Lathams News: NORTH QLD ADVENTURE - DAY 4

A nice early start this morning as we wanted to do some exploring along the way… It was 4 minutes past 8 when we pulled out of the Barracrab Caravan Park, with Mackay being our destination tonight…

We had heard some good reports about Cape Palmerston and as it was only 10kms off the main highway and only 60kms from Clairview, we thought we would drive in there and check it out on our way north…

The further north we travel, the prettier the scenery… They have obviously had more rain up here than we have had back home, as everything is nice and green…

The drive into Cape Palmerston was pretty will lots of lovely green cane fields and the distinctive 344m Mount Funnel towering in the background…. It reminds me of a lot of the castles built along the river Rhine in Germany… Qld’s own little castle of rock. It is quite spectacular…

Most of the houses in this sleepy little village are on the beach front so it was very hard to park the van and walk down onto the beach… In the end we headed down a well used and maintained dirt road to see where it would lead us to…

Fortunately for us it led to a very rough boat ramp out onto the beach and there was some bush parking, which allowed us to turn the van around. We locked the car and van and then headed down onto the beach…

What a pretty little spot… Again, this area of the coast is quite rocky, but totally different to Clairview. Mostly the rock here was black basalt and conglomerate basalt and other rocks all combined together… There were some pretty impressive tall black rocks, and I must admit we had a ball taking photos of them and having our photos taken with them also….

The beach here was also made up of tiny little shells and we saw lots of cuttlefish…

We would have spent a good hour on the beach exploring the rock pools and taking photos.

On our drive back into Cape Palmerston we noticed lots and lots of black cockatoos, which would take to flight as we drove past…

From here we headed to Sarina… Initially we had thought we would also explore Sarina as we drove through, but this turned out to be harder than we thought it would with the van hitched behind… We made the decision then that we would leave exploring Sarina until our trip home and instead of staying in Mackay again, we would stay overnight in Sarina instead and explore it then without the van on the back…

In the end we got into Mackay around 11.15am and were able to book into the Premier Caravan Park which is situated on Nebo Road, the main throughfare through Mackay…

Last time we were in Mackay we stayed in a Top Tourist Park at Andergrove but we didn’t overly enjoy that experience as it was mainly a worker’s park and was fairly untidy. Also, it is now $40 and even with our Loyalty discount, it would only reduce it to $36. The park we are staying at this time, although a little old and tired, is spotlessly clean and very well maintained….

Once we were all set up and had lunch, it was time to take off and head off to explore Mackay…

We parked and as we headed in, one of the first things we noticed was this massive carpet snake, sunning itself in one of the rock pools…. It didn’t seem to perturbed by people coming and going and I was able to get a couple of good shots of It with my camera.

The other thing that got our attention were the number and variety of butterflies that were in the garden and I am sure I took way too many photos of them.

These gardens are relatively new in regards to Botanical Gardens as they were only opened in 2003.

These gardens have over three kilometres of walking trails and they showcase the beautiful tropical flora from Mackay and the Whitsundays along with other beautiful Australian native and exotic plants from similar climates around the world. The garden, include many different areas including wetlands boardwalks, a unique little café and gallery which are perched high above the wildlife filled lagoon.

We wandered all over these gardens but particularly enjoyed their luxuriant Fernery, the Regional Forest, the Shade Garden and the unique Coal Garden .. We spent a couple of hours just wandering around these gardens getting our steps up and enjoying the different areas.

From the gardens we headed into town to visit the “Artspace” Gallery”. There current exhibition was entitled “Curious Affection” and the artwork was by Patricia Piccinini. It was a very interesting exhibition, and in the artist’s words, it has been influenced by science, surrealism and the unconscious. Patricia Piccinini’s creatures are sometimes startling, but rarely fearsome. As fantastic as her collisions of animal, plant, machine and human parts appear, somehow, they also remain quite familiar. It was a very interesting exhibition…

We watched a video about the artist and her work and were intrigued with the detail that went into adding hair to her sculptures….

From the Gallery, we walked through the City Council chambers and took some photos of the fountain which is pink this month… One would imagine that the water is pink this month to coincide with Breast Cancer Month.

From the Gallery we went to explore the Blue Water Public Art Trail. This is a 20km trail around Mackay with many large pieces of art work featured on it.. We drove past the Bluewater Lagoon which is in central Mackay, a large waterpark and swimming area and it is free. We didn’t really have time to explore it fully this afternoon and ended up heading out to almost the mouth of the Pioneer river to do a section of the Bluewater Art Trail walk. Steve enjoyed this, especially checking out all the little creeks that ran off the main river…

checking out all the little creeks.


Green ant nests everywhere

We left here close to 4.40pm to head out to the Harbour as we were meeting Richard and Dorothy out here for fish and chips on the beach. On our way back into town we passed the Mackay Fish Market, so decided to stop and see if they had any fresh prawns.

We were in luck, they had prawns and they looked really fresh, so we bought half a kilo for our dinner to have along with the fish and chips…

Ticked off another of our Big Aussie Icons on the way to the Harbour.

We arrived out at the Harbour a little early so went for a nice long drive out along Marina breakwater to Bagley Point.

The marina was constructed in 1998 with a breakwater using large rocks to accommodate the 6.5m tides. The top of this sea wall forms a two-lane roadway and has become a tourist attraction on it own right for marina tenants and locals alike…

Whilst we were waiting for Richard and Dorothy, we also went for a drive along Habour Beach road and found a nice picnic area to take our dinner back too.

We then drove back to the marina to find some fish and chips which we found just near the Lighthouse. In fact, the Fish and Chip Restaurant, was called “Lighthouse Seafood Restaurant”. This was situated just down from the playground that houses some of the big things of Mackay being, the big Fred Flintstone, Peanuts, and Old Mother Hubbard’s Shoe…

Once we had finished our dinner with Richard and Dorothy, we headed back to the park with these big-ticket items in them so that I could take some photos…