Gone From Queensland

After 3 months making our way slowly down the Queensland coast, we've finished in Queensland and headed south to NSW. We covered nearly 2,000 kilometres from the northern tropics to the state's south east, staying at or near most major population centres and experiencing most of the tourist delights on offer. The best known attraction of the northern Queensland coast is of course the Great Barrier Reef, the only living thing that can be seen from space. We visited Green Island and Magnetic Island and went snorkelling at the Low Isles near Port Douglas, we could have visited any number of other islands and had lots of other boat, snorkelling or diving trips, but we figured that after a while all coral starts to look the same.

We did quite a bit of walking at various national parks, although not much of it was wildly memorable - it seems that the western parts of this country offer much more spectacular experiences. Still, various waterfalls, gorges and coastal views have kept us sufficiently interested.

The countryside is remarkably similar all down the coast. Sugar cane fields stretch from north of Cairns down to Bundaberg, and the ubiquitous Australian scrub fills up many of the spaces in between. You can tell the local rainfall level by the colour of the landscape, vibrant green around Cairns and Tully, a lot browner around Townsville.

One thing that sets the Queensland coast apart from the west coast of Australia is the number of large towns, even cities. Our longest journey between stops was less than 400km, several times we had not much more than 100km, or even less, between places to stay. And in between the places we chose to stay at there were always innumerable villages and towns. Contrast this with the northern half of Western Australia, where you can do journeys of 700km without passing through a single settlement!

Having got as far south as Bundaberg we decided we really couldn't face the huge conurbation that is the Sunshine Coast/Brisbane/Gold Coast megalopolis, so travelled for 2 days down to Coffs Harbour, on the NSW mid-north coast. We'll now sit back for a few weeks and think about where our journey will take us next year.

Bundaberg

Still in the Queensland sugar cane belt, Bundaberg is famous for its rum. You can't visit here without doing a tour of the rum distillery, which culminates in a free tasting. We did the tour at 10:00, and neither of us is very keen on rum, so we actually declined the tasting, although we did taste some molasses, which is rum's raw ingredient. Unfortunately one of the rules of the tour is that, due to the heady alcoholic fumed atmosphere, you can't take any electronic devices - cameras, watches, mobile phones all have to be lodged in a locker before you can enter the distillery. This means we don't have any photos of the distillation process, we have to be content with the 'Big Rum Bottle'!

Bundaberg also has a thriving ginger industry, and we visited the local ginger beer brewery. As well as naturally brewed ginger beer, they produce a range of other brewed soft drinks such as sarsaparilla and lemon, lime and bitters. Part of the tour (only a display in the visitor centre, unfortunately, not the actual factory floor) included a tasting of all their products, we left feeling rather bloated after all that soft drink. We also visited the local cooperage, where barrels are made for Bundy rum. Their main product is small kegs for use in the home, they were hard at it for the Christmas trade. We tried our hand at putting together a keg from pre-cut staves, it was like a jigsaw with numbers instead of a picture, we're not sure that our finished product would actually have been water (or wine) tight.

Bundaberg doesn't provide much in the way of local bush walking, but we did visit Sharon Gorge for a short walk (and an encounter with a rather large monitor) and the Mystery Craters, a bunch of holes-in-the-ground that, apparently, defy scientific explanation. We also visited Denizens of the Deep, a huge wood carving at the local council office, showing all things reef related.

We happened to be visiting Bundaberg in the middle of the season for the latest production of the local amateur theatre group. One of the things we miss about living on the road is live theatre, so we went along on Friday night. Apart from a few fluffed lines, they put on a terrific production, and we really enjoyed our theatrical experience.

The Mon Repos beach near Bundaberg is noted for turtles visiting to lay their eggs. The egg laying season only started recently, hatching doesn't start until January. We booked in for the 'Turtle Experience' with some trepidation, the 'experience' relies on whether or not turtles choose to visit the beach and lay their eggs that night. At the beginning of the night you get allocated to a group in the order in which you booked the 'experience'. Each group has around 50 people, and despite having booked almost a week earlier we were in Group 2. The local radio has a 'turtle report' each morning and we'd paid close attention with some trepidation - it appeared that the turtles frequently didn't visit until close to midnight. However, we turned out to be really lucky, Group 1 was called around 7:30, and Group 2 only about 10 minutes later. We all listened attentively to our instructions (keep together, no lights, don't approach the turtle until instructed) then moved en masse down to the beach. 'Our' turtle was a bit nervous, she tried 3 different nest sites before finally settling down to dig her nest and lay her eggs. Meanwhile Group 2 milled around in the dark on the beach, watching the night sky for shooting stars. Finally, a good hour or more after we had been called, we got to see 'our turtle'. At this stage she was still digging her nest, flicking the sand away with her hind flippers. We had to make sure we stayed out of her eye-line, to avoid spooking her, which meant that only about 1 quarter of the group could actually see anything at any one time. We rotated around as the turtle dug, flipped sand, dug, flipped sand..... Her hearing is at a different pitch to the human voice, so the ranger assigned to our group was able to speak in a normal tone explaining what was happening. Finally the nest was dug to her satisfaction and she started to lay her eggs. The rangers picked out some of the eggs from the nest and showed us - they were almost the exact size and appearance of table tennis balls, with a gooey coating. After she'd laid about 20 eggs, the ranger considered her to be committed to the operation, and we were allowed to spread out and watch her from all sides. Once she had laid all her eggs for the night and started to cover over the nest, we were allowed to take photos. The rangers also checked her health, measured her and recorded her vital details. The poor turtle suffered all the affronts to her dignity with aplomb, finally finishing her nesting and lumbering back to sea to cook up the next batch of eggs for laying in a few weeks.

The whole experience took over 2 hours, and ended up being even more interesting than we had hoped. 'Our' turtles hatchlings should emerge some time in January, hopefully they will all make it down the beach to the ocean, to return in about 30 years to start the cycle all over again. Returning back past the visitor centre to the car park afterward around 10:00 pm, we were glad we'd booked early - the people in group 4 were still waiting for 'their' turtle to emerge from the waves!

Agnes Water

Agnes Water and the adjacent township of Town of 1770 are beach holiday destinations, trading on their position as the most northerly surf beach in Queensland and the southern extent of the Great Barrier Reef. Our caravan park had absolute beach frontage, and although we aren't usually much into swimming we decided to take advantage of this position to have a dip before breakfast a couple of mornings. The water was surprisingly mild, even Wendy, who usually struggles to get her head under water, needed little encouragement to dive under the waves.

The unusually named Town of 1770 marks the site of the second landfall Captain Cook made in his journey of discovery up the Australian east coast. A cairn marks the spot where Cook landed, along a walk around a headland which protects Bustard Bay where the Endeavour anchored. We also hiked up a short steep track in Eurimbula National Park to a lookout back to the same headland.

Apart from a short 9 hole golf course, there wasn't much else to occupy us here at Agnes Water. However, with the Presidents Cup golf tournament on television every day, we have to admit that we spent a great deal of our few days here inside the van glued to the screen. If only those professionals played a bit faster we might have had more time to get out and walk along the beach!

Yeppoon

Yeppoon is a popular holiday town on the coast about 30km from Rockhampton. Like other seaside resorts we have stopped at recently the attraction is based around the beach and the offshore islands, with not a lot else on offer. Luckily for us, there are several good golf courses, we have played 4 games in our week here, including one at Rockhampton.

Its not all been golf though, we did a couple of short walks at the Byfield and Capricorn Coast National Parks, and did a scenic drive along the coast and in to Rockhampton. The picture at left is of a sculpture at the small township of Emu Park, commemorating Captain James Cook's visit to Australia's east coast in 1770. The ship 'sings' in the wind, the day we visited there was only a light breeze but the hidden pipes produced a lovely light musical sound. The photo at right shows the remarkable eroded remains of a volcanic plug from 75 million years ago, when this whole area was a volcanic hot spot.

Rockhampton and Yeppoon sit just north of the Tropic of Capricorn, so once we leave here we will be back to the temperate zone after 6 months in the tropics. With summer fast approaching though, we suspect it won't get any cooler for a while!

Mackay

Mackay is a large town servicing a productive region of sugar cane fields and coal mines. Most of the city centre at the time was destroyed by a cyclone in 1918, but the replacement mainly art deco buildings give the streetscape an attractive look, and we did an interesting heritage walk. The Sunday market, however, was just about the most pathetic we have come across, and it took us no more than a few minutes to walk past every stall and decide there was nothing of interest.

Mackay is on the Pioneer River, and the river valley stretches 80km westwards to the Great Dividing Range. It's a very pretty drive through the green cane fields, until an abrupt change of scenery when the road climbs very steeply to the township of Eungella, surrounded by the Eungella National Park. On the way we stopped at Finch Hatton Gorge and walked to Araluen Falls.

Eungella NP protects the largest continuous stretch of rainforest in Australia, and has a variety of walks of differing lengths. The highlands of the national park were noticeably cooler than the steamy coastal town of Mackay, and we enjoyed walking under the forest canopy, with occasional spectacular views down the valley we had driven up. We usually take sandwiches when visiting national parks, but decided that we would instead have lunch at the local pub, which was perched on the side of the hill with a breathtaking drop to the valley below, they even had a launch ramp for hang gliders, which is apparently quite well patronised on weekends.

On another day we headed to the coast about 40km north of Mackay to Cape Hillsborough National Park, which protects a diverse range of lowland and coastal habitats. The walks we did had interesting information boards on the factors that shape the various plant communities, and the lives of the aborigines here before Europeans arrived.

Mackay has several golf courses in town and around the region, we managed to have 3 games at different courses in the week we were here, making up for missing out at Airlie Beach last week.

Airlie Beach

We had a bit of a shock on the road not far south of Townsville - a wild pig came running out of the bushes on the other side of the road and straight into us. We can only assume that it was being chased by something, as it was going like a bat out of hell and it didn't deviate. It hit us on the a-frame, at the front of the van, which is probably lucky, as if it had hit onto a wheel we could have had quite a nasty accident. As it is it knocked off the tap which is on the a-frame, and broke the end of the stabiliser at the front of the van (sort of like a leg which winds down to stop the van from rocking when you are parked up). The tap was easily screwed back on, and luckily the pipe wasn't broken as we haven't had any leaks. We will need to get a replacement foot for the stabiliser when we get somewhere a bit bigger. The incident gave us a nasty shock and shows how quickly disaster can strike - it certainly struck for the pig who after hitting into us then getting run over by the van is unlikely to be dashing anywhere ever again. After that stopping at the Big Mango at Bowen for some mango ice cream and a photo opportunity seemed rather tame!

Airlie Beach is a tourist resort on the Whitsunday Passage, nearly 300km south of Townsville. It is full of cafes, bars and offices booking tours and cruises to the Whitsunday Islands. We had been hoping for a game of golf, but the course that used to be here has closed down. Having been to a few barrier reef islands lately we weren't interested in any of the cruises, we did however do some walking in the nearby Conway National Park, providing magnificent views over the Whitsunday Passage and islands. It was actually lucky that we didn't have too much planned, as Wendy came down with a mysterious 24 hour tummy bug, so one day was spent lounging around the van not too far from the bathroom. Luckily 10 hours sleep that night saw her right.