We drove through Quilpie stopping for a meal at the corner Cafe and Petrol Station where we had a huge hamburger and cold drinks. The town is very spread out…You first see the Motel, then a couple of others and you are through. Motel accommodation was $89 a night and the caravan park offered cabins for $105
I did not even see the Caravan Park which is in the centre of the town and boasts its own opal fossicking area.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quilpie,_Queensland
Quilpie is a town situated in the Channel Country of South West Queensland, Australia. The town is the administrative centre of the Quilpie Shire Local Government Area. At the 2006 census, Quilpie had a population of 560.
The economy of the area is based on the grazing and mining industries. The area has one of the largest deposits of boulder opal in the world, and also has extensive deposits of gas and oil.
Situated on the banks of the Bulloo River and on the Diamantina Development Road, it is 208 kilometres (129 mi) west of Charleville, and 980 kilometres (610 mi) west of the state capital, Brisbane. Quilpie is the administrative centre of the Quilpie Shire, which at the 2006 census had a population of 986
Quilpie was gazetted as a town in 1917 owing to the railway that was laid down from Brisbane.[4] The town is believed to lie on the border of the Bunthamurra and Mardgany Indigenous Australian tribal areas.[5]
The local government centre was previously Adavale within Adavale Shire, but this was moved to Quilpie with the availability of rail transport and the name change to Quilpie Shire. It takes its name from the Indigenous Australian word for stone curlew, quilpeta. The first post office was opened in 1921. Two years later the telephone reached Quilpie and in 1927 the first court house in the town was established.
A fire destroyed a block of the main street in 1926. With no town water the residents watched helplessly. A bore was sunk into the Great Artesian Basin in 1933. It provided drinking water for the town and for a period between 1952 to 1963 the hot water was used to generate electricity for the tow
The area is wholly devoted to grazing. Boulder opal, oil and gas mining are major secondary industries for the local economy. The majority of the employees of these industries are local residents, with low rates of both unemployment and itinerant work
Sunrise Today... 
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