A Little Further North to Townsville

Our night in Proserpine did prove to be a wet one and although we didn't have more than 8-10mm, it fell at inconvenient times had we been under canvas, including the heaviest and most prolonged of the falls at about 8am.

Before it got dark, I did a tour of the caravan park to gather more information as an adjunct to the signs which were on all possible walls excusing the council from any and all blame or responsibility from everything from high winds to burglary. The park was in the shape of a capital T, with entry from the base of the T and all of the powered tourist sites along the vertical part. On one side was a swimming pool complex and the other a bowling green. Once the top of the T was reached, resident's accommodation spread on either side and the standard slipped dramatically. Old buses, rusted ancient caravans with flat tires, lean too's against dog boxes on 6x4 trailers were some examples of quarters where standards we low or lower and everywhere flags proclaimed allegiances in the hope of defining the occupants. Aboriginal flags, the Eureka Stockade Southern Cross, Holden Racing Team, Bundaberg Rum, The Skull & Cross Bones and everywhere the Australian Flag, flown as a banner, no doubt, of defiance not pride. It seemed to me from the growls and expletives I heard in admittedly a short space of time, that the wonderful blue ensign was again being used as a justification for bad behaviour which has become so prevalent in the last five years. What a shameful way to treat such a wonderful symbol.

Less than happy with our situation for the night, I locked everything down on the trailer, including the trailer itself and we shut ourselves in. All that said, the cabin we were in was very clean, well appointed and very comfortable and for the only time in our experience, the TV reception was first rate! The rain during the night probably put paid to any chance of shenanigans but it was notable how quickly the park emptied the next morning.

Dingo Beach

We chose another coastal location for our first stop in a 70km out and back deviation from our route north, by travelling to Hideaway Bay, north east of Proserpine. A small and judging by the housing, recent (last 15 years) community which stands on a cost strip among towering and at times steep-sided hills, it appears to be a place where those with money have built substantial homes consistent with the nomenclature of the place. There is only enough room for a row of large housing blocks to sit between the beach and the main road which runs parallel to the beach.

The houses on the opposite side of the road have more room to spread but they do so by way of stilts to compensate for the terrain. On this side of the road are two storeys and large verandahs. Everywhere were large rainwater tanks. It was a tidy, expensive place made to look laid back but in a manufactured way. Kayaks were strewn about and secured from theft to the casurinas which grow onto the beach.

At the end of the road where the Gloucester Bluff allows only a road to pass, another Eco Resort is tacked away in all its exclusivity ... "No Camping Allowed" the warning to the likes of us. In a new area at the start of the limited residential area, a caravan park offered the only obvious friendly face and in an area across the road, a tennis court and sporting club - purpose built in the last two years with the much maligned Rudd incentives - seemed an excellent use for this community and a perfect answer to those who bandy about school halls in the same sentence as fiasco.

Despite all of my class conscious observations, it is an extremely pretty place and our morning tea was very pleasant among the casurinas, with those typical flat Qld waves lapping against the shore and bright sunshine filling the space where our shade couldn't reach. In then end, as Spike Milligan once observed in the guise of Eccles, "everybody's gotta be somewhere".

After morning tea, we drove back out towards the Bruce Highway along Dingo Beach Drive - we really are exploring the Australian vernacular in our road use - and then we were going a little further north to Bowen. Cane fields in varying stages of development lined the Bruce, always with the narrow gauge of the cane train tracks waiting silently beside us for their noisy, rattling customers. Cane loaders occasionally roared out from dusty roads between fields and crossed the Bruce at their will, like kangaroos unaware of any potential collision with polished steel, aluminium and glass which silently flashed past their working day at 100km an hour. Once or twice men with caps or sometimes bent, beaten and sweat-stained Akubras stood with one knee on something convenient, elbow on that one bent knee in the way that rural men do as a signal to their mates that they are partial to a short, non-committal conversation, usually about the weather or some flamin' thing or 'nother. These glimpses made in such haste as I sped by were in stark contrast to our next destination, Bowen, in the apparent portrait of Australia it aided a film maker to paint.

Bowen has changed. The word "Bowenwood" on a large water tank above the town gave that away. An old town with deep water access to a longish wharf, it's great claim to fame is a recent one. It was here, on the foreshore, that Baz Luhmann bought his film circus to town to recreate his version of Darwin in the early 1940's for the climax to his film "Australia". Before we even got to the Big Mango - duly photographed with Sue in comic mode - a giant billboard told us "Baz, Nic and Hugh loved Bowen ... you will too". Whatever may be your opinion of the finished product - my own is extremely low - you don't have to be a genius to see the effect it has had on Bowen.

The financial impact is clear, with $2million spent by the film crew on accommodation alone. A new foreshore development in the wharf precinct is beautiful and very welcoming to visitors as well as passers through. The strange part is the two vacant blocks which lie directly behind the foreshore, the location for the filming. They are just that ... vacant dusty lots. Nothing was left behind of the infrastructure that the film created, which one would have thought should have been kept as a tourist attraction. An opportunity missed perhaps.

We had lunch here and then drove out to Queens Beach which made no impact on us ... we are missing surf. Everywhere we drove in Bowen, mangoes hung prolifically from trees, driving Sue crazy. She is undergoing her own form of Mango Madness.

We put the head down then for the 200km drive to Townsville, stopping at Ayr for a break and some ice cream, devoured whilst looking a nice job done by the local Lions at a rest stop on the northern edge of the town. It depicted the local area in diorama and fact sheets and gave us the best information on cane cutting we have yet seen.

TODAY'S PHOTOS

We eventually made Townsville and through a combination of Google maps and Kenny, found our friends Jim & Judy Parsons. There is great comfort in old friendships and a familiarity which allows such an easy access to sharing stories. Nearly immediately we fell into warm conversations, the sort that make your soul glow with happiness and comfort, the sort that make you so safe that there is no need for the self-protection we have to hold in place in many relationships. We spent a wonderful evening in laughter and meaning and safety and enveloped by the blessings God provides.

A Little Further North to Proserpine

Some decision making was required overnight and this morning after extensive study of the weather sites which indicated rain was about to descend on us, starting in the next evening and going on for four days ... some of it heavy and some of in the form of thunderstorms. Our camper trailer has always been leak proof in heavy rain before, but the prospect of setting down wet and then setting up in more wet and for four days, was beyond what is called for as a camper, especially in separating those downs and ups with two or three hundred kilometres each day.

We had also planed to be at Airlie Beach for the next three nights and during one of those days, taking a cruise of the Whitsundays, so the other part of our decision making was to hold Airlie Beach over until the trip back down the coast. With all this in mind, we booked a cabin in Proserpine and set off to explore.

Mackay, only 36kms away from our overnight at Sarina, was quickly reached and as usual, we consulted with the local Tourist Information. Well, occasionally things must go wrong and this was one of those times. Fairly obviously, Mackay is well served by tourists so those in charge of tourism have no need to make the tourists happy or cater for them at all, in fact. Either that or Robyn was having a bad day - even though that day only stood at 10:45am. Regardless of the reasons, we left unserviced and with all the issues we had sought information on disregarded.

By the time we found parking for the car and trailer beside a building site between a dump truck and bobcat, we realised that we had no time to walk the six city blocks we needed to get to the art deco building precinct and the art gallery. We chose to attend to some tasks we had to remedy in the next few days anyway, have lunch and then leave in time to reach the sugar mill at Farleigh.

Disappointed with the outcome of our morning, we approached the tour of the sugar mill at Farleigh some zeal, having missed the chance to tour the mill in Sarina because it wasn't Tuesday. I parked whilst Sue went inside to confirm our attendance, having rung earlier. Rushing into long sleeves and long pants and boots - a condition of entry on the tour - I knew something was wrong as Sue sauntered back towards me despite the time for the tour being only minutes away. The guide informed Sue that she wasn't sure if the tour could go ahead because of a maintenance shutdown and that they had shut down part of the plant which allowed air to circulate and it was currently 45C in the plant. It didn't take too much thought to realise that we'd be better off passing on the tour. We walked up to the tour office - a near empty hall with about 20 chairs facing a large screen TV and draped with yellow fluro safety jackets. Tourist material was laid out on a wooden table and an urn bubbled away beside polystyrene cups and a bowl of sugar, complete with its own ants. Sue got to sample a northern Queensland tropical grapefruit, well, we both did but mine quickly got sent out to the Rainbow Lorikeets who were feeding on the sugar that spills as the tankers are filled to transport the raw sugar for further refining. There was nothing for it ... ice creams at the shop across the road was the only thing to do.
with

From here we found another coastal loop to explore. At the start of the loop was The Leap, noted on the RACQ map as "a locality". At this particular locality, there was a community hall, a colourful pub, a love and mung beans organic shop which charged like a bull and a sapphire cutter and polisher. Sue visited the sapphire and organic shops whilst I investigated the pub - both of us well qualified for our tasks. The Pub was one of those wide verandah Qld pubs covered in XXXX signs but inside the bar was very interesting with its collections of clocks, household appliances, bottles, drills and drill bits, jerry jugs, walking canes and all sorts of other things. I made the mistake of asking the publican where the town scored its name, mindful that a tall mountain with a deadly vertical face loomed over the place.

"On the wall" was his compassionate and interested response. Sue eventually arrived and read the screed on the wall ... The Leap was named after an aboriginal girl had been persecuted by whites, chased up the mountain and eventually lept from its highest face in grief around 1880. Nice try but unlikely to be true. The death is likely to be true but we have to ask, did she jump or was she pushed. In most cases across Australia, the Jeddah legend is promulgated but truth, if it was really known, shows murder at the nub of the legend.

We followed the road out to Cape Hillsborough, an area of National Park south of Seaforth, with Halliday and Ball Bay between. Our favourite spot was the beach right out at the Cape, with its long flat beach covered in balls of sand fashioned by crabs and facing Wedge Island. This was a beautiful place and apart from two other beachcombers at the far southern end, the place was a scene just for Sue and I. We made a note of the camping ground right at the end of the Cape for a possible return visit.

TODAY'S PHOTOS

We took a short cut from Seaforth which included about 20kms of dirt and eventually made it back to the Bruce and settled in to get ourselves to Proserpine. We stopped briefly for some photos beside a field of cane but basically got ourselves to our cabin. Not the most salubrious of caravan parks - council run - and we are in one of only two cabins. The rain has started so vindication will help, but everything is tied down and locked with chain, padlock and high tensile steel wire just in case. It wasn't the sort of place where you wand at night.

Tomorrow, off to Townsville and meeting up with some old friends, the Parsons.