Back to Darra and farewell to Queensland

Returning to the mainland after a blissful (but busy) stay on the island without phone or internet, it was time to do a brief reality check:  Wed, 2 Feb.  (ground hog day--except it won't be 2 Feb in Punxsutawney for another several hours).  After a communal lunch in Gladstone, the Brisbane Eberts headed directly back since they had obligations the next day.  Since we did not, we decided to split the trip into two days and stop somewhere along the way to explore.  If there wasn't much to do, then we would head on south and explore other towns along the way.  We settled on Bundaberg, about 1/3 of the way back to Brisbane.  It lies in a sugar growing region and hence, one of it's more famous products is Bundaberg Rum.

Wesley and I showing the scale (2-foot gauge) of the cane railways on a crossing near Bundaberg.  There are over 4000 km of these tracks in Queensland.

(On the way we saw signs to an intriguing-sounding town named 1770--yes, the name is a number, a first for me.) After a brief stop at the city info center, we could see that there was more to do than we had time.  As it was near 5 pm when we arrived, we found a motel (a classic 1960's-era motel, but in excellent condition).  Like all (most?) hotels/motels in Australia, it had a tea kettle, a toaster and a fridge plus an assortment of teas/coffees.  On check-in, you are given a small carton of fresh milk for your tea/coffee.  After check-in, we followed the recommendation of the man at the info office and went to Grunske's Seafood Market and Restaurant for dinner.  It's located in a beautiful location on the Burnett River but it is not physically a fancy restaurant:  you pick up your own orders, water glasses are plastic, no table cloths.  However, the food was fantastic, it was beautiful to look at, the view of sunset over the river was scenic and peaceful and the price was very reasonable (about US$18 for 8 large prawns;  as always in Australia, inclusive of tax and tip).

Susan and Wesley with the view from the restaurant looking out over the river.

Apologies again for food shots, but there is something about the Australian aesthetic that is missing in the US.  You can see paper napkins, plastic cups and plain tables, but the plates are beautiful.

(There is generally no tipping here as the wait staff earn considerably more than the $3 or so minimum in the US.  Our nieces and nephews can't believe our $8 minimum wage because teenage pizza deliverers here make almost twice that.)  I couldn't resist a desert of Nutella cheesecake and the piece was big enough for all three of us to share (and only about US$4.50).  All in all a great way to end the day.

The piece of Nutella cheesecake with cream, chocolate sauce and a live flower.

Since I've already broken my own rule and posted food pictures, I'll add a few more that were taken in Bundaberg, but really don't have anything to do with our sightseeing.  These are photos at the local Coles supermarket while we were shopping for lunch fixings and one of an item we purchased.

About a meter of linear shelf space, floor to top, with nothing but yeast by-products of beer production--Vegemite plus several competing brands and types.  It's remarkable to me that Australians can take such obvious pride in food preparation and presentation (see photos above), yet have a national dish that is extremely unappealing, to put it mildly.

On a more appealing note, this is the bacon display at the meat counter.  At the center of the photo is what's called "middle bacon," what is commonly referred to as "bacon" here.  It has a 6-8 cm medallion of honest-to-goodness real meat attached to a typical US strip of bacon.  At the right is what we in the US usually call bacon and the Australians call "streaky bacon."  Like our bacon, it is mostly fat.

On a whim, we bought some ANZAC Biscuits, suspecting they might be some kind of hard tack with the military name reference.  They are actually not bad and proved to be more durable in a hot car than Tim Tams (for breaking news about Tim Tams in the US, click here).  ANZAC biscuits have an interesting history and their origin, in fact, is related to WW I.  It is indicative of the impact the Great War had on Australians that the name is still used for a biscuit (and of course on memorials in every city, town and village.)  It would be like a GAR (Grand Army of the Republic--civil war army) Cookie being sold in my childhood or an AEF (American Expeditionary Force--US army in France during WW I) Cookie being sold in the US today.

The next day we had our choice of many activities.  We did NOT do:  the Hinkler Hall of Aviation (a famous Australian aviator from Bundaberg with accomplishments comparable to Lindbergh, but who is unknown in the US since neither end of his flights were there), the rum distillery tour/tasting, the regional art gallery, any of the many possible nature activities (since we had just been on Heron Island;  however, FYI, Bundaberg is the gateway to Lady Elliot Island, another island on the reef with snorkeling, turtles, etc.) or the Fairymead House and Sugar Museum, although any of these would have been interesting.

The Hinkler house and Hinkler Hall of Aviation.  The house was moved  from England (like Capt. Cook's cottage in Melbourne).  The roof of the museum is in the shape of an airplane wing.

The Fairymead house in the botanical gardens.  It was moved to this location from a cane plantation and is a (very large) typical "Queenslander," a house style elevated on "stumps" and surrounded by verandas.  (We spent so much time at the Barrel that we missed the only tour of the day here.)

What we did was first go to the Botanical Garden since it opened early before any of the other attractions.  It was similar in some ways to other gardens we've seen, but also had a few twists:  it has a old steam-powered sugar train which unfortunately runs only on weekends, it had some specialty gardens such as Chinese and Japanese and it had an exhibit of exotic fruit trees from around the world.

In the Japanese garden at the botanical gardens.  Note the tall "trees" on the right--they are actually bamboo.  Susan and Wesley can be seen for a scale comparison.  I don't think I've ever seen bamboo this tall.

After the garden, we went to the Bundaberg Barrel, the visitor center for Bundaberg Brewed Drinks, makers of the ginger beer I have become "addicted to" according to Susan (I think I've had three since being here).  All their drinks are non-alcoholic, but produced by a yeast fermentation process with the alcohol removed.  They had an interesting interactive "museum" that explained the brewing process and a funny holographic movie extolling the virtues of brewing versus the vices of adding flavor to carbonated water.  The last activity was a brew tasting of their 16 varieties of drinks.  Kevin was our "sommelier" for the tasting and waxed poetic in describing the subtle flavors and bouquets.

The Bundaberg Barrel.  If not the largest barrel in the world, then in the Southern Hemisphere;  or if not that, then in Australia...  Australians, like Texans, seem to revel in having the "biggest" of something, even if it means adding a number of qualifiers to achieve that status.

Brew tasting at the Bundaberg Barrel.  By the time you've sampled 16 brews, you've had more than a serving!  The problem was that there was no way to cleanse the palate between tastes.

By the time we finished at the Barrel, it was too late for the Fairymead House, so we opted for the railway museum.  It's in an out-of-the-way place such that you're not even sure the track is to the museum or if you're heading to a horse pasture.  However, it turned out to be a most interesting museum for me especially and I was able to learn several new things about Australian railroading.  The museum had a varied collection of mostly items that were scrapped by the railway (rolling stock, stations, hand tools, signal huts, etc.) and either donated or sold for $1 to the museum.  Probably the best thing was the retired man doing the tour who was passionate about the museum, knew a lot and loved to talk.  He led us display-by-display throughout and was able to answer questions very well.  He never worked for the railway, but his father and grandfather did.

The old North Bundaberg railway station.  This is not really indicative of what is in the museum, but the small black sign above the bench and near the corner marks the water level during the 2013 flood.  It's remarkable that the station and rolling stock are still here as the current here was estimated at about 50 km/hr.  Flooding is a recurring problem in Queensland.

After the museum, it was already later than our intended departure time, so we headed back to the Bruce Highway and Brisbane.  Interestingly, the road back to Childers (on the Bruce) is the Isis Highway.  (This is probably the proof that Australia is trying to foist terrorists on the US (a really bad deal).  We remained vigilant for drones all along the way!)

The terrorist franchise now extends to highways in Australia.  Sugar cane is in the background.

We stopped in Gympie again on the way back and had some Indian food to clear out our sinuses before arriving back in Darra around 9 pm.

Thursday was primarily a low-key recovery day after the concentrated activities on Heron Island.  Susan and Wesley went into Brisbane for the morning and visited ANZAC Square and also St. John's Cathedral (Anglican).  The church was built over a century and was only recently completed, but used the original design for all, so the structure maintains architectural consistency.

St. John's Cathedral in Brisbane.

Unlike the architecture, the stained glass styles did vary with time.  This is an example of a more contemporary window.

At the memorial, Susan learned that one of the reasons for the wide-spread distribution of ANZAC memorials is that bodies of dead Australians were not repatriated, so there are no national cemeteries, only these memorials.
I stayed in Darra and waited for the optometrist to open and see if they could rehabilitate my mangled glasses.  They were able to re-bend them without breaking and did it without charge, so the whole experience was only a very minor inconvenience.
In the evening we went for a cookout at a local park (Rocks Riverside Park) on the banks of the Brisbane River.  The barbecue grill was electric and more of a griddle than a barbecue, but that seems to be common in parks here.  While Paul grilled, we explored the park a bit.  It is built on former industrial land that had a cement factory.  It was a bit unique as the source for the calcium carbonate (one of the ingredients in cement) was not limestone, but rather dead coral dredged from nearby Moreton Bay and barged up the river to the site of the park.  In the 1990's, the company lost its license to dredge the coral and went out of business.  The park is not the legacy of the company and it is decorated with various artifacts from the old processing plant.

Emma, Susan and Wesley by one of the crushing drums from the cement plant.  The artifacts are not placed as if they were functioning, but rather as art installations.

The family getting ready to eat.  Note the electric barbecue.

We returned home about 7 pm as it was getting dark (and the park was closing).  Because of low latitude and lack of daylight savings time, sunset occurs much earlier in Brisbane compared with Wisconsin in the summer.
Saturday was a laid-back-get-ready-to-leave day.  We did some laundry, Susan went to a fabric store (of course, not coming home empty handed) and Wesley helped some on a bath remodeling project.  While Susan was at the store, I got to play grandpa with Emma and Jack as Christopher and Brittany were in Melbourne  for the weekend scouting out the possibility of buying a Domino's and going into business for themselves.  We got packed and ready to hit the road again in the morning.  We'll be generally heading to Melbourne via Sydney, taking about two weeks for the trip (which we did in four days northbound.  We don't have a specific itinerary, but will frequent information offices and consult with Mr. Google.