12 th May to 18 th.

Bowen

The sun has really come out and the rain gone, the weather at Bowen humid and hot which is fantastic but the midgies are too friendly especially in the grass and after four o’clock if outside. The mozzie coils helping but we are still chased indoors by dusk.

The town of Bowen and local areas are known for growing 70 Percent of tomatoes and capsicums for Australia and also supplying fresh tropical fruits.

The towns symbol is the Big Mango but there was no mangoes around to buy at the moment as it is not the mango season. We settled for a fresh mango sorbet instead.

We had four nights here and found Bowen very pretty and relaxing. The beaches were lovely and the number of people around very reduced compared to Airlie Beach.

Our first afternoon was walking along Bowen foreshore at low tide, the walk including the marina and the towns Main Street, all very quiet here in Bowen with lots of the shops closed after 2 pm.

The next day we explored all the beaches from Queens bay, Rose bay, Murray and Grays beach, but the best one of all was Horseshoe Bay which we snorkelled just off the beach and near the rocks seeing coral and fish. The cafe at the beach served great fish and chips which we went back again the next day. The first picture is Horse shoe Bay , the other Grays beach. The last two is John playing with the drone on Queens beach.

After lunch we spent some time overlooking Stone and Gloucester Island from the Flagstaff Hill lookout and watched the sea eagles soaring overhead. We viewed the North Head lighthouse, which at extreme low tides you can walk the sand spit to it. But not at our visit.

The following morning

We had played 9 holes of golf…. Badly !!! The course runs adjacent to the coral sea, the course was nice and flat and a glimpse of the sea from the first few holes. There were a lot of other golfers on the course which put pressure on us to keep moving, which took away some of the enjoyment of playing our first golf in a long time.

My t – shots were good but the rest of my game was awful, John did his usual score of 52 and mine a lot higher!

After golf we had another snorkel at Horseshoe Bay which cooled us down and then went for a drive to see Mullers Lagoon which we viewed from the water towers lookout, feeling to lazy this afternoon to walk around the lagoon.

The tanks are covered in Murals featuring the sea and sea life, and the water towers can be seen from many points around the town. Yasso point where the river enters the sea also visible in one photo. John took some drone footage here at Yasoo point as well. The point was named after two south sea Islanders that were famous locals in this area.

Our last day was spent driving out to Collinsville a mining town one hour west of Bowen

The town had many painted murals depicting the towns history,

and a bronze statue of a horse called a Pit Pony. The ponies were famous here in Collinsville and used in the mines even up to 1990. Collinsville being the last place in Australia to use these horses in the mines.

The Workers club had a coal face experience which was interesting and showed the way mining of coal was done through the decades and info about mine disasters. Collinsville was known as Little Moscow as the workers here were very active working with the unions for better pay and conditions for the miners.

We stayed on at the workers club for lunch.

Earlier we had had morning tea at the lookout that overlooked the town and the Clark’s ranges. The view a great spot to enjoy over a cuppa!

The park in town had many fruit trees where you could pick fruit in season for free. We got an orange and a few limes but nothing was really ripe.

The areas around here are abundant with fruit growing trees particularly mango trees, but nothing is in season.

The next day we left Bowen and just one hour up the highway we stopped at Home hill which has a free comfort stop in town, a really fantastic facility for travelers with toilets showers bins etc all fairly new and free. The town looks sad with a lot of shops closed for good but one little business which was selling prawns for $12:50 was doing a roaring trade. We bought prawns and Moreton bay bugs and the guy threw in a mud crab as well. More seafood on the menu.

We unhooked the van and drove 10 kms back to Mt Inkerman and up to the lookout which had 360 degrees of the Burdekin region. An allied rock wallaby stayed to say hello and was very unperturbed by all the people taking his photo.

Charlie Hill a WW2 radar station and bunkers was our next stop. These were constructed in 1943 and operated as an early warning system for approaching enemy aircraft. The igloos were made of reinforced concrete 8 inches thick.

Then we drove out of town to the Burdekin bridge known as the silver link.

Built in 1957 over the Burdekin river as previously the river was impassable for much of the wet season stopping trade to north Qld. The bridge is longer than the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The Burdekin area is famous for its sugar cane and the Inkerman Mill is here at Home Hill, I took some photos of the model machinery in the Lions park (above)

Harvest time is June to November so we have missed seeing this by just a few weeks. The cane is often burnt first in this area one of the last places in Australia to still use this method to destroy the green foliage before the husk is harvested to make the best sugar world wide. Nearly everywhere else uses modern day methods using new harvesters without burning.

The Burdekin region is the sugar cane capital , a dry tropical area with 300 days of sunshine annually plus 1000 mm of rainfall, making it a perfect agricultural centre for this industry.

Ayr

Ayr is only 11 kms from Home Hill so we visited the township the next day. The town has many statues and a nice town clock.

We managed to find our scooters here!! Who would think in a small town that a Jay car reseller store would be where we would find scooters and they were on special. We hadn’t been able to find them in any major town as we did a ring around prior to finding these. And we also bought a Go Pro which we had also been considering and unbelievably it was on sale too. So a big spend but John and I are now sorted for birthdays and Xmas presents to each other for 2021.

While in Ayr we went to Plantation park and walked through a tree lined path call the Juru walk. The snake is a feature of the park and an Aborginal totem.

After lunch we drove out to the beachside town of Alva, no photos were taken as we weren’t inspired by this area. The Burdekin river enters the coral sea here but it had dispersed mud flats everywhere and was not picturesque.

Before leaving Home Hill the next day we took advantage of the town car and caravan wash, nice to see them clean again, they had started to look very unloved.

The road to Townsville again lined with sugar cane, coal trains and mango trees.

Now it is off to Townsville for five nights our next blog.