Hervey Bay. Well, it is a quiet place when the whales are not about and we went to Rainbow Beach and to Inskip Point and to a beautiful Sand Bar, some pictures have already been sent from that.
After that we discovered The Water Works, which was just a short distance from our caravan park. It is a real family affair. Its primary purpose is to take all the storm water from the drains and transform it into pure, clean water, which is safe to enter the ocean. In this process, some of the storm water is used to run this family fun park. Even grannies and babies can enjoy it.
You can ride the waves on a surfboard or float, you can have great buckets of water – as large as 44 gallon drums poured down on you when it tips over, you can stand under and run through a host of other water activities and sometimes they have up to 4,000 people there on a single day, all in the water and having fun. There is no charge to enter this fun park, just $5 to ride the wave machine on a surfboard. It was a great surprise to see it. It is right on the beach of course.
We could not miss Agnes Waters and 1770. I had heard so much about them from Sandra. Our park was in the bush, but the one on the beach is a beauty, if you book and can get into it. 1770 is where Captain Cook brought the Endeavour in for a “look see”. It must have looked magic to him as it did to us. Few people live in 1770, but it is a wonderful place and we enclose a sunset from the lookout.
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| 1770 near sunset |
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| 1770 |
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| 1770 |
The following day we hopped on a fast boat, you can see it in one of the photos as it was coming in the previous day. Fairly small, about 40 passengers and we went for a 2 hr trip to Lady Musgrave Island to snorkel on the lowest reef in the Great Barrier Reef. As we looked out of the semi submersibles and glass bottom boats, we could not believe the beauty we were in for, once we donned the flippers and mask and dived into the warm waters, 21 degrees. The reef was alive with coloured corals and fish, so it was worth the effort, despite the temperatures having been quite cold on the mainland. Graeme took the seagull shots from the platform on the reef and had fun doing that.
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| In the wake of the boat |
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| View of 1770 Capt Cook from the boat |
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| 1770 Capt Cook |
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| At Lady Musgrave Island |
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| Grace and Poise |
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| Graceful |
We walked over Lady Musgrave Island which has strange trees on it, which have seeds that land on the local birds until their feathers are so gummed up, they can’t fly off, then they die and make fertilizer for the trees. Nature will have its way. We saw some of the birds and chicks running around. The colours of the waters around the island were just like all the gorgeous pictures you see. This was a special day. We always love the reef best of all.
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| Lady Musgrave Island |
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| Shell Phone |
Agnes Waters is a small town too.
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| Agnus Waters Reflections |
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| Agnus Waters Sunrise |
We drove to Gladstone and photographed a sunset from a local lookout.
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| Gladstone Sunset |
To my dear friends who think we are seeing all this beautiful scenery from the hands of the creator, this is true, but we are also seeing the terrible devastation caused by mankind especially at Gladstone and Mount Morgan today.
Gladstone is the most “go ahead” city you can spot up this way. The suburbs are set in bushland, the waterfront is amazing. The harbour ships mined products and processed metals off to all parts of the globe. I don’t quite know how to describe the devastation caused by the industry and its processing and carrying on amidst beautiful waterways, harbours, rivers, power plants and huge dams as big as Sydney Harbour to run everything.
Now at Rockhampton, 100 km north of Gladstone, we decided to visit and tour ex-“success story” Mount Morgan. Once again, the devastation is almost unbelievable. From the 1880’s and onward it was the biggest town going. Maybe one of the biggest in Australia way back when. Today, of course we did have a most interesting tour with a great tour guide. Very interesting to learn all about it, but to see what is left would almost make you weep. A great huge open cut, with 40 feet of polluted and poisoned water in it. It is a kilometer or more long. It is like an ugly scar on the countryside with all the old mining equipment and history. The famous manager of the time, Walter Hall and his wife Eliza founded the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for medical (cancer) research and this fund is still operating today from one of the Unis in Melbourne.
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