Elliott Heads, QLD

Here’s a catch-up post.  I’m going to call them flashbacks.  From earlier in our trip, so the post is out of order.  Hopefully I’ll be able to sneak these in from time to time and catch up on blogging about some of the places we’ve been.  I’m finding it near impossible to keep up, every time I feel close to caught up it all gets away from me again!

On our way up the east coast we spent a couple of nights in Elliott Heads, near Bundaberg.  The beach was right across the road.  We were there at sunset which made for some beautiful pictures.

They got in the water, but then they were freezing.  That sun is tricky.  You arrive at the beach thinking it’s lovely and warm but then the sun goes down and the warmth goes with it.  Quickly.

TurboBug was thrilled to take his new dump truck to the beach.  He’d gotten it for his birthday and hadn’t even considered that it could be taken to the beach.  What a discovery!

 

We drove to nearby Bundaberg and saw heaps of sugarcane.  It’s plentiful as we head north.  The sugarcane is often hauled on special trains which have their own tracks.  It’s interesting to see the plants in all the various stages of growth. 

Family bike ride.  The trail went right up the coast.  It was a nice warm morning.  Such a lovely ride.  The kids scrambled down to have a look at a large rock pool.

They all wanted to climb the huge rock for a picture with the tree, which wasn’t really a tree but a branch someone had jammed in the rock.

We followed the trail up the coast where it dead-ended in a new housing development.  We pondered living in Elliott Heads to enjoy the stunning ocean views.  Sigh.

Random ‘triangle’ house that LadyBug wanted a picture of.  :)  I’d love to go in and see how it feels from the inside.

And that’s Elliott Heads.  A small town with lovely views.  :)

Road Tripping in Queensland

There are some great signs along the road in Queensland.  Not sure where they think we’re headed! There can definitely be a lot of time between towns.

I guess I should get a picture of a kangaroo roadsign, not sure I’ve got one of those yet.  They are all over the place.  I think we’ve seen more signs for kangaroos than actual kangaroos.

When we left Mulambin we drove for several days in a row to get all the way up to Cooktown.  One of our stops was in Bowen at the Big Mango. 

We’ve seen some nets crossing the roads at times, I’m not sure if they are for tree kangaroos or other animals or both.

On days that we travel for several hours I sometimes have to get creative to keep TurboBug happy.  Pictures did it this day.  I’d take a picture and then show it to him.  Thank goodness for digital cameras!  You can see the boys playing their iPads in the background.  They are not always allowed to in the car, but on days where we travel quite a way they usually get at least a little time on them.  That scab on Turbobug’s forehead is from falling over into one of the bikes.  Ouch!

One more roadsign.  Beware of cows tipping cars over!  :)

Aboriginal Rock Art at Split Rock

Does this count as a roadsign for my collection?  Not exactly what you think of as Australian animals, but we see a lot of these signs!  So far up this way we’ve seen wandering cattle, but no sheep yet.

After Cooktown we spent a night in nearby Lakeland so that we could make a quick visit over to Laura to see the Aboriginal rock art at Split Rock.  (I never know whether I’m supposed to capitalise Aboriginal, I see it both ways and have yet to figure it all out.  So I’m capitalising it, just in case.  I also don’t know when to use Aborigine vs Aboriginal.  Maybe by the end of this trip I’ll know!)

We didn’t bring many picture books with us, but this one had to come along!  This is by a well-known Aussie children’s author, and it’s about a family taking a trip around Australia in a caravan.  Ahem.  We also have the audio and we listened to it in the car that day.  At the beginning is a map showing their route and it’s fun to see the places we’ve yet to go.

This guy was veeerrry quiet.  Turns out he was just very interested in his book.

Tangent…Once when I was stopped for a breath test I had my three older kids all lined up in the backseat next to each other.  (Breath tests are random and common here, this one was in the middle of the day in the middle of town.)  Each kid had a book open on their lap.  The officer saw them as he was administering my test and asked ‘How do you do that?’  I laughed, but from the look on his face he was serious.  He asked again, and I laughed again.  Three kids, all lined up and quiet in the backseat, happily looking at their books.  How do you do that?  The answer is, you give them books.  Lots of books.  From a young age.  (Insert spooky whispers: If you build it…) But back to our story…

This far north we pass a lot of bananas, and a lot of sugarcane.  This day it was bananas.  Not sure whether the bags protect from the elements or the animals, but this far north in the middle of winter I’m guessing animals.

Our first stop was the Quinkan and Regional Cultural Centre in Laura.  The display there is really very good and worth visiting.  There was a small fee to enter.  The kids loved this display on guessing the animal tracks.

And this one with the grinding stone and information on how they made paints.

And I loved all the information on the signage.  They were really well done.

Then I realised some kids were missing and I found them inspecting the termite mounds out back.

Which are very interesting also, especially if you find a broken one.

Some of them are quite large, which makes them especially fascinating.

But, back to the museum!  Of course there was information on interpreting the rock art.

And on how the paintings are made: the paints and tools.  We also watched a video that interviewed some of the Aboriginal guides in the area. 

Laura is famous for its Aboriginal Dance Festival.  We missed this year’s by a few weeks.  I loved this room with the giant pictures and mirrors, we tried out the various dance poses.

The spelling of kangaroo came from Captain Cook and Joseph Banks.  They did their best to interpret the Aboriginal word into English.  They originally spelled it kanguroo.  Aboriginals in the area spell it gangurru. 

Something I’ve never imagined before: the first car to make the trek to the tip of Cape York.  I would not have guessed it was as early as 1928.

Part of the rock art is free to view, you just have to be able to walk up to it.  You can also pay for a tour which will take you to even more rock art and engravings.  The site is about 11km outside of town.

There were three different galleries to view.

The flying foxes were my favourite.

There was a bit of a walk up to the sites with a couple of steep spots but otherwise not too bad.  It gave a good view of the surrounding area so you could see why Aboriginals would spend time up here.

This was our first viewing of rock art on our trip, we hope to see more in the Northern Territory.  We’ll be heading back down the coast then inland to Longreach and eventually Alice Springs and Uluru, then north to Darwin.  We can’t wait to see more of this great country!