Moonie
Tiny town on the edge of the Surat-Bowen oil and gas basin.
To call Moonie a township is to give it a quality which would probably surprise most of the residents. Located on the junction of the Moonie and Leichhardt Highways some 323 km west of Brisbane and close to the Weir and Moonie Rivers (noted for their quality fishing) it is really nothing more than a service station, a few houses and a motel.

The area was first settled in the 1840s but it only came to prominence in December 1961 when it became Australia's first commercial oil field. In reality it is only a small oil field accounting for less than one per cent of Australia's oil and gas reserves but the excitement which was associated with its success led to the establishment, in 1969, of a pipeline which joined the fields to refineries in Brisbane. The area around Moonie is known as the Surat-Bowen Basin.

It is possible to inspect the oil fields (they are not immediately obvious from the Leichhardt Highway) and tours can be arranged from the motel.

	Motels
	Moonie Motel Moonie Hwy Moonie QLD 4406 Telephone: (07) 4665 0200