Moonie is a town in the Darling Downs region of Queensland

Queensland

Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. The town is located in the Western Downs Region Local Government Area at the intersection of the Leichhardt

Leichhardt Highway

The Leichhardt Highway is a major transport route in Queensland, Australia. It is a continuation northward from Goondiwindi of the Newell Highway....

 and Moonie

Moonie Highway

The Moonie Highway is a state highway of Queensland, Australia. It leaves the Warrego Highway at Dalby and runs for over 250 km until it reaches St George. From there, it continues as the Balonne Highway...

 Highways, 331 kilometres (206 mi) west of the state capital, Brisbane

Brisbane

Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...

, and is the Official Oil Capital of Australia.

The town's name is derived from Moonie River

Moonie River

The Moonie River is a river on the western Darling Downs of Queensland, Australia. The rivers flows in a south western direction into New South Wales to the west of Mungindi and then into the Barwon River. The catchment area has no major towns and is extremely flat...

, which was first recorded as Mooni by Sir Thomas Mitchell in November 1846 when he passed through the region.

The town is very small and consists of a public school, service station, a few houses, Moonie Sports Club and a motel. In December 1961 Moonie was the site of Australia's first commercial oil field

Oil field

An oil field is a region with an abundance of oil wells extracting petroleum from below ground. Because the oil reservoirs typically extend over a large area, possibly several hundred kilometres across, full exploitation entails multiple wells scattered across the area...

, a very small field consisting of less than one percent of Australia's oil and gas reserves. The oil field is still operational and pumps out 35 kilolitres

Litre

pic|200px|right|thumb|One litre is equivalent to this cubeEach side is 10 cm1 litre water = 1 kilogram water The litre is a metric system unit of volume equal to 1 cubic decimetre , to 1,000 cubic centimetres , and to 1/1,000 cubic metre...

(7,700 gallons) every day.

The region is also an agricultural area that produces grain, beef cattle and prime lambs.