Not Before Time

We went for a walk around the botanic gardens in Bundaberg the other day. There are a couple of lagoons in the grounds which are home to about 100 different species of birds – however, my limited knowledge could only identify magpie geese, egrets, herons, cormorants, some honeyeaters and a few others. Hmmm, still got a lot to learn about birds yet .

There’s a walking/running track surrounding the grounds, and the day we were there it was complete with a few joggers out buggering up their knees and hips. I’ll stick to strolling and taking photos . There’s a railway track running around the perimeter of the gardens and you can ride on a coal powered steam locomotive which travels around the park.

One of Bundaberg’s most famous people is Bert Hinkler, a pioneer aviator who made the first solo flight from England to Australia in 1928. His house in England was moved brick by brick to Bundaberg in 1983, and you can visit the house and aviation museum in the grounds.

There is also Fairymead house, a relocated and restored 1890 homestead which now houses the local history of the sugar cane industry; Chinese Friendship gardens; Japanese Gardens; a pretty good café and the Bundaberg and District Historical Museum. All in all a lot to see in a fairly small area.

We’re staying at the Glenlodge Caravan Village about 5km out of town, and it’s a lovely park. We have a channel behind where we park and get heaps of birds visiting right behind the van. It’s really busy right now as this time of year is the peak season for the grey nomads up in Queensland. In another 3 or 4 weeks it should get a bit quieter we’ve heard.

We’ve been in Bundaberg for just over a week now and we probably need to seriously look for some work. Don’t know that there’s much around here except for harvest related work, but we’ll check it out and if we don’t get anything we’ll move on somewhere else. Bundaberg’s a nice town, bigger than I thought it was (population of about 85,000) with lots of parks and is close to beaches. It’s a good base for exploring the beaches, rivers and hinterland in the area. There are a couple of beaches about 15 minutes away. If we get work and stay around we hope to get some good fishing in

We went for a drive to Bundaberg last Friday – mainly to check out caravan parks and see if there was work in the area. We think we visited Bundaberg years ago, but neither of us can remember much about it. I was really surprised by how big it is – population is about 85,000 people. We found a park to stay at and it seems like there might be work so we’ve booked in for the week after next and we’ll give it a couple of weeks to see what happens with work. If we don’t get anything we might head further north or go inland a bit. That’ll also give us a bit of time to explore the area.

We had a bit of a drive around, and went to Bargara beach and had some fish and chips on the esplanade which was really lovely – the beach is about 15 minutes from the park we’ll be staying at. Apparently there’s some great fishing off the rocks there.

There’s also the Burnett River which runs through Bundaberg, which also has some good fishing spots. We’re looking forward to checking out all the fishing spots.

A couple of weeks back , and the main reason we came to Gympie, we put the van into the dealer to have the suspension changed over to a local suspension. While it was in overnight we had to find somewhere else to sleep so we went for a drive into the Sunshine Coast hinterland and spent the day exploring Imbil, Kenilworth, Maleny and surrounding areas, eventually winding up at Maroochydore where we spent the night in a hotel/motel on the Maroochy River. I didn’t get as many photos of this area as I should have, it’s really lovely.

The following day we went to the Ginger Factory at Yandina and spent a lovely few hours doing a couple of tours, having lunch, checking out the products for sale and wandering around the tropical gardens. It was really good, and we got lots of photos of the ginger flowers and other sub tropical plants.