September 2013 - Rockhampton to Bundaberg

Following the Capricorn Highway east from Lake Maraboon, we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn at a town about 5 kilometres west of Rockhampton called Gracemere.  The Gracemere Caravan Park had been recommended to us by other travelers so we based ourselves there for a week while we took in the sites and attractions of Rockhampton and surrounding areas.  As usual, the Visitor Information Centre was our first stop and they were a wealth of information.

Rockhampton, which sits astride the Fitzroy River as well as the Tropic of Capricorn, has become known as the Beef Capital of Australia with about two and a half million cattle in the area.

 Rockhampton grew quickly as a shipping port and when gold was discovered sixty kilometres north of "Rocky" 1858, the ever increasing population was dependent on shipping for transport until the railway line to Brisbane was completed in 1903.  Further gold fields were discovered at Mount Morgan to the south of the town which added to the prosperity of Rockhampton.

The Koorana Crocodile Farm and Restaurant was first on our list. 

Koorana is a grass roots crocodile farm with over 4,000 crocodiles on the property, some as old as 45 years and almost 5 metres in length.  It is estimated that these crocodiles weigh almost 1 tonne.  The guide showed us around some of the enclosures and demonstrated just how stealthy these animals can be.  At one pond the guide tried to get us to show him exactly where the croc was.  We all had a guess as there were bubbles rising in the middle of the pond and we could also see water swirling. 

We were all very surprised when he threw a piece of chicken into the pond and the croc was right at his feet in less than half a metre of water.  Fortunately the guide was standing up above the water on an enclosed platform.  It just went to show just how they can move into position to strike their prey without any indication at all. 

We had an opportunity to hold a young crocodile which was 4 years old and a bit less than 1 metre long.  It has a commercial value at that age of $4,000.00.

At the farm, they can adjust the temperature in the incubators to determine the sex of the hatchlings, they aim for 20% female and 80% males as the crocodile meat and skin market is more profitable from males.  Their good breeding females are of more value to them as they have only bred from females that will lay around 80 eggs per year.  All the female young from these breeders will also lay 80 eggs per year once they reach breeding age.  If they bred from mothers that only lay 20 eggs per year, the young females would also only lay 20 eggs per year which is unproductive.

Modern day crocodiles are unique in that they weigh around 200 grams when they are born and there are records of an 8 metre long crocodile that weighed in at 4,000 kilograms which was estimated to be more than 60 years old when captured.  Apparently this is the largest weight span of any modern day animal.

Their restaurant serves all things crocodile, steak, burgers, kebabs and even spare ribs.  As it was lunch time we gave it a try.  Sort of a mixture between chicken breast and crayfish but with a firmer texture.

The Mount Morgan Mine which contributed so much to the economy of Rockhampton was mined over a period of 108 years.  During this time the mine produced 238,979 kilograms (8,429,736 ounces) of gold.  At today's price that would be 12.75 billion dollars.  It also produced 54,535 kilograms of silver and a staggering 360,000 tonnes of copper.  When the mine closed in 1981, it was 325 metres deep which made it the largest open cut gold mine in the southern hemisphere.

Over 300 dinosaur prints were discovered during mining operations which have now been authenticated to be over 200 million years old.

Mount Morgan is nestled at the foot of the Dee Ranges and building the rail to the mine from Rockhampton presented some engineering difficulties as some of the hills were too steep for the train to get traction on the rail.  

This was overcome by installing a "rack and pinion" rail in the centre of the track that the engine hooked into to drag itself up the hill.  This is like a set of teeth like 2 saw blades side by side that a special gear on the engine would engage with to give it traction.  Unfortunately the line was ripped up when the mine closed and that little bit of history has been lost forever.  There is only one of these trains left operational anywhere in the world.  The only bit left from the Mount Morgan train is this old drive gear.

The biggest Sunday market I have ever seen is held 6 times a year at the Rockhampton Heritage Village. What a fantastic idea for raising money for the village. I don't know what they charge the stall holders but there could have been up to 500 of them. If there wasn't 1,500 cars in the free car parks by 10.00 am I will go he. They charged only two dollars per person entry which of course then gave you entry into all the old buildings as well as a look around all the outside displays as well. A great community effort with SES organising the parking and of course the services clubs like Lions and Apex all with food stalls. The fire brigades must be well funded in Queensland as I don't recall seeing a fire brigade doing fundraising anywhere that we have visited up here. 

We were amazed to see how well the old houses had been restored when they were transferred to the heritage village site. The hospital is immaculate and a lot of the original equipment is still in it. 

Dingley Cottage has only been opened at the village since December 2011. What's particularly fascinating about it is that it shows how life was lived a hundred years ago but also how life was lived for one elderly lady up until as recently as three years ago.
Alice Dingley lived almost all her life in a little cottage in Denham Street in Rockhampton which did not change from the time it was built in 1911, not even to have electricity put on.


For some reason, I always imagined that Rockhampton was right on the coast, but I soon found out that it wasn't. About 40 kilometres from Rockhampton are the coastal towns of Yeppoon, Roslyn Bay and Emu Point. 

Great Keppel Island is about 7 kilometres off shore from Roslyn Bay and sightseeing cruises and ferries operate from the Keppel Bay Marina out to the island. Having never sailed before, we booked a cruise on a catamaran yacht operated Capricornia Cruises called Grace 2. The wind wasn't favourable for sailing on the way out so they had to leave the outboard motors running to keep us moving. Once we reached the island, we anchored in one of the beautiful little inlets not more than 20 metres from the Great Barrier Reef and only about 50 metres off shore. The couple that run the cruise were really well organised and gave us freshly cooked muffins and coffee for morning tea, and then ferried non swimming passengers to the beach in their inflatable and left the rest of us to snorkel along the reef. There were an abundance of small fish as well as some good meal sized fish. Of course this is a marine sanctuary so no fishing allowed. After a couple of stints in the water snorkeling  a full on BBQ lunch with snags, salads and fresh prawn was enjoyed by all on the boat. 

Great Keppel Island used to be home to a beach resort, but cyclones, environmental factors and government red tape made it nonviable and it closed down almost 5 years ago. The locals are now saying that with a change of government and Peter Garret no longer Environment Minister, there is a real good chance of the redevelopment plan being approved and work can start on rebuilding and upgrading early next year. Apparently there is a 5 year plan to get the resort up and running again better than ever. There are some permanent residents that do live on the island around the old resort as well as a shop that opens when the ferry and tour boats visit. 

We were dropped off on the shore at the old resort for a look around. It is a pity to see it in ruins. A lot of the gardens and grounds are still there and it is not hard to imagine it up and running again. It would be a beautiful place to visit with it's pristine beaches that are sheltered from the rough ocean currents and weather. Fortunately the wind picked up a bit in the afternoon and as it was from the right direction, it allowed the crew to raise the sails and turn the motors off. It might have taken twice as long to do the 7 kilometre crossing as the ferry but what a beautiful way to relax and take in the serenity. 

Cania Dam is not listed in the tourist brochures but there is a Big 4 caravan park there which has very spacious grassy sites. The park advertises that it is a good fishing destination and we happened to be there on the weekend of the local fishing competition. Unfortunately the lake is almost 5 kilometres from the caravan park and I felt that our little boat trailer just wasn't made for this so unfortunately we didn't get the boat into the water. The dam is completely surrounded by either national park or private farm land, so there is no access to the waters edge apart from at the boat ramp and picnic area. It was lovely to sit in the shade for a few days and just watch the comings and goings of the parrots, kangaroos and wallabies. 

There is a wallaby species here called the whiptail wallaby which we haven't seen before. The whiptail wallaby, also known as the pretty-faced wallaby, is a species of wallaby found in eastern Australia. It is locally common from Cooktown in Queensland to near Grafton in New South Wales. 


Fishing for Red Claw was back on our agenda so we moved onto Wuruna Dam where we stayed at a free camp site, right beside the water. This is awesome, right beside the lake and warm enough for a swim. We put the pots in and next morning expected a big catch. but it wasn't to be. 
Not to be defeated, we moved the pots to a different location and set off to go fishing but the wind came up which made it very unpleasant. We spent the day on shore where the wind was a constant 25 to 30 KPH with gusts up to about 45. The wind died to nothing by 8.30 pm and evening was beautiful but by 3 am all the wind that went from the east to west all decided to come back again but at about double the rate of knots. One thing we have learnt on this trip is to always have everything well secured no matter how calm it is as the storms tend to blow up quickly. Fortunately we didn't have any damage and the wind slowed down again by morning so we were able to collect our pots. 

At last, a couple of nice size red claw, not enough for a feed but they went well with a steak for dinner.






Sick of the wind and rough conditions at the lake we started to head for Bundaberg with a stopover in Gin Gin for the night. Lovely little town but the caravan park was washed away in the 2011 flood and not rebuilt. The shire have opened the show grounds to travelers so we stayed there. Beautiful mowed grass and very peaceful.

This whole area was severely flooded back in 2011 and again two more minor floods at the beginning of this year. The ranger up at Cania Dam told us that they received 48 inches in as many hours. (twice as much as Geelong's annual rainfall). The water in the river at the caravan park was over 10 metres deeper than normal. It is obvious all the way through this region just how devastating the big flood was. All the creeks and rivers have flattened trees still laying in them. Places we drove through along the road have grass debris at least 4 metres up the trees, and these are areas well away from the river. We also saw a fruit tree orchard where half the trees are just ripped out of the ground and pushed into the trees still standing. The power of nature is very unpredictable.

Sugar cane at various stages of growth

Bundaberg is right in the heart of sugar cane country and there are literally thousands of acres of sugar cane at various stages of growth in this area. Unfortunately visitors are no longer allowed in cane mills because of OH&S regulations, but we did learn a bit about growing sugar cane from the Bundy Rum Distillery.

Sugar cane has been grown and processed in Bundaberg for 128 years, and it was the problem of what to do with the by product of sugar processing (molasses) which led to the Bundy Rum Distillery being built to process the molasses into rum.
Sugar cane is grown by replanting a 40 cm section of a mature cane stalk called "setts". New setts are planted by machine which drops them into furrows, adds fertiliser and covers them with soil. New shoots which grow from buds on the joints of the setts, break through the soil surface between 2 and 4 weeks after planting.

Sugar cane ready to be harvested

Sugar cane looks a bit like bamboo and takes between 9 and 16 months to grow to maturity in this area. It loves hot weather and grows quicker if it is hot. It also loves heaps of water, just over 1.5 metres per year, so the irrigators are running constantly this year as it has been such a dry season. 
A typical cropping cycle comprises of 1 planted crop and 3 to 4 regrowth crops called ratoon crops. Cane growers are rotating their paddocks all the time and replanting usually falls about every 6 years.
When the cane is ripe, it is usually between 2 and 4 metres tall.
Harvesting season is June to November when they cut the cane off at ground level with a harvesting machine that then cuts it into lengths between 200 and 300 mm long. There is no need to burn the cane anymore as the machines just pick up the toads, snakes and anything else that might be in the crop and this is dealt with at the sugar mill. The cane has to be processed within 16 hours of harvesting otherwise some of the sugar will evaporate or leak out of the cane making it less valuable. Cane is shipped in bulk bins by road or in smaller bins on a narrow gauge railway line. There is 4,000 kilometres of narrow gauge rail maintained by the sugar industry to get cane from the paddock to the mill quickly and cost effectively.
At the sugar mill, the cane is chopped and shredded to rupture the juice cells. It is then crushed and passed through a series of rollers to separate the juice from the baggasse which is a fibrous material left over and then used as a fuel to run the mill's boiler furnaces. The juice is then pumped away, cleaned and thickened into a syrup by boiling off the excess water. 
To form and grow the sugar crystals, the syrup is "seeded" with tiny sugar crystals in a vacuum pan and boiled until the crystals form. These crystals are separated from the molasses in a giant spin dryer and then dried and stored ready for sending to sugar refiners.
Australia is the second largest sugar exporter in the world after brazil with 80% of our raw sugar being exported. Australia produces 4.5 to 5 million tonnes of raw sugar each year with 6 bulk storage terminals in Queensland which can store more than 2 million tonnes of raw sugar allowing year round deliveries to refineries in Australia and overseas.
When sugar milling first started in Bundaberg 128 years ago, it only took 3 years for them to run out of storage space for all the molasses that they produced as a "waste" product. It is said that molasses was literally running down the street into the river. 

It was this problem that brought about the idea of distilling the molasses into rum and the Bundaberg Distilling Company (BDC) was born. 
We did a tour of the factory to find out about how the process works. Firstly I was surprised to learn that the distillery is treated as a flammable liquids area the same as a petroleum refinery. All battery operated and sparking devices had to be left at the office. It is a complete "dematched site" 
Nowadays, the sugar milling process in Bundaberg alone produces over 10 million litres of molasses which BDC turns into 6 million litres of rum each year. Fortunately BDC can store this amount of molasses in bulk open top vats so that the famous Bundy Rum can be made all year round. 
Yeast which is produced on site is added to the molasses and then heated. The vapour is captured and cooled back into a liquid. This process is repeated until they end up with 78.9% alcohol which is then matured in big wooden vats for up to 2 years which gives the rum it's colour and flavour. Surprisingly only 2% of the rum produced at BDC is exported, the rest is consumed within Australia. The factory tour ends with 2 free drinks and as we think that Bundy ruins the taste of coke, we tried another of their blends with ginger beer. I much prefer straight ginger beer as well. 

Bundaberg Brewed Drinks "keg" shaped building

Bundaberg Brewed Drinks make the wonderful Bundaberg ginger beer that we see in our shops, but what we don't see in Victoria are the other dozen or so drinks that they make. They are very proud of their traditionally brewed drinks and have a unique facility to show visitors their history and a bit about their process. The good part about it is that visitors get to sample all 15 of their drinks at the end of the tour. They have a very nice pink grapefruit which Judy liked and an excellent lemon, lime and bitters everywhere near as good as you get in any pub. 


Hervey Bay (Harvey as it is pronounced) was next on our travels on our way back to Brisbane. Hervey Bay is big enough to be split into suburbs and we stayed at the Happy Wanderer caravan park in the beach side suburb of Torquay, just 400 metres from the ocean. More from Hervey Bay in the next post of our blog and be sure that whale watching will be on the top of our agenda.