August 25 & 26 Mackay

Some light rain as we were packing to leave Proserpine made life a little uncomfortable and turned the dust on the car and van into mud. Once we got on the road the drive to Mackay was uneventful and about all there was to see were sugar cane fields and more sugar cane fields.

Finding the caravan park was a bit of a challenge as it was well off the main road and for the first time getting the van on the site proved to be a bit difficult. All was well in the end.

Mackay hasn’t grabbed us in the same way that Townsville immediately did. Despite that it’s quite a nice place. The shopping facilities we’ve seen are excellent with a good mix of businesses in the CBD plus a large major shopping centre (Woolworths, Super IGA, Big W, Target etc) only a couple of blocks away.

About a week ago Bluewater Lagoon was opened. With three pools and a water play area similar to that on the Strand in Townsville, it’s going to be very popular in hot weather. Admission is free and when we were there two lifeguards were on duty. I know it’s the tropics and it’s supposed to be warm enough to swim all year round but I can’t help thinking one of these facilities would be a great asset in Wollongong.

Mackay doesn’t have a pedestrian mall but the main street is set up as I imagine they’d like to do in Crown Street – lots of pedestrian crossings and speed humps means any traffic is slow moving. In Mackay the traffic is in both directions while I think Wollongong’s is supposed to be one. I can’t see why something similar wouldn’t work at home.

Today we headed about 80 km west of Mackay to Eungella (pronounced Young-g-lah) National Park where we enjoyed a couple of walks through the rainforest. The highlight however was seeing a platypus in the wild for the first time. We could have joined a platypus tour for $75 each so felt quite pleased that we’d made a sighting on our own.

The drive to Eungella was through the Pioneer River valley with sugar cane fields as far as you could see. As harvesting is in progress it was quite interesting. We saw cane being harvested, carried in bins by tractors and then transported to the mill by train. The rail-lines used by the trains spread across the area like a spider’s-web with the main track following the road we were travelling on. It amazes me that the bins don’t topple over as the distance between the rails is really narrow.

For the second day running mum was able to have a training swim in the 50m heated pool. She’s at last making up for all she missed out on while we were out west.