Across The Darling Downs - Anti-Matter Arizona

I've been curious about the Darling Downs since I was a kid, having seen this curious blank spot midway down the east coast of Australia in the Reader's Digest Atlas of the World. Presumably it was an agricultural area, but what kind - sheepranching? cotton? millet?

Went to bed late, but got up early on Tuesday, and rode into Gatton with Andrew. After discussing a trip to Carnarvon Gorge National Park with Murray and Andrew, it seemed better to take three days instead of two - the distances were considerable. I borrowed the car, then off I went west, towards Toowoomba.

I stopped at Helidon and talked to a friendly gas station clerk. He had seen a television show about the construction of the transcontinental railroad through the Sierra Nevada in the 1860's, and we talked about that challenege - snow sheds, coolie labor, bankrupt railroads, and other fun stuff.

I drove up the steep escarpment of the Great Dividing Range, to Toowoomba, and I stopped to take pictures and fill out post cards. I ate lunch at the super Rooster and talked to a music teacher named Barbara Broom who plans to visit California in 2008.

Headed WNW on the Warrego Highway. The famous Jondaryan Woolshed was closed Tuesdays, so I went to the cemetery instead.

Vast cotton and wheat fields stretched from horizon to horizon, looking fallow, but maybe just in-between crops. On the distant low hills, battered-looking eucalyptus forests. Dalby, Chinchilla, Miles were the principal towns.

It looked a lot like open meadows in Northern Arizona, but the heat felt like Southern Arizona. In Toowoomba, the red brick and palm trees made me feel like I was in some kind of alternate-universe, mirror-image version of Tucson, Arizona. Interior Queensland was like an Anti-Matter Arizona. If the two regions were to actually meet, there'd be a huge explosion and they'd both annihilate each other.

Looking at the map, it looked as if population density slowly dwindled the farther you went west. I was unprepared for the reality: population density radically crashed west of McAlister, not far west of Chinchilla. Sedentary agriculture largely ended and ranching, mostly cattle, took over. The forest was back again here out west - a very arid-looking eucalyptus kind of forest, with some pines, but it looked as if stockmen had tinkered with it over the years, killing off trees in some areas, and parking cattle in others.

The maps did not readily express the sharp change. Given that the population of Toowoomba is about 100,000, and looking at the map, you'd guess the populations of the big towns were like this:

• Toowoomba - 100,000
• Dalby - 50,000
• Chinchilla - 30,000
• Miles - 10,000
• Roma - 50,000

The reality was more like:

• Toowoomba - 100,000
• Dalby - 30,000
• Chinchilla - 10,000
• Miles - 2,000
• Roma - 5,000

In addition, road quality deteriorated, so even this major, major highway was a just another bumpy, narrow two-lane kind of road. Speed limits are somewhat low (100 or 110 km/hr, which works out to about 62 and 68 mph) and rather well-enforced, so it always takes longer to get somewhere than you'd think necessary. Even if you'd want to speed, road quality discourages you from doing so. Plus, I was misjudging distances from the map - everyone uses kilometers, and the Australian road maps are larger-scale than their American counterparts - so, I kept getting surprised. And my directional instincts were crap anyway, with the sun in the northern sky, and with few landmarks.

Near Tchanning, I saw *something big* hopping across the road - my first kangaroo! - but also potential roadkill. Approaching Yuleba at sunset, I stopped to investigate a roadside field where I saw some strange animals - probably kangaroos - but the animals stole off in the gloaming.

Nearly out of petrol, I stopped at 7:30 p.m. in Roma, getting a room at the Quality Inn, a higher-end motel chain - still far from Carnarvon! Oddly, they asked me to fill out a breakfast menu and make a breakfast reservation. I was still wearing a DMTC T-shirt, but I changed into a different T-shirt, thinking that an obvious reference to musical theater might be a bad move in macho interior Queensland. Roma, 'The Gateway to the Outback' looked very empty - emptier than a town in Wyoming, for example. I ate a lamb dinner at their restaurant, also after they made a reservation for me (still traces of the old formalities here).

Roma looks big on a map, but in reality it's a little, vulnerable town on Bungil Creek, lost in the vastness wilderness of Interior Queensland. I'm not even close to the REAL Outback, either, where there are almost no people at all. Population density here is like the western U.S. around 1920 - not that many people! Picture interior Nevada, with fewer of the crowds.