The best and worst: Queensland south to north

In my last post, I mentioned that the state of Queensland does not accept Daylight Saving Time and so is an hour behind. In fact, Queensland is more than an hour behind. This is not meant in a disparaging way. It’s the same as when I say of Australia that it reminds me of the America I grew up in, rather than twenty-first-century America. There are ways in which it’s nice to go back in time.

I’ve never traveled Route (“root”) 66 in the U.S.A., but that’s what the Bruce Highway reminds me of. Except that whereas Route 66 is a nostalgia trip, long since bypassed by the interstate highway system, the Bruce Highway is the main road up the Pacific coast of Queensland. The main road, but north of Brisbane it’s a two-lane. Many times there was no other car in sight.

T. nicknamed our rental car “the yellow peril.” It was not at all perilous, but the color was that of the plastic “cheese product” that is sometimes called American cheese. There was no way we were going to lose track of this car in a parking lot. It took us all the way from the Gold Coast, on the border between New South Wales and Queensland, up to Cairns and back.

It was a fun trip. I thought so, even though for significant portions of it we were pounded by torrential rains. You see the further north you get in Australia, the more tropical it is, meaning there are only two seasons: the dry and the rainy season. Or, with the Australian penchant for abbreviating absolutely everything: the Dry and the Wet.

The "Sunshine Coast"!

We are here in the Wet. But this did not mar my enjoyment of the going back in time that is traveling in Queensland. I’m not just talking about Woolworth’s stores, frozen Cokes, and the other things that remind me of growing up in twentieth-century America. I mean sugar cane fields and little towns that were once served by the railroad, where a hamburger doesn’t mean McDonald’s (“Macca’s” in Australian) but a homemade thing. Complete with grated carrot and, this being Australia, beets. 

What we didn’t realize at first was that our little yellow peril had a very little gas tank. Luckily, our ever-helpful hosts Kim and Garry had lent us their road atlas (we don’t have data on the road), so I could see what places were coming up where fuel would be available. Or rather, place. The only stop for 196 km between Marlborough and Sarina going north is St. Lawrence, and that is 7 km off the highway. We had to pay it a visit.

St. Lawrence is named after the St. Lawrence Seaway in North America, but we didn’t know that at the time. We just knew we needed fuel and they had some. Here it is.

Yes, it’s a single gas pump on the sidewalk in front of the general store. Lots of these little towns have a general store. There were a couple guys in a pickup truck (“ute”) when we got there, but when they saw there was another customer, they waved to us and drove off. The passenger had a cowboy hat and a bottle of beer. I didn’t see the driver.

The general store just looked like someone’s house, and it probably is. The woman was selling pies (savory, in the Australian way) and I wished we needed food as well as fuel, because it would have been worth trying. Probably better than the beet burger, too.

Our destination was Airlie Beach. We spent a day in Airlie Beach four years ago followed by a day trip to the nearby Whitsunday Islands. We loved Whitehaven Beach in particular, but I said at the time how nice it would be to come back and spend a week just hanging around Airlie Beach. So we did.

First we had to get there, and that was a two-day trip. There is nothing like crossing Australia overland to make you realize how huge it is. We spent more time in Queensland than any other state on our first trip here, and the same thing seems likely to happen this time.

Australians love to put "big" fiberglass things on the side of the highway.

Since Europe and South Africa we hadn’t had occasion to use Airbnb, but it comes into its own in rich countries. Every place and every host is a little bit different. We didn’t meet our host for the overnight stop in Gladstone (“Gladston”) at all, but the place was great. The New Zealand guy who let us in is staying there for a month.

So it’s a long way to Airlie Beach, and the thing is, it’s not really a beach. The town has grown up around the marina, but you can’t swim in the sea, because from November to March it’s full of marine stingers (jellyfish). They can be highly toxic. Just another of the many deadly creatures that call Australia home. What Airlie Beach and other towns in tropical northern Queensland have are safe swimming areas—either enclosed by stinger-resistant nets, or separate from the sea entirely. Thus, the Airlie Beach Lagoon.

This is what I remembered from four years ago. It’s an absolutely enormous swimming pool, “self chlorinated.” I don’t know exactly what that means but in Australia, it seems the thing with pools is to use salt water. Not as salty as the sea, but no box jellyfish, either.

I was looking forward to spending more time in the Airlie Beach Lagoon and in our Airbnb flat, just making ourselves at home. It was just as well that the lagoon was only a short walk away, because we had to go there in between the rains. Some of the time we were in the flat, it just hammered down for hours or all night, as if it were never going to stop. Luckily the TV was working at the time, and the Winter Olympics were on.

We had a recommendation for a day out in Bowen, just up the Bruce Highway. It seemed like a good idea because Bowen claims to have the best climate in Australia. It did not disappoint. It was sunny all day in Bowen, and did we feel the heat! Besides the beaches (where you shouldn’t swim at this time of year), Bowen’s main attraction is the Summergarden Theatre, a movie theatre dating from the 1940s. It still shows movies, but sadly not the day we visited.

Bowen also boasts the “Bowenwood” sign, an imitation of the Hollywood sign, for reasons I don’t understand. And a spot called the Bowen Arrow.

Not wanting to miss any of the good weather we did get back in Airlie Beach, we set out one morning to hike to Swamp Bay. Given the name, and the tropics, we took our rain gear and wore boots. It was raining when we set out but by the time we got into the woods, there were only clouds.

Swamp Bay

Another place we stopped on our road trip four years ago was Townsville. It sounds like a repetition, but it’s named for someone called Robert Towns. We got there on a Saturday and T. looked up things to do that were cheap or free (we do this a lot). What we found was not actually in Townsville, or anywhere near Townsville; but Australians must think nothing of driving more than an hour down the highway. More than an hour and a half, if it’s us on our way back at night, and we don’t want to hit any animals.

I’ve noticed this about Australia: they love superlatives. We’ve seen "Australia’s best climate," “best pecan pie,” “tastiest chicken.”  Let’s be honest—how would we know? In the case of Charters Towers, it could very well be "Australia’s most authentic country town." It doesn’t look like much today, but in gold rush times it had a stock exchange open twenty-four hours a day.

We stopped in the pub and that was an experience. All the guys were in there betting on horse and, yes, greyhound races that were being broadcast on television. We thought there were only a few women there, but it turned out the rest were in the beer garden out back. You can see from the pub sign that they’ve got their priorities here.

We got there early!

But we weren’t in Charters Towers to gawk at the locals. We were there for the drive-in movie theatre, which charges A$8.50 for a double feature and has been in continual operation since 1966. They have Australia’s worst hot dogs (trust me on this one), but everything else about the place is fantastic, from the period music and ads playing before the show, to the speakers you can still take and hang on your car window. Plus if the film gets too weird, which happens, you can always look up at the stars. The moon rose so big and bright on the horizon that we almost didn’t know what it was at first.

So, we had a late night, especially for us. As a result, I was awakened by church bells, which is a little late for me on a Sunday morning. I got out in time for the market and noticed there were several churches within a block of where we were staying. Not sure whose bells I heard, but St. Andrew’s Presbyterian had a 5:30 P.M. service, so there was no excuse for missing that.

St. Andrew’s was a friendly church. It had a very different vibe from the one we visited in Footscray, but it had grape juice, so that at least was familiar from my growing up. In some ways (all the elders were men) it seemed like going back in time; in others (contemporary songs projected on a screen) it did not. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a minister get up and preach in shorts before.

In between the market and church, we did manage to walk down the esplanade to one of the stinger enclosures where one can swim. Townsville’s esplanade is really beautiful, and we had good (hot!) weather that day. I needed the swim, too, because earlier I had walked up the “Goat Track” to Castle Hill (above). There is no castle on the hill overlooking Townsville, but it’s still a nice view.

I can’t leave Townsville without mentioning the Sunday dinner we had, after all the hiking and swimming and evening church. I had seen that there was a deal on Sundays, A$14.90 for a steak dinner. When we went down to have a look at it we discovered that the restaurant was actually part of the Cowboys League Club, a club for fans of the North Queensland rugby league team. So, only members were eligible for this dinner deal.

Like all Townsvillians I met, the security woman at the Cowboys League Club was exceptionally friendly. She said we could buy a membership for only A$2, and only one of us had to buy one. I could then sign T. in as a guest!

If you’re ever in Townsville, join this club. It is the best deal in town, if not in Australia. All you need is I.D. We got a lovely dinner, including a big soup and salad bar, and even the drinks were discounted with my membership card. For the rest of our road trip, whenever I saw a billboard for the North Queensland Cowboys, I thought, “That’s my team!”

What a friendly place—and huge. These clubs are everywhere in Australia. Food and drinks are subsidized, by the gambling I suppose. I am not sure what the Presbyterians would make of it, but we had a great time. It is the place to eat in downtown Townsville.

Seriously. Australia’s tastiest chicken was closed.