Sweet Wayfaring

I felt Hervey Bay beckoning me.  We often holidayed at the bay when I was a child.    I wanted to see if it had been spoilt and whether the beachside camp grounds had been replaced by horrible high rise developments.  I was delighted to find it was still low rise and the campgrounds still there, though we were booked into another further up the coast. It is the weekend and time to take a road the beckons, but instead we are taking a tour to Fraser Island.  I have been told it is wonderful.

Childers is a nice town.  With a street full of pubs.  So where was the Royal?  Diane's friend Ann had sent me a photo of it for the Royal Collection back at the beginning of the trip.  Thank you Ann. I walked up and down the street looking for it.  It was only after I eventually gave up and checked the web that I found it hiding in a back street.

By the way it is nice green undulating country around here. The sugar cane plantations have returned as well as crops like pineapples and macadamia.

Finding ourselves unexpected in Bundaberg for a couple of days I quickly looked up what there were to do in the area.  The Bert Hinkler museum seemed like reasonable choice. Bert was a famous aviator back in the early days of flying.  The museum is excellent and includes Bert's home from England transported brick by brick and reassembled here.   So it's not only Captain Cook's cottage that has been transported from England to Australia.

Oh oh.  We are heading south and the winter warmth looked like it was going to disappear.  We found the first rain of the trip. I wanted to visit the town of 1770, such an interesting name.  But is wasn't just the rain that was disappointing.  I found the place unappealing and to add to our woes the caravan park we had booked into didn't have mobile coverage, which I discovered just as we were about to check in.   So there was a quick change of plan, we would press unto Bundaberg. By the way 1770 got its interesting name because Captain Cook landed there in May 1770.  In 1970 the village of Round Hill was renamed to 1770 to celebrate the bicentenary of this event.

Moving on from Rockhampton we are following the coastline down to Brisbane.  Gladstone is an industrial town.  It is the world's fourth largest coal exporting terminal.  There is also an aluminium smelter and this power station.

We visited the Railway Museum in Rockhampton.  The railways had a big part to play during the war. As we travelled around I began to realise that these ornate timber railway stations are characteristic of Queensland rail, very different from the brick ones we see down south.