Run 1:02:00 [3] 11.0 km (5:38 / km)
A morning run in Toowoomba. I thought traversing the top of the range northwards from where I was staying would make for a good run, and it did, or would have if I'd been up for it a bit more. There was ruggedness there I didn't quite come to terms with; the map I saw showed much of it as being on roughly the same elevation but you can hide a lot in 20-metre contours, with some very sharp (if short) climbs, as well as a fair bit of mud (thanks to heavy rain on Thursday night) once off the bitumen. Felt a bit better in the second half, through the suburbs with a bit less up and down, before finishing off by going down to a creek which had rather less water in it today than it did one afternoon in January 2011.
Toowoomba isn't a place I'm especially familiar with - the last time I spent a night here was during the 1991 carnival, and I've never run here. The east side of town seems quite a pleasant place. Even saw a couple of cafes which looked as if they wouldn't be out of place in inner Melbourne, somewhat belying the city's reputation as Redneck Central. (I think I went past one of the places which contributed to that reputation, the rugby ground which once had the "Nigger Brown Stand" - if I did have the right ground it's not surprising it caused offence, as it's across the road from an Aboriginal drop-in centre whose occupants would have seen the sign every time they looked out the window).
Most of the rest of the day was spent in hitherto unexplored territory (I haven't previously been west of Dalby, apart from passing through St. George and Roma from south to north), initially out to Miles to tick another site off my list, before meandering southeast through the back roads of the Downs with the day's ultimate destination being Warwick. Miles is the last of the relatively low-hanging fruit; all of the remaining 17 sites on my list are at least 600km from the nearest capital city, and at least 1000km from Melbourne.
Miles also appears to be the epicentre of the coal seam gas boom (an area of land probably a kilometre long and 200 metres wide on the way into town was stacked with pipes). As one might expect, visible signs of non-enthusiasm for the industry were more evident further south-east than they were in and around Miles itself. The infusion of very recent new money into areas that haven't seen much of it for a long time makes for some interesting contrasts, not least in Tara, where a fading off-the-beaten-track small town (for the Victorians, think Goroke or Boort) now boasts the somewhat incongruous Tara Spa Apartments.
(As I've previously noted I'm something of an agnostic on the industry at this stage because of the conflicting evidence on the most serious issue in my view, the potential contamination of groundwater. The thought did, however, cross my mind that Queensland cotton growers are not in the ideal position to object to alternative land uses on environmental grounds).
Near the end of the day I passed close to the area used for the long day of Easter 2012 but I wasn't really tempted to go out for a run there. Pratten got hit by a suspected tornado a couple of weeks ago; the unkind might suggest that it is hard to tell the difference.