28 Days In....
Tomorrow we leave tropical Mackay after 6 days with cousins and aunts and uncles. It's been an action-packed time of family get-togethers, photos and visits. The recent floods have been THE topic of conversation around here. My cousin John has an engineering workshop and it was flooded to a depth of 4 ft with all his equipment inside. Some of the cars started up okay after the flood but after a day or two the starting motors had seized. He has to replace a lot of gear-making equipment. The flood came up really quick and subsided again as quickly but the mess it left behind will take months to clear away.
The city of Mackay is fringed by some lovely beaches empty of people but full of sand crabs and insects. That was the first full day. Then we decided on a trip to the Great Barrier Reef via the campervan/hippie resort of Airlie Beach. We did the full tour - semi-submersible where you get in close to the reef and watch the fish in detail, a helicopter trip which gives you the overview of the reef and a snorkelling half hour which had it been an exam I would have failed dismally as I parted company with my mouthpiece early on in the proceedings. No sharks up close but huge wrasse and groper fish. A really enlightening experience (the food was pretty good too). Next up a trip up country to the Eungella National Park where - to our great pride - we spotted a duck-billed platypus who obligingly put on a good display for us though even the best photographer amongst us (my cousin Esther) managed to cut off his tail in her close-up. My uncle ran various sawmills round this area as a young man after emigrating from Ireland just before the war. Today we've been to the Sarina Sugar Shed which is a mini sugar mill providing a snapshot of the sugar cane industry. A couple of my relatives are involved with sugar, it's been the backbone of the Queensland economy for 150 years but times are harder now for the growers and the new big industry is coalmining. Volumes of coal mined are truly enormous and the coal jetty at Mackay is one of the biggest in the southern hemisphere. Tomorrow we go back over the Tropic of Capricorn back towards Brisbane. It's a fascinating area, though very high humidity makes it difficult for visitors and insect repellent is a top priority. (Animals checked include one or two snakes, tree frogs but the elusive kangaroos remain, well, elusive). Staying tonight with another cousin in her modern suburban-style house. Porky now has to be packed up again along with our smoko (morning snacks) and bottles of water for the trek south. Hope that clutch is okay.
Be seeing you.