masks due to Covid.
We were allowed to have Blue and Hugo with us in the pub. They were a bit intimidated when Marley the resident Labrador came to meet them. He is a very gentle dog who never stopped wagging his tail even through Hugo's barking tirade.
