We’re now in Mackay and hopefully will find some work here soon. On the way up we stopped for a few days in Flaggy Rock, 100km south of Mackay, to visit friends. Kay and Ray are caretakers of the Community Centre and swimming pool at Flaggy, and Kay is very involved in the various craft sessions they run there. It was great catching up with them, we haven’t seen them since they left Darwin to head west, and we went south. Apart from a few houses, some cattle and sugar cane properties, there isn’t much else in Flaggy – it’s peaceful, relaxing and lovely. The community centre has also just gotten approval for self contained motorhomes and vans to stay overnight, $5/night/vehicle. There are toilets there, but no showers. A good spot to stop for a night or two and do nothing.

On the way here we got held up by 2 of these on the road –

The pilot and police escorts actually did a really good job organising the traffic, keeping the buckets well apart and informing oncoming traffic that they were on the road well in advance of them suddenly finding themselves forced off the road It was quite interesting seeing them – they are each 7.5m wide .

Bundaberg has some beautiful sunsets, most of which I unfortunately missed, mainly due to my being busy socialising and having a drink during sunset time. However one night I somehow managed to foresee that there might be a good one so I went out and sat on the back of the truck and waited. Rather than being the normal pinky coloured sunsets I’ve generally seen here, this one was the most beautiful golden sunset.

One night our last week in Bundaberg, there was a performance by Dennis Cuthel, a member of the original Aztec band (as in Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs) which was fun. Dennis plays a good mix of classic rock music and most of the park guests turned out to see him, with some of them even getting up to dance. He did a great job and still has a good voice, although I heard afterwards that we wasn’t very well that night. During the break, his partner was demonstrating line dancing, but wasn’t very successful in getting people to join in.

Before we left Bundaberg, I got the chance to go to The Bundaberg Quilters 12th Biennial Quilt Exhibition last Friday at the Civic Centre in town. I had a great couple of hours checking out the local quilting talent and sitting around talking to some of the quilters while having a coffee and cake. This show was really well run, and very organised. All the women I spoke to today were friendly and happy to chat about the Bundaberg quilting group and answer questions about their activities. And of course, there were lots of gorgeous quilts to see.

The aviary has about 400 metres of walkway and most of the birds are freely flying about. Some of the lorikeets and parrots are very cheeky and will land on your shoulder trying to get your earrings (which I’d been warned about, so I took mine out), or in my case, the chain holding my glasses.

At the moment, there are still some birds in cages – mainly the cockatoos, some of the larger parrots, and of course the Macaws, but there are plans for a big parrot cage where they can fly around more freely.

I really enjoyed it. Here’s a few photos of the birds.

The main street ( which is also the Bruce Highway) was closed off, and market stalls had taken over the road. The stalls sold everything from clothing, jewellery, and handmade soaps and jams, through to hats, novelties and home wares. Some of the local community artists were there showcasing the regional arts and craft groups.

There were also a lot of food stalls selling food from different countries, Thai, Japanese, French, Hungarian, to name a just a few. Some of the food you could buy included crayfish (Redclaw, and excellent), kebabs, burgers, all different types of sausages and even Tibetan momo’s (dumplings). We had the crayfish, salt and pepper calamari and the Japanese gyoza. I forgot to take photos of the crayfish and gyoza – we were too hungry and greedy to wait. But I did remember to take a couple of the calamari (which was really, really good).

Wineries were also well represented with local wines from the Wide Bay area providing tastings and sales.

The entertainment was provided by street performers moving through the crowds, and musical acts from different genres and countries performed on the various stages set up around the area. There were demonstrations of rock and roll dancing, line dancing, and belly dancing and clogging. We hadn’t seen clogging before so that was an experience.

The music on stage varied from jazz, blues, rock and ethnic – so lots of variety for everyone. The Swinging Dixie Jazz Band was really good. So were Los Cobros – a blues and rock ‘n roll band.

Children were well catered for too with a petting zoo, carnival rides, a rock climbing wall for the older kids, and stalls selling toys, carnival food stuff and novelties designed to separate the parents from their wallets.

This was a great local festival, probably one of the best we’ve been to – if you happen to be in the area on the last weekend in July next year, go have a look – you know I wouldn’t lead you astray! Honest, I wouldn’t

By the way – has anyone seen these?

They are called Chips on a Stick and are selling for $5 each at the festival. Someone’s doing well – $5 for 1 deep fried potato!! And they were selling well. Amazing.

Agnes Waters is a lovely little coastal town with a beautiful beach. It (and 1770) is really a full on tourist town with lots of holiday accommodation and heaps of activities to keep you busy if that’s what you want – such as snorkeling, surfing (it’s the northernmost surf beach on the east coast) scuba diving, fishing etc. The towns are at the southern edge of the Great Barrier Reef, and there are tours to Fitzroy Reef Lagoon and Lady Musgrave Island , There’s a small but good shopping centre there too. We spent most of our time at Agnes Waters walking along the beach and had a picnic lunch in the park.

1770

The town of 1770 is where Captain Cook came ashore, his second landing in Australia, and the first landing in Queensland, and the town is referred to as the birthplace of Queensland.

The bay is very sheltered so is a great area for mooring boats. It was nice and quiet when we went there, with just enough people around to make it interesting. The foreshore area wasn’t busy, probably because it was a little cool, and the tide was out, so it was easy to walk around and take photos. The town is quite hilly and if you go for a walk or drive you can see some great views out over the bay.

There’s an annual Captain Cook 1770 Festival held in May with market stalls, a parade, a reenactment of the landing and lots of family activities to commemorate the landing by Captain Cook.

I think it would be packed in the summer months. We’d like to see it then, but aren’t so sure about dealing with all the tourists! We’d like to go back again for a sunset which is reputed to be spectacular – the area is apparently one of only 3 spots on the east coast where a sunset happens over the water.

Miara

On the way home from Agnes Waters we checked out a place called Miara which a number of people have told us about. There’s nothing there except a boat ramp and the caravan park – and it’s lovely. When we drove down to the boat ramp a herd of cattle were blocking the road, we had to wait for them as they weren’t going to shift, especially the huge bull! They were busy eating some sugar cane – hmm, wonder if it makes the milk sweeter? Anyway they eventually moved after posing for photos

Sighs, it’s a shame we have to find work, otherwise we’d be spending a few weeks here and a few at Agnes Waters too. But we’ll see what we can do if/when we finish working in Bundaberg.

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.

As we went further in, the road became more like a goat track and the bush got thicker. Some of the track was good and other parts was pretty bad but David had a bit of fun using the 4×4 function on the truck which he doesn’t get to use that often .

Eventually we got to a part of the track where we couldn’t go any further – there was a tree down across the track and just beyond that was a fissure in the ground and it was much too wide and deep for us to get over. The only problem was, the track wasn’t wide enough for us to turn around and on one side was a drop and on the other a bank too high for the truck to get up. The only way out was to reverse. So I got to play scout to make sure he didn’t go off track while avoiding tree branches and holes in the ground.

Eventually we found a place where David could turn the truck around, albeit doing about a 20 point turn instead of a 3 point!

On the way back we checked out an intersection with another track, and it was such a lovely spot and we could pull over a bit in case anyone else came by, that we decided to have lunch there. We could hear plenty of birds around, but apart from some wrens and finches flitting around we couldn’t see them, so I didn’t manage to get any photos. The little birds are too quick for me!

Unfortunately my camera died when I was trying to take photos of the birds, but coincidentally the weather also changed so we decided to head home and we’ll go back another day to explore a bit more. On the way out we passed a track we’d missed going in and it led to a walking track so we’ll check that out next time too.

We got home just in time – it bucketed down!

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.