Queensland

One morning during our stay in Rubyvale, Dad walked outside and attempted to enjoy a mandarin.  He was suddenly assaulted by rainbow lorikeets who apparently like mandarins!  We all came out to have a look and we soon gathered a good number of them. TurboBug really wanted to hold the birds but wasn’t too keen on it when it happened.  A bit of panicking but he was fine once we coaxed the bird away. LadyBug found them a bit scratchy … Read More

After Mackay our next major stop was to be Longreach.  To break up the drive a bit we spent some time in Rubyvale.  We don’t often arrive at our destination after dark, but this night we did and during a lovely thunderstorm, too.  That made for some interesting driving.  We prefer not to be on the road at dusk because of the risk of kangaroos who are more active that time of day and thus more likely to become roadkill.  … Read More

The morning we went to Cape Hillsborough to watch the sunrise we also stopped at the Diversity Boardwalk.  I had read it was a short walk and worth doing, but we might not have stopped if it weren’t for the butterflies.  We were sleepily happily driving along, wondering about all the mangroves we were seeing,  and suddenly there were butterflies everywhere.  This was an easy walk, about 1.2km, a forty-minute loop through woodland, mangroves, and eucalypts.  The first section had … Read More

Just north of Mackay is Cape Hillsborough National Park where the wallabies come down to the beach at sunrise every morning, what a sight!  They don’t seem to mind people watching them eat their breakfast and it makes for such a memorable morning. We stepped onto the beach and saw wallabies off in the distance.  We made our way down there and got there just as a man walked out onto the beach dropping food for them as he went.  … Read More

On the way back from our lovely tour of the Sarina Sugar Shed we made a quick stop at Hay Point.  There’s a lookout with a great view of one of the largest coal export ports in the world. Look at all that coal!  I can’t begin to describe how much coal we could see.  They export something like nine million tonnes from this port every month. The coal is transported to the port through a rail system.  When we … Read More

Seeing all this sugarcane in Queensland really made us want to find a factory tour to do.  That proved hard with the various ages of our kids, many of the factories have age or size requirements which our younger kids don’t meet.  So when I found out about the Sarina Sugar Shed I knew I’d found the right one for us.  It’s a hands-on mini-sugarcane mill, perfect for families.  We got there just as a tour was starting.  The tour … Read More