Arrival At Island Number Three

Thursday 23 November

We were allowed a brief lie-in this morning, not leaving the hotel until 08.30, so we took the opportunity of a short stroll along the tow path, where we saw an eel (or it may have been a water snake) swimming round and round in circles in the shallows near the bank, before heading off downstream. There were five pelicans, one swimming in the river, and four sunning themselves on the rocks by the bridge. The temperature was already in the top twenties, so we were in for another warm day.

Our first stop, literally just outside Rockhampton, was at the Tropic of Capricorn marker. Of course, we had already crossed this line on our way north out of Alice Springs, and now we were making our way back south to Sydney. This imaginary line marks the zenith of the sun at the summer equinox in the southern hemisphere that falls on 21 December and is 2,311 kms from the equator.

From the start of our journey we followed an electrified railway line linking Rockhampton and Gladstone carrying coal to the port – it was built between 1988 and 19997, using 110,000 steel masts to carry the power cables. All the materials, the 3,000 employees and technical know-how came from Australian sources. Before the electrification the journey took about 14 hours, since the electrification the same journey takes 8 hours. We saw a couple of “coal trains” which have three diesel locomotives on the front, about fifty wagons full of coal (or empty on the return journey), another three locomotives and another fifty wagons. It takes a few minutes to drive past one.

The port of Gladstone is now second only to Sydney in terms of trade (everything here is measured against Sydney Harbour). They did try to set up a penal colony in this area in the early years of transportation, to provide labourers to work in the fields growing sugar cane, but the heat was too intense for white people to work long hours, so the plan was dropped. But fisherfolk did stay, and later miners came to this town, and now the port is a major exporter of coal, aluminum, and sulphuric acid – the only plant producing sulphuric acid in Australia is in Gladstone and seven ships deliver the chemical to industries around the coasts.

On the road, the landscape changed to temperate forests again, many showing signs of being burnt. This was probably “prescribed burning”, as the trunks were only black up to about two metres – anything over two metres is probably the result of a “bush fire”. Burning is needed as a natural cleanser of the terrain – it removes dead vegetation, and ensures that there are not too many animals for the forests to sustain. Indigenous people started using fire about 20,000 years ago, as a way to obtain food. They would make a fire, which would drive the animals out into the open, where they could be killed and eaten. Later, as the new plants started appearing in the ground, other animals would come to the area, which would provide more food. They would then move on to a new area to give the ground time to recover. Europeans did not understand “firing” when they arrived, and it was not until the 1950’s they began to set light to the forests to burn off dead material and prevent the more harmful “bush fires”. Bush fires are fires started by accident – lightning, tinder sparks or the reflection from the sun – and are hard to control. It is the heat from these fires – reaching to over 130 degrees C and even up to 1000 degrees C - that does the damage, not the flames, and most trees will be burnt to a depth of ¼ inch or more.

In 1995 it was decided to undertake a major reclassification of all trees in Australia, which they estimated would take about five years. It started in Western Australia, but they keep on finding new strains of eucalyptus trees, so it is still on going. Eucalyptus trees can be divided into four different types according to the bark – smooth, stringy, iron, no bark – no bark trees look as if they are wrapped in a thin paper. There are 111 different families within this classification and it used to be thought there were around one thousand varieties of the tree within those families. But they have been finding new hybrids each week, and it is now estimated that there may be as many as ten thousand different species of eucalyptus trees – some varieties being only a very few trees in one specific area.. Most of these trees - often referred to as “gums” - reach 30 feet or more in height when fully grown and their claim to fame is as food for koala bears. When there is a fire, each variety takes a different length of time for the bark to recover, some just a few weeks, some five years or more. Consequently when passing through the forests, some trees still have blackened bark, while others show no sign of fire at all.

We passed through Miriamville, a roadhouse café and few other houses, which was established by Arthur Chervill in 1854. He fell in love with Miriam and they looked round for somewhere to live after they were married and decided on this spot. Arthur went to Sydney to register the deeds for the land, and by the time he returned Miriam had run off with the local vicar! Arthur did not stay long in the area either, and nor have most other people. We also passed by the turning to 1770 – a settlement commemorating Captain Cook’s second landing point – strange name for a town.

Lunch today was at Childers, a long linear settlement, similar to lots of other inland towns in this country. There were lots of small cafes selling snack meals – no Maccy D’s or KFC for a change – but individual sandwich bars and hot snack shops, and a Vietnamese café advertising ‘Devonshire Cream Teas”. We settled on a recommended sandwich shop where Colin could not resist carrot cake and cream! Childers is now best known for the fire at the Royal Backpackers Hotel in 2000, where eleven young people died. The town apparently only started to recover a couple of years ago, when a Belgian investor came and set up a huge new pineapple farm, and provided economic growth for the area. Backpackers continue to come, as they work as pickers on the numerous fruit farms around here.

We continued on our way to Hervey Bay – the stepping off point for Fraser Island – our destination for the next two nights. As we neared the coast, we passed through a series of huge new retail parks, which continued as shopping malls, and then street shops and houses before finally becoming hotels, hostels and bars close to the beach – it must have taken twenty minutes or more from the first buildings to the marina. Ten years ago, there was just a motel and campsite, but with the development of Fraser Island as a major tourist area it has grown fast. We passed a pier, about a mile long into the sea, which apparently used to be about double that length, and was the main docking point for the ferries. When half of it was destroyed in one of the cyclones and a new marina and ferry point were built in a small sheltered cove. While we awaited the arrival of the ferry, we had time to wander around the few marina souvenir shops.

For once the crossing was very smooth, and after about forty five minutes we landed at the Kingfisher Jetty, close to our resort. This island is made completely of sand – a fine silica sand – that when wet, is a great exfoliant. The resort, situated just inland from the jetty, is a series of designer wooden buildings, around a teardrop shaped pool. The main building had looked like an armadillo shell, with several curved layers overlapping each other, from the ferry, and once inside it was a very tall airy building, containing reception, two large restaurants and a barbeque deck. Our room was off to one side, along a boardwalk, within two stories of terraced rooms, on stilts. We were on the lower floor, and our patio windows led out to a balcony overlooking an oval shaped lake, with trees of all shapes and colours reflected in the smooth water, in the late afternoon sun. We had been booked into a buffet dinner at 18.00 – very early for us to eat - so that we could attend a film show and briefing by an Island Ranger. We all gathered to hear about what we would hopefully see tomorrow on our tour of the island – insects, reptiles, mammals and of course, the famous dingos – supposedly this island is the home of the only true dingos left in Australia. We saw pictures of lots of flowers and trees, as well as geological formations, and physical sights like the shipwreck. There would be a lot to fit in to one day.

The rest of the day was spent blogging and emailing. By this time the frogs were out and croaking – the noise was tremendous as they all croaked together – you could even identify the different croaks from the different frogs. We are really looking forward to seeing some wildlife tomorrow. This island appears to be a real wildlife centre, with both rain forests and temperate woodlandss, and a seventy five mile long sandy beach.