Mackay - 23rd -30th July

Our stay at Mackay had the auspicious start of a drive-thru site for the van because we got there earlier than the people behind us and were able to come in forwards over their site to ours (drive-thru site explained!).  At 4.30 we also came upon the daily bird feeding event where the park feeds the hundreds of whistling ducks, the many rainbow lorikeets and some Sacred and White Ibis plus a few drop-ins like the moor hens, plovers and the blue-faced honey eaters. Very noisy but generally well behaved until they are all fed then some birds get a bit aggressive with each other. In a walk around the park later I met one of the permanent residents who, at 84 and fairly housebound, was keen for a bit of a chat. Among other things he told me where to get a good fish and chips meal and gave me directions to a couple of scenic spots.

Feeding time, then feuding time

Whistling Ducks at the Andergrove Caravan Park - most spacious in Mackay

The next morning saw the annex up to the tune of a Murri radio broadcast that supplied another ‘must see’ destination. Apparently somebody had belted the Leichhardt Tree with something resembling an axe and damaged it. While lamenting the mindless stupidity of that act, the announcer pointed out that it was a historically important tree as it had served as the tie-up point for early port users and had also been where the ancestors of many Australians of Islander descent were chained up pending their auction to sugar farms. Strangely, I could not find any marker near the tree to tell its history. Interesting old tree though and a bit much for one camera shot...

The Leichardt Tree opposite the ABC studios about half a block from the CDB.

Somehow we seem to visit most spots at low tide so the ocean views at Mackay were often over a vast distance of sandy flats. There is a strong sea breeze here that has a large impact on the trees.

Both these trees show the prevailing wind - not your usual bottle tree shape



The Light House at the Marina village does serve the best fish and chips ever. The fish was fresh Mackerel, it was well cooked in nice sized portions and it was well priced. We sat inside the glassed in area, watched seagulls squabble outside and saw a couple of small boats come in to the boat ramp. One was collected by an old Land Rover Discovery that I would not have been game to park on the steepest (floating end) ramp I have ever seen. (Perhaps some of you are not aware or have forgotten that our old Landy once skipped the pawls on the Park gear and ran away backwards down a hill – and Jim came tumbling after...)

From there we cruised around the coastal area (Shoal Point, Bucasia, Eimeo, Dolphin Heads and Blacks Beach) and took photos from the lookouts.  At Lamberts Beach we were intrigued by the number of ships anchored off the point (about 20 of them - way too many for Mackay Harbour itself) and the long jetty we could see in the distance so decided to visit. The trip was way longer than we expected. We would probably have given up had Anne not called it up on the iPad, learned it was Hay Point and done the navigation there and back with the iPad.

Wow! The Hay Point coal loading facility is really something. I had the camera out and had taken a number of shots before I wondered where the long jetty thing was. There are two. The Hay Point Coal Terminal is 1.8 km long and the Dalrymple Bay Coat Terminal is 3.85 km long. This one is so big that I had taken it for an enormous crane-like structure. Second looks put the whole into perspective – what I had seen as a several hundred meters long crane was in fact the several kilometres long jetty!! Then whole site became the simply enormous place it is!!! And the big coal mine trucks start to emerge as those match-head sized things moving about in the distance. Anne here... The statistician must out... Coal from the Bowen Basin coal mines 300 km away is exported from here. Train sets of up to 2kms in length powered by up to five locos deliver up to 10,000 tones of coal each.  900 ships  visit per year, and bulk carriers of 230,000 tonnes can be accommodated at these wharves.  130 million tonnes are exported each year with expansion likely.  The Authority had a very good way of containing its visitors by erecting a lookout on a nearby low hill, the simple horizontal iron rail fence and large signs warning people not to venture out onto the grass as the snakes are very active in that area. The villages of Half Tide and Salonika Beach are looking a bit sad these days but the pub seemed to be doing a good trade.

Trucks dwarfed by the size of the operation

Miles of conveyor belt take the coal from the trains to hoppers, to stockpiles of coal by type and then out to the ships



The quiet drive out to Eungella National Park took us along the floor of a long wide valley through the few small townships of Marian (where Melba House museum is located – she apparently lived there while married to a sugar cane farmer), Mirani, Gargett, Pinnacle and Finch Hatton, past sugar fields and a couple of sugar mills which we decided have a strong and unpleasant odour, strongly reminiscent of ammonia. Then came a very steep and curvy road up to Eungella (pronounced Young-Galah) that had Anne working on the wheel and the gears and me wondering if my vertigo would stand the ride... Here we had lunch at Eungella itself and admired the view that on a clear day goes all the way back to Mackay some 100 kilometres.

Our lunchtime view back down the Pioneer Valley from Eungella

We had a couple of short walks in the National Park. I found the one along the creek less worrisome than the sky window walk around the edge of a cliff above the valley. It was too early for the platypus sightings that make the park popular but a toad did manage to amuse a number of visitors by posing in a spot that made photography worthwhile.



View from the Sky Window back along the road up to Eungella

A short stroll from the kiosk at Fern Flat to this piece of Broken River

The trip back took us to the start of the Finch-Hatton Gorge walk. It is another one of those unfortunate National Park “short walks” (15 kilometres along an unmade track that is ‘steep and slippery in places’ please advise a competent SES search party of you intentions and take adequate food, water, and first aid supplies). That said, the track in and out was very pretty, crossing several creeks and following a good track along a nicely forested narrow valley floor.



The first of many river crossings on the way the Hatton-Finch Gorge

We could not decide whether these were gum trees with paper bark or tree sized Melaleucas.

One of the several rocky little creek crossings

Sugar Cane dwarfs the car - the plume reminds me of Pampas grass - bet they are related.

Our last day in Mackay saw us purchase a new camera, a Nikon D500 digital SLR which was on special with 2 lenses (18-55 & 55-300), tripod and bag. We settled for a good memory card instead of the tripod and ordered some polarising filters to be picked up in Townsville. Anne had a haircut – mine was on the first day in town. We also did the cook-up, the washing and a pack up of Annex and outdoor furniture so we could be on the road early the next morning headed for Arlie Beach or thereabouts.

Anne here... Mackay has seen Manyana set in with a vengeance; lost a couple of half days here to indolence, reading and various lazy pursuits.  Have not done a bit of appliqué nor cross-stitch handwork the whole time and it looks like it will not get even started.  As one of my fellow quilter on the road said ‘Ah well, there is always tomorrow’.