No matter what the weather there is always time for hugs on
our trip.
Mr L is carrying out a surprise ninja style hug here.
OK so maybe that’s a bad rap for Mackay but we had lousy
weather the whole time and we didn’t get to see some of the things on our ‘really
must see in Mackay’ list (in particular Eungella National Park and Finch Hatton Gorge).
We were in a lovely beachfront caravan park which apparently had great
island views – however for the whole of our stay they pretty much looked like
this (although David did say he saw a bit of the southern end of an island
early one morning):
Yep even in our one sunny hour we still can’t see the island
–
you can almost make out the silhouette if you squint really hard.
On our first day we had lighter rain so took the boys to the
Blue Lagoon. This was the first of a
northern Queensland ‘tradition’. The seas
can be dodgy swimming up here for much of the time so they have these free amazing
swimming oases usually in the middle of town or on the sea. This was Mackay’s:
We didn’t stay too long – the boys asked why we hadn’t
brought their wetsuits (it’s the TROPICS).
We offered a return visit later in the stay – there were no takers,too cold they said.
So we did some shopping.
The boys got their hair cut – David opted for the easy care tropical
look so they both got No. 5s for the first time in their lives.
One of our finds in Mackay for inclement weather was the
Sarina Sugar Mill. Leaving aside any
discussion of how much sugar we should or shouldn’t eat, considering the acre
after acre of sugar cane we had seen we thought it was a good idea for the boys
to learn how sugar is made. There are a
number of full working mills up here that do tours but they are apparently very
noisy and a bit confronting. The Sarina
Sugar Mill is attached to, but separate to a working mill up here. It is a mill in junior and with a range of
additional pieces of equipment so that you not only get the story from the cane
field to the plate, you also get some of the history of sugar cane farming. David and I learnt things as well – that Australia
exports almost all of our cane crop; that you have to get your harvested can
billets to the mill in under about 18 hours; that sugar mills now also make
bioethanol and are in fact net energy producers. The proper mill at Sarina (which wasn’t one
of the big ones) produces power for about 1,000 houses.
The Sarina Sugar Mill also makes a range of gourmet sauces,
relishes, alcoholic beverages and ice creams.
The entry fee includes fairy floss (which the boys ate with gusto) and
tastings for adults, I will admit David and I almost bought their lemon alcohol
drink, but settled instead for a very nice lime sweet chilli sauce – I am
intending to marry this up to some juicy prawns at some stage. We then took the boys to a nearby park to
play off the fairy floss.
The rain really set in so David took the boys bowling the
next day. At this point with the
forecast threatening to stay the same for days we decided to move on. We had planned to go to Airlie Beach but as
the boats weren’t leaving Mackay due to high winds we doubted much would be
different there. We had also read a blog
from there from fellow travellers and they had also commented about the
limitations of bad weather in Airlie. So
we decided to go straight to Townsville – even if it did continue raining
there, there were lots of indoor activities.
Of course having made that decision we got one hour of lovely sunshine
on our caravan park and finally got to see the beach we had been beside
without a howling gale. It resumed
raining and blowing later that evening.
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