Miles from nowhere

Looks a bit milky to me!

Miles is over 200 miles from Brisbane in a westerly direction, i.e. into the outback, there's not much traffic here, in fact there's not much of anything including light pollution which means we got an amazing view of the night sky - this is a picture that Lyndall took outside our wooden cabin.

I'll go for double tops!

A couple of hours earlier, in the diminishing light of dusk, we'd spotted an Australian Darter coming in to land onto a branch very conveniently situated right opposite the verandah of our log cabin. I took a stack of photos but given the fading light only a few were much cop but this one sums up the magnificent bird - they are a bit like giant sized cormorants and often sit with their wings spread drying themselves in the sun. We also saw one on our last visit engaged in its other favourite activity which is fishing - when swimming their bodies are submerged and all you can see is the neck and head - this looks eerily snakelike and explains the alternate name of 'snakebird'.

Ooh that hurt!

Miles is not much of a town (pop. 1746) but it does have a very good example of a 'Historical Village'. Generally this means that the odd small town has decided to move it's old buildings to a site on the edge of town and line them up in a vague approximation to how the town would have looked like a hundred years os so ago. The collection of buildings in Miles was impressive enough, an old post office, a tavern, butchers bakers, candlestick makers, etc., but somehow along the way the local seem to have put the call out for everyone to donate their artefacts, collections of trivia and junk. here's a snap of a bullock that had escaped and lived in the bush. Unfortunately one of its horns had grown in the wrong direction, not having a caring farmer to trim this renegade appendage, it must have suffered a lingering death.

On your marks!

Despite its size Miles has a parkrun! So we had to give it a go. And everybody knew everybody else apart from us - and they soon knew us. Lyndall was first lady (with Scout, 8th in 25:46) and I was second overall (21:42) and Vicky got her best time for ages (33:03)) on a slightly undulating course along the Dogwood Creek.