Sparkling Company, Sparkling Gems and Now the Booze

We’ve been treated to some Queensland hospitality over the last week or so. We camped on Chris & Mike Rogerson’s front lawn in Townsville for a few nights and then visited Adrian’s cousin Wendy in MacKay. It was good to catch up with old friends, get some local knowledge and experience some gourmet delights in both households. While in Townsville we spent a day on Magnetic Island where we did some Koala spotting. Then it was more fauna at Eungella National Park near MacKay where we saw platypus, goanna and turtles.

Between Townsville & MacKay we spent a night in Bowen where

the Darwin scenes for the film Australia were filmed. We had to see Bowen because Chris loathed the place having been stuck there due to floods during their move to Townsville. We didn’t spend enough time to fully appreciate or loath the place but it did have nice beaches, the best sandwiches we’ve had on our trip and some delectable local tiger prawns.

We then traveled to the gem fields and stayed at Rubyvale. We had heard about the area from other travelers we had met and Wendy showed us a ring with a sapphire she had found there. We had great fun fossicking and from our first bucket we found one sapphire big enough to have cut and set in pendant for Joy. The small towns of Rubyvale and nearby Sapphire are dedicated to the gems and we went to several local businesses set up for fossicking to fossick.

We came away with a small bag of sapphires and zircons that we will send to Asia to have cut. Adrian was almost tempted to stay as in the local supermarket window there was house with 2 mines and all the required mining equipment for sale for $45 000.

We are now in Bundaberg and spent last night at Rockhampton. Tomorrow its rum tasting.

The Capitals and the World

Since arriving in Queensland we have stayed in 2 Capitals of Australia: the Rodeo Capital (Mt Isa) and the Dinosaur Capital (Richmond) as well as a city whose slogan is ‘the World’ (Charters Towers). In Mt Isa there were signs showing distances to various localities around Australia and the World. We realized that, if only there were roads, we could have reached London or Washington in the distance we have traveled around Australia so far.

The Rodeo was on when we reached the Isa so we had to go. It was a little different to the Fitzroy Crossing rodeo: the bulls all had names and knew where to exit the arena after their run and there was a program of events that changed every 15 to 20 minutes. At Fitzroy Crossing we were told the bull riding would be on after lunch, “what time” we asked and the reply was “after lunch” which turned out to be around 4pm. The bulls there were out of the scrub and they had to run in a herd of steers to get them out of the ring.

We tried our hand at mining at the Hard

Time mine in Mt Isa and visited an underground hospital that was built after the bombing of Darwin during World War II.

At Richmond it was a tour of the Dinosaur Museum then a field trip to one of the fossicking sites. We came back to the museum to have our finds assessed, we thought we had found a dinosaur tooth and a fossilized leaf but they turned out to be a stone and a scrape made by a grader. We did however find fossilized fish scales and shells.

In Charters Towers we have toured the town by car and foot and inspected many of the impressive buildings of the gold rush era. Joy paned for gold and found a few specks.

Wetlands to Marbles

Kakadu doesn’t have a good reputation with a lot of the grey nomads we have met on the road. We are not sure why because we enjoyed our 5 days in the park visiting aboriginal art sites, cruising the wetlands, swimming in a plunge pool beneath a waterfall and scrambling to pools above the falls with one of the traditional owners. We even got to watch crocs catching fish.

We then spent a couple of days in the never never at Mataranka where we floated around in hot springs and watched the daily screening of “We of the Never Never”

Then it was a night beside a wetland at Elliott that some other travelers told us about. (If you are in the area: turn west at the cattle grid as you enter the town, ignore the ‘private property’ sign and drive about 12k down the sandy dirt track.) Thousands of birds fly in and out each day: many more than we saw at Kakadu. On our way we had a light lunch at the famous Daley Waters Pub.

Tennant Creek was our next base

and we did a day trip south to the Devils Marbles before an evening around the camp fire with Jimmy the bush tucker man where we had damper and tea made from a native lemon grass. Jimmy recited a couple of poems and told a few tales.

We crossed the border into Queensland today. We both have colds which is no wonder as winter has kicked in with nights as low as 10 and days only reaching into the mid 20s brrrr.