Old School Queensland

Queensland is really a very curious dichotomy of towns – on the one hand, where the development is completely rampant and the amount of money being poured into that town is so obvious (like the Gold Coast or Airlie Beach). And then at the other end of the spectrum are the towns where it honestly looks like no one has spent a single cent for the last 30 years (like Monto or Tully).

And it is the latter that we find ourselves strangely attracted to – and (architecture aside) here are some of our favourite old school Queensland shots.

Possibly our very favourite ‘George Iggulden of Tully for the man of fashion’.


And just a little close up of that graphic.


And for the ladies ‘Swingers Ladies’ Fashions’ of Innisfail.


A spot of dancing in Tully perhaps?


And Shute Harbour Motel in Airlie Beach. This one is cheating a little, coz it is the old school anomaly in a town gone a little development crazy. We heard that the owner of this motel – admittedly in a sensational cliff top position overlooking the harbour – had turned down an offer of umpteen million dollars for this site.

In the lap of luxury

From Proserpine Dam we went to Townsville via Bowen, to stay with Tim’s sister Caitlin and husband Rod. They have the most beautiful house right next to the Ross River, about 30 minutes outside Townsville. They have a delightful lap pool and lovely garden – it is just like staying in a resort.


We spent most of the weekend just hanging about with them, and eating wonderful meals and drinking lots of good wine. And Tim and Rod spent a bit of time hanging out in our wee tinnie out on the waterhole in front of their place – giving the spangled perch a bit of curry!

We did the usual city things while we were there, like seeing a movie, buying some essentials, and also had a lovely breakfast with Kath Broderick who has been in Townsville for the last 9 months. And then our paths diverged - Nic spent her birthday and the day after it lounging around the pool and occasionally doing a few desultory laps, while Tim spent lots of money and lots of Rod’s time on fixing various things on Elsie.

We did leave Townsville eventually – for a stop at a waterhole just 60km north, and then met up with Caitlin and Rod the next day in Cardwell, where they keep their boat. Which we went out on around Hinchinbrook Island for that afternoon, night and the whole next day, including dinner at the resort on the island. The luxury continued – although the weather wasn’t so kind to us, it was quite wet at times, a bit windy and definitely overcast. But still fantastic to be out on a boat, cruising around the quite stunning and somehow prehistoric looking Hinchinbrook Island.



And if that wasn’t enough – we then had another three days of luxury in Mission Beach. Our families all chipped in some money for a couple of nights somewhere for our birthdays, and we found the most fantastic place – ‘Sanctuary Retreat’. It is set high on a hill on many hectares of stunning rainforest, and all the buildings are low key and in harmony with the forest.



So we just completely chilled out, doing very little apart from walking down to the beach or on tracks around the property, and having breakfast, lunch and dinner made for us. And even better, they have a yoga studio and one half of the duo that owns/runs Sanctuary, Susan, is a yoga teacher, so Nic even got her longed for yoga class. It is such a special place, we felt like part of the family/furniture after just 3 short days. Definitely recommended if you are ever anywhere near Mission Beach!

And now, after all that, we’ve got to get back into camping!

Bowenwood

We’d heard that the new Baz Luhrman film Australia was being shot in Bowen about the time we were passing through, so we stopped along with all the other tourists on the way through, to see what we could see! We caught a little glimpse of a transformed mainstreet of Bowen, but no Nicole or Hugh…

It truly must be the most exciting thing to have happened in Bowen for a LONG time. They’ve even put ‘Bowenwood’ up on a watertank as you drive into town. And all around the set are pensioners in special Australia Volunteer t-shirts giving everyone tips about Nicole & Hugh sightings.

Whitsundays

We got to Agnes Water/ Town of 1770 in the hope of our very last surf on the east coast before the Great Barrier Reef blocked out all the swell. We found …. about a six inch wave! Which didn’t stop a little girl of about six learning to surf on a big soft board, but weighing substantially more than her we had to kiss goodbye any surfing action for some months.

So we pushed on with a mammoth drive (longest since the Nullabor) through miles and miles of canefields. With the windows open and Paul Kelly on the stereo, we’ve possibly never felt more Australian!


We drove right through to Airlie Beach where we were keen to soak in some mellow Whitsundays kind of vibe. Hah! Airlie Beach was nothing like what we’d expected – it was pretty much a full-on backpacker party town, which seemed to be expanding at a furious rate, with construction going on all over the place.

The nearby camping spots in a National Park were no longer in operation, so we had to stay in another caravan park. Which turned out to be not only right next to the main road (like they all were) but also right next to the airport, which meant small planes and helicopters taking off and landing about 150m away from where we were camped. The management weren’t at all accommodating when we tried to get a night refunded that we’d paid for in advance – so whatever you do, next time in Airlie Beach don’t stay at the Flametree Caravan Park. (Nic: Had to get that out of my system!)

The point of being there was for the Whitsunday Islands, and we did get out there on a boat trip with a really nice bunch of people and great crew, which involved a good long snorkel next to an island, where we saw some fabulous coral and a huge number of amazingly colourful fish.



It also involved a stop at the very white Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island, as well as a walk up to the lookout over Hill Inlet. We were told by at least two staff on the boat that this was the ‘Fourth most photographed place in Australia’. Which of course meant that Tim was asking ‘so what are the top three?’ and then questioning, ‘well how is it measured?’


The crew on the boat just got the tailend of our bemusement/slight frustration at the whole tourist hyperbole that just seems never-ending! It is like everything has to have some claim to be the highest, the longest, the oldest, the most photographed. We keep asking why things can’t be just high or long or old or beautiful – why do they have to be the ‘most’ all the time?

Some hyperbole seems warranted when you’re talking about the highest mountain or the largest river, but when places resort to ‘Silkwood – home to the smallest National Bank in Australia’ you know that Silkwood doesn’t have a lot else to recommend it. (The bank was pretty small by the way!)

So anyway, at the risk of sounding like complete wowsers, we’d had enough of Airlie Beach, the ‘the biggest backpacker party town in Australia’, and went inland to Proserpine Dam to try and catch a barramundi. But given the short amount of time we had to try and suss things out, it wasn’t so successful. It was spooky being on out on the water in a drowned forest and Nic took some classic pics.