Adventures in Aramac - a Remote Queensland Town

Last weekend was a long one, thanks to the Ekka (Exhibition Long Weekend) so hubs and I decided to take a little jaunt up to Aramac to see our oldest girl. She moved there back in June and you know, we kinda miss her so decided this was the first possible opportunity.
​So on Thursday afternoon, we piled into the DMax (my car) to make the run to Chinchilla about 2 hours away. 
We got there in the dark but it was simply an overnighter so we could be on the road early.
In our case that means 6am in the morning - or that was the plan, but we were on the way by about 5.45am
The roads were busy with lots of miners going to work, but that's how it is in lots of these areas.
About Aramac
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We stopped at about 12 in Tambo, ready to grab some lunch and discovered the post office no longer acts as an agent for our bank... yay, so headless chickens ran off to find money and pay for lunch, then back on the road. We made it to Aramac by 3.15pm. I was tired but really pleased I'd managed to drive the whole way there with only a couple of stops along the way.
So where is Aramac, I hear you asking. It's a very small town in Rural Remote Queensland. The 2011 census said there were 299 in town. There's one motel and a pub. The welding works also is the roadhouse and the other main option for cooked foods.
Booking into the Traveller's Rest for 2 nights, we picked up the girl and headed to the pub for dinner. It's lovely, friendly and in a period of change as the owner is taking it back over.

We'd decided to do some of the local tourist stuff, so we visitedthe tramway museum, took photos of the bulls hidden around town, the headed out to the sculpture trail. With lunch and road conditions varying, allow the best part of 4 hours.
One of the local councillors creates all the sculptures you see along the way. Some were amazing with a couple breath taking, but take a look for yourself.

There are a few Facebook Live posts and I did post a bit to Instagram too while we were away.

On Saturday we decided to have a night in with the daughter, as she had some things that she needed help with - heavy lifting and some reorganisation. Of course, no trip to visit her would be complete without checking in on Miss Eira. She's taken to Aramac very well indeed.

Did you see the red of the ground? Yep, bitumen is there in smaller than usual amounts, so there's a lot of dirt roads. 

I'd forgotten how taxing it can be driving on some of those roads, but the car held up like a trooper.

We did encounter Road Trains (trucks with 2 and 3 dogs of a double layer) but so long as you get out of their way, they don't cause too many issues. I'll see if we have some photos we took of them and post them to facebook.

On Sunday, before we left, we headed over to Muttaburra to check out the interpretive centre and go Agate Fossicking. Now I'm not sure how good some of our rocks are, but we had fun before we had to drop the girl home, collect the boxes she wanted us to bring home and deal with, then began the trek home. 

We stopped overnight in Tambo, and were home by 3pm on Monday afternoon, having left Tambo at 6.15am