On Friday night I went to see Burt Bacharach and The Queensland Orchestra. From the first notes played to the last song of the encore I had a grin on my face like you just wouldn’t believe. I was chatting to some people waiting at the traffic lights outside the
Convention Centre waiting to cross who remarked that wasn’t I bit young to be at a Burt Bacharach concert. I replied that “who wouldn’t love Burt?”. As a pianist and composer he has a remarkable career and many of the songs that he wrote are entrenched in pop culture. I personally own two of his LPs which I quite enjoy.
The format of the 100min show was mainly the playing of medleys as well as a few full length songs. Whilst I knew most of the “old songs” and soundtrack tunes they played, it was quite interesting to hear three of the songs off his newest album At This Time (2005) which was the first time he had written lyrics as well as the music. This of course meant that he was singing as well as playing piano/keys which was very impressive.
The two days that we spent walking in the Eungella National Park were through Rainforest and due to the recent rain they had had. The fungi was positively blooming. In addition to the fungi in the pictures we saw jelly, finger and elephant foot fungi.
24/6/07 06:11 Depart Brisbane 13°C 0.0km
11 minutes after the ETD we depart the Palsson residence. Mum is driving. Our first item on the agenda is to fill up the tank as that would be the cheapest petrol we would see until we returned to the South East 10 days later.
24/6/07 07:08 Arrive The Farm 15°C 57.1km
We had breakfast at The Farm with Grandad watching the birds feed outside his kitchen window.
After watching the birds and chatting with “The Man” we went to pick the Custard Apples, Passionfruit and Cherry Tomatoes. Taking just a small bundle with us to eat in the following days.
24/6/07 08:25 Depart The Farm 18°C 57.1km
24/6/07 09:45 Arrive Gympie 18°C 180.3km
Have our morning tea at the lakes and spend some moments watching the ducks, swans, geese and other bird life having a feed from a young lad with a bag of bread. Drive past Gympie’s Big Pineapple and are shocked to see that the area is fenced off and that the petrol station is long gone. Hope that whatever takes up shop on the land keeps the Big Pineapple.
24/6/07 10:05 Depart Gympie 18°C 180.3km
Helen takes over the driving seat. Highlight is driving over the Burnett River bridge just south of Gin Gin and wishing that it was the mighty Burnett again not the piddly little river it is now. Drive past many many acres of cane fields and smile at the sun hitting the cane flowers blowing in the wind.
24/6/07 12:26 Arrive Gin Gin 21°C 385.6km
Gin Gin is an interesting town. Like many other towns on a highway (Sarina for example) it has a park which divides the road with picnic tables, toilets etc for those passing through. Gin Gin though manages to have no less than three (3) blocks of toilets in this park.
24/6/07 13:25 Depart Gin Gin 21°C 385.6km
Mum takes over the driving seat for 1hr or so until she starts to get sleepy and Helen takes over the wheel again.
Heading North along the Bruce Highway in the afternoon sun my eyes are caught by the sun reflecting on the insulators and pull over to take a photo or two.
Just after taking these photos we hear the sound of a coal train and coming past and quickly turn round to count the carriages. 3 engines, 86 carriages of coal. A couple of km down the road we see another one approaching and pull over so that we can count it as well. 4 engines, 100 carriages of coal. After getting this same count when we next saw a coal train we realised quickly that they are standard lengths and could then know the number of carriages by counting the engines as they went past us.
24/6/07 16:30 Arrive Rockhampton 21°C 668.3km
Mum and I check into our budget motel room for the night and head to the Old Rockhampton Botanical Gardens chasing the light. I managed to get a few photos before the sun dipped even lower on the horizon.
Whilst driving back to the motel, I marvel to Mum that the streets of Rocky are soooo wide. She replies that the streets were made that wide so that cattle could easily be driven down to the sale yards back in the day.
Head back to the motel and settle in, whilst waiting for Cathie and Lesley to arrive. Once they turn up we walk down the street to a local pub for a buffet dinner which was quite nice. I fed myself for the next couple of days with numerous serves of dessert and mains. They had a really, really nice choc mousse.
25/6/07 07:29 Depart Rockhampton 17°C 680.4km
Mum is driving and Lesley is with as Cathie has headed off to Mackay earlier to visit family. Exercise Talisman Sabre is taking place at Shoalwater which is just outside of Rocky and I comment at the American Army trucks we see driving down the highway. They looked so out of place and instantly recognisable as American. They are a different colour green to our trucks and a different shape. It only took a glance to know that it an American mini-convoy driving past us. It was sort of funny. They just look really American.
25/6/07 10:14 Arrive Clairview 18°C 895.5km
Have morning tea and ward off pesky Blue-faced Honeyeaters who want some food. Have a browse through the local op and crafts shop before having a bit of a stroll on the beach.
25/6/07 11:03 Depart Clairview 18°C 895.5km
25/6/07 12:53 Arrive Mackay 20°C 1020km
Lots of driving round Mackay in the rain. It is wet and we want to find somewhere undercover to have lunch. We end up eating our lunch on the seats outside the Mackay Performing Arts Complex. Real Classy. After feeding the worms we head over to the EPA/QPWS office to ask some questions about the walk. Whilst up in the office I fall in love with the art work by a few artists representing birds of the region and in particular birds on the Great Walk. Mainly collage in form and just really great.
Cathie arrives back from visiting her family and we go about looking for accommodation and getting a hot drink. We check out the first backpackers hostel and they only have room for 2 people but they ring the other backpackers in town and we find out that they have room for all four of us and will hold it for us. We all get a Hot Chocolate and ponder our options because outside it is raining and the forecast is for more rain in the next couple of days and all the locals have said if it is raining in Mackay it is ten times worse at Eungella. Just Great. After sitting in the car deciding if we should stay the night in Mackay or head up to Eungella, I put forward the motion that we may as well drive up to Eungella tonight because then we are up there and we can make a moves from there. Motion accepted by the other party members we pick up some groceries and start the drive through the cane fields and in the rainy night we slowly wind our way up the range to Eungella on a road that is steep and shrouded in mist.
25/6/07 18:10 Arrive Eungella 14°C 1125km
We pick up the map to our accommodation off the office door (they closed at 17:30) and make our way to the cabin. It is still raining but we are all bushwalkers and have our trusty raincoats at hand to cart our bags from the carpark through water logged grass and down a slippery mud slope to our cabin. It was a wonderful place to arrive at. A microwave, a working tv, a fireplace and a nice shower. We shower, eat and retreat to bed all hoping that the morning would bring a sunshiney day.
3/4 (Mum, Leslie and I) of our party arrived home in Brisbane today after spending 10 days and 2813km on the road. We went as far north as Mackay and as far west as Dysart. We didn’t end up walking the complete Mackay Highlands Great Walk due to the rain not playing nice. We got did the first two days of the walk as day walks and then headed into Hazelwood Gorge for a 2 day walk before heading to Blackdown Tableland for another 3 days. We have seen a huge number of birds and animals as well as walking through countless different types of vegetation from rainforest to cattle country and everything in between. Many of the photos I have do not do any justice to the scale of the countryside, we are talking about vistas that literally leave you awestruck as you stand on the edge of a cliff 600m odd above sea level and look not only down the cliff face but out 100’s of km to the horizon.
The forth person of our party (CDM) departed us at Dysart to go camping at Carnarvon with her family so was not with us at Blackdown Tableland. This photo of Mum and I returning to the cars from Hazelwood Gorge was taken by CDM.
My Mountain Goats love is well known and they are probably the band that I promote the most to my friends and randoms in the street. The Mountain Goats are my 24hr a day band, a song for every mood.
I was reading Aquarium Drunkard the other day and saw this post – Under the Covers – Babylon Burning, my heart started to thump faster as I read the post and then when I clicked on the links and listened to the music, I had chills running down my back like I have never had before from a song and it was not just from the title track but the other 3 songs from the session as well. Talk about raw JD!
These four songs were recorded in a Daytrotter session at SWSX and the description of the session just makes me smile.
He performed most of the set sitting cross-legged on the cement floor of the Big Orange studio. Daytrotter
It is very well worth heading over to Daytrotter to read JD’s track notes as well as get/listen to the other three songs and to look at the super cute artwork of JD
Here is Babylon Burning, originally by Peter Tosh(he died on my 2nd birthday). I have had this song running through my head non-stop for the last 24hrs.
[audio:The Mountain Goats – Babylon Burning.mp3]
Note – this is an automated posting. Helen is out bush until July 2ish.
Taken at night in my room, a thick plastic bag over my computer screen, a polariser filter on my camera and cross-polarisation goodness occurs. I want to play with this idea further as I love the lines and colour graduations I have captured.
Note – this is an automated posting. Helen is out bush until July 2ish.
