Airlie Beach to Bowen

October 8

It was tempting to stay where we were, and we did fill in the morning before moving on. Michael worked on some brush-and-ink work while I went window-shopping. (Somewhere there's a great swimsuit for me at a price I can justify for the rare occasion that I'd wear it. Not here though.)

We didn't go far. Just up the road about 80 km to Bowen. Bowen is the mango capital of Queensland and has the Big Mango to prove it:



Unfortunately for us, it's not quite mango season here, though we are able to buy good ones shipped in from the Northern Territory.

Someone from Bowen visited Chemainus on Vancouver Island and admired the murals there. The town imported the artist and together with local artists, he set about decorating Bowen's walls the same way. On the whole, we thought the Bowen murals better than the Chemainus ones.

In World War II, Bowen was the centre for the famous Catalina flying boat squadrons which did reconnaissance work, particularly in the battle of the Coral Sea. A couple of the murals record this era.



The airport also has a dusty little museum with dioramas...



...and an interesting sign in the ladies' room.



More recently, Bowen stood in for Darwin in Baz Luhrman's drama Australia, and 600 locals got jobs as extras. Posters of the movie adorn just about every shop window in town, and there's a suitable mural on one of the local banks.



The town, which must have been humming during the shooting of the movie, was pretty quiet during our stay. No doubt due to an injection of cash from its starring role in the movie, the town is tearing up its waterfront in a grand beautification project, presumably hoping to lure the kind of crowds that Airlie Beach attracts. It's hard to tell how successful this will be; right now it's miles of dust and chainlink fencing.

Black's Beach to Airlie Beach

October 6 -7

Black's Beach was the sort of place we would have stay longer if we'd had more time. The caravan park has been recently sold to a development company, and it won't be there much longer, superseded by apartments which will destroy the charm it has now.

Our next stop was Airlie Beach which was pretty much what Black's Beach will become: beach backed by a well-groomed park, backed by a street of upscale shops, selling mainly resort-style clothing at steep prices. It's quite attractive, but a far cry from the sleepy little backwater that Black's Beach will soon no longer be.

Airlie Beach is the hub for cruises of the Whitsunday Islands, tropical islets ringed by beaches and coral reefs. The sand is white, the water turquoise, the reef still colourful with coral and fish, although it's sad to see the extent of damage to the coral caused by thinning of the ozone layer, human trespass, fertilizer run-off and numerous other nasty things.

We hoped our own trespass on this fragile ecosystem wasn't going to contribute too much to its decline. There are a ton of different packages available: one, two, three- day or weeklong cruises on motorboats, catamarans, sailing ships or small planes. Or you can book into an island resort. We chose a one-day cruise that focused on natural beauty. It offered no waterslides, imitation coral reefs, jumping pillows(!!) or other kid-attracting features and so the vast majority of our fellow passengers were adults, mostly affectionate young couples, mostly German.

The crew were young, efficient, artificially jolly. They took us first to a hilltop lookout on Hook Island to give us an overview of the area. As every other boat had this on their itinerary, it was a bit like being on a conveyor belt, but there's no doubt that the view was worth it.





Leila, a young Belgian woman we had struck up a conversation with took a photo of us both at the prime viewing point.



On the railings as we marched single file along were plaques explaining the aboriginal myths about the place, though we had scarcely time to read them, let alone line up a photo, as we were chivvied along.



We then cruised to Whitehaven Beach, the distant curve of white sand in my second photo. We had about ninety minutes here to loll on the beach and swim in the warm waters. The blonde on-board photographer spent this time arranging couples in tourist brochure or discreetly suggestive poses, or having the families jump in the air. As she got near us, we got up and casually strolled away to the other end of the beach.

Our last stop was the best. We were taken to a point where the reef came close to the shore, issued with wetsuits and snorkels and had an hour or so of seeing some of the coral and fish that made the Great Barrier Reef so famous.
Amazing fish, and some amazing coral, but many stretches of it bleached-bone grey and dead.
It was a long day, but worthwhile, and met our criterion of something we hadn't done before.

Marlborough to Black's Beach

October 4

Up early to beat the heat. Re the kangaroo road-kill, we saw a lot of it that morning in various stages of decay from recently dead to just scraps of desiccated fur.
A lot more wide brown land to drive through. I started recording the road signs:

Survive this Drive
Rest if Sleepy
Driver Fatigue Zone for 10 Km
Rest Revive Survive
Banana plants must not be taken past this point
Break the Drive, Stay Alive

Says it all really, doesn't it?

Closer to Mackay we began to see more of the huge canefields stretching out in long lines from the highway. Narrow gauge rail lines sometimes ran alongside the highway and across the side roads. The signs changed to Cane Hauling Ahead and Cane Railway Crossings next 30 Km.

Mackay is an attractive town. After a cyclone in 19?? which flattened a lot of the buildings, the town decreed that new construction had to be made of brick or concrete. And it was the era of art deco. The result is that Mackay has a wealth of deco buildings. Some have had unsympathetic paint jobs, but all are in good shape.



We ate our lunch in the local park which was unremarkable except for a lovely double row of palms and this oddity, a cannonball tree (Couroupita guanensis, according to its plaque):





Mid-afternoon we arrived at Black's Beach, with a small, slightly shabby, cheerful caravan park right on the shore of said beach. Lovely big trees overhead to shade the area,



and a long stretch of soft sand with just a half dozen or so people wandering along or surf fishing at the water line.



The were sand dollars everywhere, and tiny crabs that threw up curious spherical balls of sand in random patterns that looked like some sort of abstract art or aboriginal dot paintings.



In the evening we went for dinner in nearby Eimeo. The Hotel sat on a headland overlooking the ocean from north to south. We had checked it out earlier in the day and I took this photo from the very spot where we sat that evening.



Of course it was dark by then but as we stared into the blackness, a mango-coloured full moon rose slowly out of the sea, turning the sky to pearly grey and tipping a myriad tiny black wavelets with sparkles. Just magical.
Dinner was good too.

Gladstone to Marlborough

Now that school holidays are over, the roads are quieter. Rockhampton was our destination. As we arrived we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn.





And, hey, another botanic garden!. This one had a rather sad zoo, one of those old-fashioned ones where all the birds and animals are in cages. However, it also had a great specimen of a bottle tree,



and even better, an enormous banyan under which was an outdoor cafe. My photo shows only a small part of the vast canopy.



There was a decent dry garden,



as well as a Japanese garden which was chiefly remarkable for the sign at the entrance:




Downtown Rockampton was deep in Sunday languor. It was as if a neutron bomb had gone off in the CBD. There were some grand buildings, like the Customs House



but no people on the streets, no cars other than a few stationary ones. Nothing open, not even the big commercial supermarkets.



Was it a normal Sunday, was it the 35ºC heat, or could the Rugby League final have something to do with it? (Curses! The Melbourne Storm won over NSW's Parramatta Eels)

Wait a minute - the Art Gallery was open. And well worth the visit, too. Downstairs an exhibition of fabulous gowns crafted by a local seamstress, now with a national and international reputation. Beautiful garments pieced from many scraps of old silk and embroidery. Upstairs a small but good collection of work by well-known Australian artists: Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Geoffrey Smart and others.

Partly because the town was so dead and partly because we were beginning to think our pace was too slow, we decided to keep going. There's not much along the Bruce Highway at this point. Essentially, a lot of wide brown land. Nearing dusk we arrived in Marlborough, which consisted of a pub, a servo (gas station), and...a caravan park. Pretty basic, but good enough. We don't like driving after dark because of the likelihood of hitting a kangaroo which would be bad news both for it and us.

Gladstone

October 3


If you like views of thriving industrial complexes, Gladstone is for you. There's the Port Authority, Queensland Alumina, Rio Tinto Alcan and more. Most of them offer free tours to visitors during the working week.

As you might expect, this is the kind of town where much of the old has been mown down in the enthusiasm to be "modern" and "functional". Nevertheless there is a brochure optimistically entitled "Heritage Walking Tour of Gladstone", which we duly set off to follow. Actually, as Michael remarked, Gladstone Old and New" would have been a better description. We admired the Grand Hotel (which was old, succumbed to a fire, was rebuilt, and is indeed grand, though its heritage credentials are now dubious)) and climbed to the lookout from which the various port activities can be seen: coal terminal, Qld Alumina works, etc. Michael sketched the waterside from the bascule bridge while I photographed a few of the remaining Queenslander houses on the hillside above.



In the same area we had come across an equally good-looking, very modern mansion.



The biggest problem we had with Gladstone was the lack of good places to eat. The one decent option was so popular we couldn't get a table. Another, rather expensive place was shrouded in blue neon, not inviting, and the Grand Hotel was clearly more of a watering hole than an eatery. We ended up with a take-out Domino's pizza back at our campsite. Adequate but not good.

Town of 1770 to Gladstone

October 2

Did I mention the sandflies? In spite of applying quantities of Rid, we ended up with a few bites. Later in Gladstone we heard that the Town of 1770 area is notorious for them.

Called Town of 1770 because in that year Captain Cook came ashore on the headland there, it is mostly national park with a few scattered holiday cottages. No shops. The headland is certainly very pretty. We had a morning walk there and enjoyed the views.







A foreshore park provided interesting observations from the native inhabitants of Cook and Banks' visit.



While we were there we saw two local employees dusting the benches and railings before taking their midmorning tea break



Throughout our time in this pretty place,we couldn't help noticing a strong fishy smell in the air. Back at the larger town of Agnes Water we discovered that the smell was due to a red tide (algae bloom) that had drifted in, coating the local beach with slime.

Soldiering on we took a detour to a small blip on the map called Rosedale which claimed to have a historic hotel. The hotel wasn't much but Michael liked the old water tank beside the railway line, and I liked the hoop pine next to it.



Several utes passed us while we were there, all with a cattle dog or dogs in the back. Very country Australia.



Approaching Gladstone with no great hopes of Queensland's most industrial coastal town, we nevertheless followed the signs to its botanical garden. Surprise: though small it was well designed, the plants were grouped and labelled, and the whole place showed the signs of attention. I wondered if the groves of eucalyptus were the original bushland skilfully thinned, or whether they had been cleverly planted.



In the palm section we admired this Burrawang palm with its metre-long fronds, a marvellous red flower and a suitably marvellous botanical name - Lepidozamia peroffskyana.






The artificial lake, originally the water source for the town, was rich in waterfowl and flowering lotus.



Well, after such an introduction, is it any wonder that Gladstone had the best caravan park to date: spacious grassy sites, large shady trees, quiet occupants, WiFi available, friendly helpful owners.

It seemed a good idea to kick back there for a couple of days, catch up on mail, do laundry, wait for all the holidaymakers to go back to work and school again.

Bundaberg and 1770

October 2

In the morning we went and had a swim at the beach across the road, which somewhat redeemed the place for us.
Then we beat a retreat to the highway, through vast plantations of sugar cane in rich red earth - a Mondrian landscape.



We got to Bundaberg around lunchtime. The town, famous for its rum distillery, boasts a botanical garden which we thought would make a good place to eat our midday meal. Most of the area seemed to be under construction with a lot of parched paddock and a Chinese temple in the middle of a tumble of boulders. There was a small but not very well thought out Japanese garden, alongside a good collection of bamboo, none of it named.



We did find a small area near the attractive museum, among bedding plants and some succulents, which was pleasant enough for a lunch spot, but over all, it was a disappointment.



I guess we should have been warned by the billboard entrance. A botanical garden that advertises its presence with a train??



Bundaberg redeemed itself with a good small art gallery, and an attractive main street.

A detour off the highway to the coast again brought us to the Town of 1770, where the local caravan parks were full up. Not wanting to drive further, we took one owner up on the offer of an unpowered spot on a grassy slope at the back of the official array of sites. "It's not level" he warned us and he was right. However, our well-equipped camper comes with blocks which allowed us to more or less level it off, unlike another hapless van nearby which was quite tilted to one side. For the pleasure of this basic campsite we paid $30! Obviously the owners are cashing in because of the distance you'd have to trek back if you decided against it.

Still, being where we were meant we were well away from the inevitable hurly-burly of young families and hormone-fuelled teenagers.