I have a very random, unexpected but very very fun last couple of days. Thus why there have been no more photos from the Gig on Sunday night. I got home Sunday 1:30amish and was in bed by 2am. Woke up at 4:18am to go to work on Monday morning. Worked for 7.5hrs, came home flicked through my photos and started them processing. Went to sleep for 1hr or so. Get waken up by a phone call from Svavar asking me I want to go up the coast with them tonight. I say nah, going to BIFF tonight. 10 mins later after speaking to Mum I ring back and say count me in. 1hr or so later I am hanging at Thor’s house with Pete, Svavar, Thor and Ronnie packing Ronnie’s land cruiser so we can hit the road to Noosa. Had a fantastic 20 hours or so in Noosa, walking in the National Park, chilling at the beaches, listening to Svavar and Pete play guitar and melodyhorn. Then last night Svavar, Pete, Tom, Thor and her parents, myself and Pabbi went to see Parents which is the sole Icelandic movie showing at BIFF this year. Then it was bidding a fond farewell to Pete, Svavar and Tom as they head down to Byron Bay today for the next stage of their tour and thanking Thor for a great time. This morning I have a job interview 🙂 and then I go to work at noon.
Outback Spectacular
We went to the Australian Outback Spectacular at the Gold Coast on Sunday night for Mum’s birthday along with Aunty Susan and Ian who are over for a short holiday from NZ.
It was an interesting night. For the price of your ticket you get a straw hat, three course meal and a showcase of the outback, the history and where we are now. It was nice to have been once but I wouldn’t be rushing back there in a hurry. Well perhaps I would rush back to have more of the salad that we were served as a starter as it was very very yummy. It had lots of endive which I just love as well. Though I wasn’t fussed over the AACo Steak or the Pavlova.
Upon entry you are herded past a series of photo stations and a shop into the bar/holding pen area where they want you to spend money on drinks for 45mins or so until they let you into the arena to your seat where you are then given free beer, wine, lemonade or water. The holding pen is decorated with lots and lots of outback memorabilia such as signs, hats, fence posts, photos etc etc.
This sign in particular was my fav.
The arena is divided into two sections, one half supports Austral Downs, the visiting station with a yellow hat band and the other half supports Wondoola Station with a red hat band. We were in the Wondoola Station section which was good because I thought the yellow hat bands were pretty average.This of course meant that whilst we were in the holding pen it was a sea of hats.
Now a stereotypical outback bar is just not going to be true blue if there is not a country singer with his/her guitar and if the stage does not suit you, what better stage is there than the back of a ute.
The show overall was pretty average in my view, possibly I think because of how they force the Australian clichés on you. Now I can say g’day and cooee with the best of them but I don’t swing my hat round in exclamation and I certainly don’t do a kookaburra laugh and you won’t force me to said mentioned things if I don’t want to.
There was three acts in the show. The first act introduced you to the outback and the people of the outback as well as some circus style horse riding which was quite good. The second act saw a reciting of The Man from Snowy River as well as “mustering” of sheep, cattle and colts before we see the men breaking in the colts in the stereotypical rough and tough way of literally breaking them and not getting anywhere. Than the daughter comes along and “whispers” to the horse and then proceeds to easily mount it and ride it round the arena. To which the men humbly accept that maybe there are better ways to break in a horse. To show how the outback has adapted to technology they mustered the cattle with a helicopter as well as quad bikes and horses. The helicopter was pretty cool, it is suspended on a rail which runs down the centre of the arena and then uses it own power to move down the rail and turn side to side. Very cool.
The final act was a competition which saw members of the audience pulled out for a kids chicken race, a beer can regatta as well a the typical barrel and flag races.
They also had a camel race round the arena which was a bit of a have really as two camels come in with two riders, they go round the ring once and then out the door again, I would have loved to have seen them go round the ring twice at least so you could actually see the animals and get a feel for them. Whilst points are awarded to the two teams through out the final act it comes down to the audience as to which station wins the show with a hat passing race. On our night the opposing station Austral Downs won the show.
One of the things I did really enjoy were the images that they projected onto the backdrop especially for The Man from Snowy River where they had a series of panoramic scenes which they would pan over as the poem progresses. That was really cool and there were some gorgeous photos on the screen.
Eungella National Park
We ended up spending three nights in Eungella and not once did we utilise the QPWS campsites that we had booked before leaving. The reason you ask? We were prepped and ready to attack the Mackay Highlands Great Walk. We had been looking forward to it for months now. Mackay is in the tropics. That means they have a Wet Season and a Dry Season. It is meant to be the Dry Season at the moment. Well as a further example of the really weird weather we are having in Australia at the moment. It decided to pour for the first couple of days that we were up there. We are talking constant rain for days. Rain that made it impossible to complete the walk as planned. Instead we walked parts of it and the final two days will have to wait for another time.
I think I have mentioned before how much I love backlit foilage, so here is another healthy dose of it.
The stinging tree aka Gympie Gympie (Dendrocnide moroides) is one beastly plant. Yes in Australia, we don’t only have animals that attack, we have plants that attack. There are six Dendrocnides in Australia ranging from 40m trees to shrubs. Native animals are not harmed by the stinging tree but humans and introduced animals are. In having a closer look at the plant and picking a few of the berries so that Mum could have a closer look, I brushed my hand on the stem and by boy did my hand feel like fire when it got cold in the week following my attack. Touch wood that it doesn’t flare up again.
These are just some general snaps from the walk.
Fungi of Eungella National Park
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.
Driving to Eungella
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.
home again
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.
