The Tropics At Last

It is now Tuesday March 17, and we have left Maryborough and are heading north through the coastal plains of Queensland. The landscape looks a little more tropical because there are now fields of sugar cane, as we are going to go through, but not stop at, Bundaberg, the home of bad rum and good ginger beer. I never find out if they mix the two into a cocktail.

We are aiming for the little town of Agnes Water, 130 kilometers further up the coast. We find it has a lovely park at the beach where we eat lunch and swim. The surf is gentler than at Emerald Beach, but even so, like every beach in Australia, there are surfers. Actually, once we get inside the Great Barrier Reef, there is no longer any surfing, I am told. The different color flags tell you where to swim safely where there are lifeguards.

We check out the campgrounds between Agnes Water and the Town of 1770, where Captain Cook first landed in Queensland and decide to stay at the Captain Cook Campground. Unfortunately, the walk to the beach is 800 meters through coastal scrub. We discover that this is a long distance, especially as we are only wearing sandals. Ron’s give him a blister. However, all is forgiven when we check out their restaurant for an evening cocktail. We pick up a small order of French fries (chips) to go with our dinner salad for 3.50. The box of fries I am given would fit about 4 large orders of McDonalds fries in it! We see our first kookaburra and our first bush turkey. It is too dark to get a good picture of the turkeys, which look a lot like American ones except for they have no wattle. But the kookaburra sits patiently for its portrait.

By the time we leave the campground Wednesday morning, we realize we have also been introduced to Australian sand fleas. Some of the bites that I scratched still have not healed.

Finally, later Wednesday morning we reach Rockhampton, which sits on the Tropic of Capricorn. It is also the Beef Capital of Queensland, so there are lots of statues of cattle around in different colors, kind of like Washington had donkeys and elephants a couple of years ago.

Here are Ron and I sitting on either side of the line of the Tropic of Capricorn.

We drive over to the coast as far as Yeppoon looking for campgrounds. We stop at a very nice picnic area on a long stretch of beach. In many ways it reminds me of picnic spots along Lake Michigan. However, the weather is cloudy and blowing hard, which makes the beach totally uninviting. We stay at a campground nearby that is about a quarter mile away from the ocean and has a pool. We find that we are also sharing the camp kitchen with a group of Catholic middle school students and teachers. They are there for a regional sports competition. Although in some ways it feels ironic to be in the middle of all these kids, we actually enjoy talking with the teachers and following their progress.

Finally, on March 19, we take a day tour of Great Keppel Island to get a bit of an experience of reef life. Unfortunately, the weather is not good – intermittent drizzle and blustery. But we dress appropriately and most of the time it is not raining. There are only 13 passengers on the large catamaran that takes us out to the island, and only nine of us on the tour. (The island also has various resorts and lodges for people to stay overnight.) It is just a half hour trip across a very choppy sea. After tea and some free time to walk on the beach, we go out in a glass bottom boat to look at coral. The wind and waves restrict where we can look, and the clouds and turbulence means that visibility under water is limited, but still we see some interesting coral and learn something of the ecosystem. We see very few fish. We then return to the big boat, which takes us around the island to an uninhabited, and sheltered, area.

Some people snorkel, but Ron and I elect to walk around. Seeing that some trash has been blown into the bush by the storm, we end up getting plastic bags and picking up trash! Not that much, thank goodness, but it feels good. Then lunch on the boat - barbequed tofu for us veggies. The boat then proceeds slowly down the coast of the island trailing what they call a boom net which the swimmers grab on to or sit on and are pulled by the boat. Much hilarity for both swimmers and audience.

Finally we go to an abandoned marine research station that acts as an artificial reef and the crew throws food out to the fish which come darting in schools to the surface to eat. It is actually more interesting than I expect.

Luckily, the trip back to the mainland is not nearly as choppy as the morning ride because we are going with the waves. It rains most of the evening and all night. The next day – the Equinox! – we decide we have had enough of tropical rains and head back down the coast to look for beaches and sunshine.