Our travels...

It's a little while since I've written a post so over the next few days I'll try to remedy that situation. Last Wednesday, DH and I started driving north as we were heading off to a wedding in the Rockhampton district. In my previous post I wrote of our stop at my niece's place on the Sunshine Coast. After that, we made our way to Gympie, an old gold mining town, where we stopped for lunch. I had packed the esky with the makings for some sandwiches which we had at a picnic spot just outside the town.

We also drove through the picturesque town of Buderim on the Sunshine Coast

Lunch at Gympie



 As we drove north from Gympie, we headed into sugarcane growing territory. The season lasts from May to december, so most of the cane had been harvested. Some paddocks close to the road had ratoon crops (what sprouts again when the cane has been harvested) that were over 30 cm tall. We were stuck behind one truck loaded with cane that was throwing back some of its load on to our car! The next city we reached was Maryborough.

Like Gympie,Maryborough suffered in the floods that hit the state in January this year. The part of the city that we drove through showed no evidence of the devastation. We skirted around the outskirts of the town so I haven't any photos of the gracious old buildings in the city centre. In its early days, Maryborough was a very prosperous city with a lot of  industry and of course, wealth. 

A tantalising glimpse of Hervey Bay in the distance

From Maryborough, we continued north to our destination Hervey Bay, where we would stay for 2 nights. Hervey Bay has long been a popular place for people from the south to retire to. It is also popular with families as a beach holiday destination without the glitz and crime of the Gold Coast. Tourists also flock to Hervey Bay to board 'Whale watching' cruises...sadly for us, these tours finish early November. In 2006 DH and I went to Hervey Bay for the other main attraction...Fraser island, a magnificent sand island which is now a National Park. In its early years of white settlement the island was the scene of many extractive type industries, but now it's just controlled eco-friendly tourism. 

An old whaling harpoon on display at the Hervey Bay Marina

One of our favourite places in Hervey Bay is Urangan jetty. It is 863 metres long but used to be over a 1000 metres long. There used to be a railway line from nearby Pialba to Urangan and the trains actually went out on the jetty carrying coal, sugar and passengers to waiting ships. Sadly the line closed quite a few years ago.

The jetty at Urangan

 A sculpture near the jetty (the fish and the boy!)

Part of the Esplanade at Hervey Bay Some of the beaches are named after English beach towns eg, Scarness and Torquay