This year we have an ambitious trip planned across the northern part of Australia. We intend to go northwest of Brisbane in Queensland out to Mt Isa and from there, west to the Barkly Homestead in the Northern Territory, were we will turn north on our way to Heartbreak Hotel at Cape Crawford. We will be visiting the places that a good number of Australians visit at least once in their lifetime. Broome on the west coast of Western Australia, Darwin, Alice Springs and Ayers Rock and Adelaide and Melbourne are our destinations before returning to the Gold Coast of Queensland.
Tin Can Bay
Before we begin travelling, we have a houseboat outting planned on Tin Can Bay. Tin Can Bay is east of Gympie, which is renown for its gold mining. The bay is a body of water between Frazier Island and the mainland coast between Rainbow Beach on the south and Bundaberg on the north. We will be hiring a houseboat that has 8 bunks and join friends of Liz. The Tin Can Bay community is just a handful of business that caters mainly to the tourist and marine business. At the boat ramp, porpoises come up in the shallow water for the entertainment of kids. The Tin Can Bay marina is home to a ragtag fleet of boats and sailors.
The houseboat that Liz and her friends hired, is owned by Frazer Island Houseboats. The boats have everything including the linen and dishes. Our motly crew had two seasoned skippers. Peter and Lindsay who kept us in the channel and off the sand bank. Mealtime was a fun gathering, a banquet.
For three days we sailed the bay and fished. We caught a mess of whiting and also a cod which we enjoyed for dinner. We also caught some mud crab, which was delicious.
Bon Voyage!
Our home away from home is a Jeep Cherokee pulling a 16 ft. caravan. Last year we invested in a television since the 7 pm. News on ABC TV is generally the only news we get travelling.
We left the Gold Coast at about 10 am, Friday June 18th, planning either to stop at Dalby or Chinchilla. We stopped at Chinchilla. These towns are northwest of Brisbane, which is the capitol of Queensland. Towns in the outback generally have populations of less than 2000 and are focused to serve the local economy whether its focus is mining, farming or cattle and sheep.
The second day we stopped briefly at Wallumbilla, an unremarkable farming village. Liz taught school there, as a young lass, and . We were gonna stop at Morven but the caravan park was abandoned and had no electricity so we continued on to Augenthella (Augenthella can be translated as Meat Ant in Aborigine) and found a RACQ three star caravan park. Generally, a RACQ (AAA in America) three star caravan park has nice amenities (toilet, shower and laundry blocks). The 4 and 5 star parks will have their ratings according to landscaping and more desirable positioning in tourist destination.
The third day, which was Sunday, we struck out for Longreach, stopping on the way at Ilfracombe, which has a nice machinery exhibit along the north side of the highway. The machinery and vehicles are relics donated to the Folk and Transport Museum. The display is of early vintage equipment and inventions used by the cattle and sheep stations in the vicinity. The Wellshot Hotel also has a stockman's demonstration show at 7 p.m. in the evening. Trained dogs that herd ducks and a sleeping horse are the main attractions.
We finally arrived at Longreach and stayed three days at the Caravan Park in town. It was crowded and overbooked but Allan had a brief visit to the hospital necessitating the extra stay.
Highlights of Longreach include the Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame, a version of the Cowboy Hall of Fame in America. Historical aspects include stockman and sheep ranching and Australia art and sculpture. Approaching the Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame, one is taken by the huge windmill and as one approaches closer, the prominent sculpture of a stockman after a long day ringing. In June, the bouganvillia are beautiful. Inside the hall, an early settlers cabin has been reproduced. Recently one of Liz’s bush friends commented that the bed reminded her of her early life in the bush. Here on the high plains, fire in a fireplace on a cold winter’s night was a family gathering point.
Day trips are available to stock and sheep stations as well as a sundown dinner cruise down the Longreach waterhole, west of town a short ways. Longreach is also where Outback.com.au is the ISP. Merideth Freeman, one of the owners, was sure friendly and helpful allowing us to connect the notebook to their system, which allowed us to chat with the friends around the world and send and receive email. I don't know if they are still in business or not. Capital intense businesses like an internet service provider don't last long if they are undercapitalized.
Wednesday we moved on to Winton, a dusty town reminiscent of Old El Paso in a setting of miles and miles of dry grass in the winter, with a few mountain plateaus to the west visible. Winton is well promoted.
Winton is home to the Waltzing Matilda Museum. The huge wagon in front is the type of wagon used to carry tons of wool to the nearest seaport, Rockhampton. It was pulled by about 30 horses and the trip took about 3 months. Andrew Barton aka Banjo Patterson wrote Waltzing Matilda. Waltzing Matilda which has been performed since 1895 is the song about a sheep rustler who when caught by the police committed suicide by leaping into a billabong (waterhole). The scuplture of "The Jolly Swagman" is promenient in the museum also.
An Australian photographer, Peter Knowles had an excellent exhibition of his work. The photography in both color and black and white was exceptional. The Caravan Park at Winton had a bush poet that was amazing with her bush cooking, bush poetry and yarns. She was really an 'Annie Oakley' of the outback.
Thursday, on the way to Cloncurry, we passed through McKinlay, which is where the movie Crocodile Dundee was partially filmed. At Cloncurry, we saw road trains that had 5 trailers.
Friday, we arrived in Mt. Isa, which is large for Queensland outback towns with a population of about 25,000, comprising some 50 nationalities. The main feature of the dusty mining town is the Mt. Isa Mining Company. Almost everything in the community revolves around the mine, which mines zinc, copper and lead. To many of the locals, Mt. Isa is at the center of the world. We took a tour of the Mt. Isa mine area in a dilapidated tour bus and heard more about Mt. Isa mining than most wanted to know. Of the outback towns we have seen so far, Mt. Isa is one of the few that has a mall and a compact downtown area with a K-Mart and also a Coles Supermarket.
The Mt. Isa stock show was at the show grounds, while we were there. Shows are another word for a fair, where local folk exhibit and compete for ribbons their best of everything and the kids have fun at the carnival. I got a genuine Aussie leather stockman's hat. The entertainment included a stockman and his wife who showed the skills of their three dogs in herding cattle. They also had a horse they had raced, and the wife had trained the horse to do things horses do not do naturally. She didn't use reigns but hand signals and pressure on different parts of the horse to encourage the horse to do the unexpected.
The stockman handles 700 cattle on their ranch without help from anything except the 3 dogs. The dogs can cut cattle out of a group, and put them in a corral or a caravan, without human intervention...just by calling their name and directing them and with hand signals.
Evidently in trained stock dogs, either the master or another dog is the lead dog, which leads the cattle or sheep to the corral or caravan and the others keep the stock right behind the lead dog. As a example, the stockman released two calves from a corral and directed the dogs to keep them behind him as he walked figure eights around barrels in the corral. After they had amazingly done this, he asked if any one thought they could do the same with three people to replace the dogs. Three teenagers felt up to the task and joined him in the corral. The teenagers were to lead and drive the calves around the barrels. The stockman had his dogs retreat and the teenagers had their turn....well one calf went one way and the other another way...instantly...from one end of the corral to the other. Dogs had the respect of the calves...humans didn't. Well to make a long story short, the teenagers gave up...they couldn't drive one calf let alone two.
The dogs grouped the calves back together, and the stockman led the group to a stock caravan and opened the back. The dogs then drove the calves and made them load themselves in the caravan.
I won $102 playing keno at the Town Club. We also had a nice meal and the entertainment was very professional. The 'Money Tree' drawing seemed to favor those well known to the staff and didn't include any of the visitors. One might wonder if the drawing is on the level. Perhaps this was just an unusual draw.
On Saturday Evening, we were rejected from entering the Buff Club because the shirt I wore didn't have a collar. (It didn't seem to matter that it was covered with a nice sweater and the Guess Jeans designer shirt beneath did have a sewn in collar.) Their loss was over a $100 in sales for dinner and gambling. The Pizza Hut across the road was the recipient of the money...we would have spent at the Buff Club. We had no trouble with a dress (discrimination) code there.
The Pizza Hut experience, was not without dramas. The presentation of the food under glass was obscured from sight by dirt on both sides of the glass sneeze shield and some of the food was stale. In the corners and next to the ice cream machine were residues of trash and dirt. It is a fact the mall keeps their toilets tidier than the Pizza Hut dining room. Management was unresponsive and curt to the suggestions they could do better. Surely the health department and the franchise inspection service of Pizza Hut needs to make a visit before customers become sick.
In my opinion, the people and businesses I came in contact with during a short time, Mt. Isa can do better training their people and management to respond to suggestions and concerns expeditiously rather than just curt acknowledgments...which tend to anger the travelling folks who spend their money here.
North of Mt. Isa, is Lake Moondarra, which was built by the Mt. Isa Mines as a water supply for Mt. Isa.
