Big Chunk

Michael may have a packet of lollies in his hand but his real love is green vegetables. This is cos lettuce in Grannat's garden.

It's been a year since we last saw Grannat's garden and it's looking good! Last year it was just lawn and some plans. This year it's got herbs, veges, flowers and . . . a fire pit! The garden is a work in progress. It surrounds Grannat's house in Warwick, in the southern downs of Queensland. Grannat and the landscaper have been transforming it into a haven. We're hoping to try out the fire pit while we're here. The firewood is ready. The marshmallows are bought. We just need the rain to stop.

Yes, it's been raining - the first we've seen for months on our big chunk of Australia trip. Susie said she didn't want just drizzle. She wanted real rain! It made our visit to Jondaryan Woolshed a bit damp, on top of the icy wind. More layers of clothing needed. We toured the buildings of the former sheep property (established in 1859) and watched a sheep being shorn by our guide, an ex-shearer called Snow. Snow also introduced us to his sheep dog and demonstrated how working dogs muster sheep. It was amazing to watch. He said dogs could be trained to respond to whistles, verbal commands and hand signals, and that an old man with a dog was better at mustering than three young men on horses! This dog stared down the sheep and followed Snow's commands until the sheep were in the pen.

While we haven't had much rain on our trip, it was constant early this year in SE Queensland. Brisbane and Warwick were both flooded. When we did a walk from Keith's sister Linda's place in inner Brisbane, we saw the ground level of the famous Regatta Hotel was boarded up while repairs are in progress. Grannat's town of Warwick was cut in two when the Condamine River flooded. Luckily her house is on a hill. (It's in a suburb on the site of an old drive-in cinema, and the streets are named after movie stars. The local park honours Mel Gibson.)

We're enjoying catching up with Keith's family. We're being thoroughly spoilt! We had a lovely lunch last Saturday with Wendy, his sister, and brother-in-law David, and a play in the park at Scarborough. While Keith and I had lunch after church with his Dad, Linda took the kids to Movie World. Susie, of course, went on the biggest roller coaster there.

Sheep dog at work at Jondaryan

Fraser Island dingo, the purest bred dingoes in Australia, at 75 Mile Beach. There is controversy over how they should be treated. Aggressive dingoes have attacked people.

Michael's Year 2 class did a topic on 'Change' and looked at how people change. Well, some of the places we've just visited have changed a lot too. Hervey Bay in the early 1990s was a little seaside resort. The Esplanade along the beach was lined with 1960s blond brick holiday units. Now Hervey Bay is huge with new apartment blocks and resorts everywhere. Flights from southern capitals bring the tourists to see the whales in July, go to the reef and visit Fraser Island.

From Hervey Bay, we spent a day at Fraser doing a typical tour - Lake Mackenzie, Eli Creek, Central Station rainforest, the Pinnacles coloured sands, the wreck of the Maheno on 75 Mile Beach. They are all beautiful and haven't changed much - luckily! Fraser Island is the world's largest sand island. The beaches are long, the sand is white and the creeks are crystal clear fresh water. Plus it's fun being in a 4WD hurtling along the beach at 80km/h! Keith lived on Fraser Island in the early 1980s for two weeks and so is sort of local. Our tour guide was a colourful character and aired very strong views about how the Fraser Island dingoes, the purest dingoes in Australia, are being 'managed' by the Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM). Late last year, a friend of hers, wildlife photographer Jenny Parkhurst was charged with feeding the dingoes, fined and banned from the Island. She featured on Australian Story in February on ABC TV. The transcript makes an interesting read.

Noosa has become very upmarket since our last visits but is now lacking in tourists. It's suffering from the Global Financial Crisis, the fact that Qantas doesn't fly there any more and that Aussies are travelling overseas more. Just west of Noosa is the fantastic Eumundi Markets, which must the be the hugest market ever. Susie got her hair braided there. Check it out!

Susannah with hair braids at Eumundi. Who needs to go to Bali?

Susie and Keith reef walking at low tide at Lady Elliot Island

Two days without TV, newspapers, mobile phones or internet. Two days with reef walks, snorkelling, beachcombing and slacking off at a resort. All of this on the southernmost island of the Great Barrier Reef, Lady Elliot Island, just north-east of Bundaberg. Even though it's winter, the sea was 22 degrees, about the same as Clovelly in summer. Bit cool for some though. The men in the family need a bit more fat on their bones to keep warm. Yesterday, our only full day, was a perfect snorkelling day - calm seas, fantastic visibility (you could see a long way down in the water) and sunny. Before we even got in the water we saw a whale, a turtle and a manta ray.

We shared the water with scientists from CSIRO, NASA, universities etc recording which mantas are visiting Lady Elliot. In fact, Project Manta is in full swing right now. You can tell an individual manta ray by the pattern of spots on its tummy. Bet you didn't know that! These gentle giants generally grow to 3-4metres across but only eat plankton. We saw some from the plane as we flew in. The Project invites divers to send in photos of manta rays' tummies - true citizen science! Visit the Project Manta Facebook page here.

What did we like best about Lady Elliot? Michael liked the buffet breakfasts with pancakes and hash browns. Keith liked stargazing in beautiful dark skies away from city lights. Susie liked the turtles, including one she swam with. The turtles at Lady Elliot like to be scratched on their shells. One fellow snorkeller said she kept getting bumped by a turtle, not realising it was asking for a scratch! Me (Carrie), I liked the colourful fish. I got a last snorkel in the lagoon before we left and watched anemone fish (Nemos) hiding in their anemone homes.

Anything not so good? The cold nights (11 degrees or so). Only one blanket each on the first night. Then we asked for more and slept better the second night.

View from the verandah of our 'Reef Unit'. The beach was coral sand and chunks of old coral.

Where the metal for your aluminium windows probably comes from

Then today, almost by accident, we drove into Gladstone and up to the port lookout. Fantastic views of the coal handling facilities - no really! Huge amounts of black coal from Bowen Basin mines are sent on ships all around the world. We saw it being moved off huge long trains and along conveyer belts. Not very good for climate change but there you go. And aluminium (made using huge amounts of coal-powered electricity and therefore also rotten for climate change) goes out from Gladstone. And 28 other things do too. We learnt this at another lookout set up last year by Queensland Alumina Limited. It has views over their massive smelter (see above photo) and nicely written information about how aluminium is made. Did you know that the red pebbles of bauxite used to make alumina are called 'pisolite'? Michael and Susie, who showed no interest in aluminium, thought that was hilarious.

On a different note, but related to pebbles, we now have a chip in our windscreen. We can't complain. We've driven more than 13,000km and all we've had is a flat tyre (when car was parked 5 days and able to be fixed after) and this glass chip.

Drums are best played in the outback where there's plenty of space. These are at the Musical Fence, Winton.

No more zooming flocks of budgies. No more lumpy termite mounds. No more endless flat plains of spinifex on red dust. We're not in Kansas, sorry, the outback any more. We could see it coming. The road trains got shorter - two trailers instead of three or four. There were more cars, mostly 'normal' cars, and fewer grey nomads in 4WDs towing caravans. Bigger hills started happening. We even saw a sign that said 'Great Dividing Range' and the highway got some actual bends in it. The trees got bigger and started casting shadows across the road.

Before we left the outback we got one last swim in. Sounds weird when the outback is lacking in water but Ilfracombe is one town that found its water underground. We swam in an Artesian Spa with prehistoric water coming up from a kilometre below. We borrowed keys for the pool from the council offices across the road. The water was so warm the kids asked if we could stay there forever! The Great Artesian Basin is under about one-fifth of Australia. It supplies water to Winton too. When you have a shower there, the bathroom smells like Rotorua as the hydrogen sulphide from the water fills the air.

En route to Rockhampton (or 'Rocky') we've travelled through cattle stations, cotton farms and collieries. We made a stop at Westwood for some sweet local mandarins ($7 for 20 - we ate half of them in one go) and Mt Hay for thunder eggs. Tonight we're off to the Heritage Grill to try a good steak. Rocky got flooded in January. We're doing our bit to put the economy back on its boot-shod feet!
P.S. Heritage Grill had a shiraz on the wine list from a winery in Victoria. Its name? 'Ladies Who Shoot Their Lunch'.

Michael with thunder eggs, rocks formed from volcanoes