Tannum Sands & Gladstone

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First of all, many congratulations to our good friends Alison & Victor who have just welcomed their beautiful baby daughter, Violette Evelyn, into the world!We are thrilled for you and can’t wait to meet her (that’s your cue to bundle Violette up and join us in sunny Queensland, haha)!

Our next stop after Agnes Water & Town Of 1770 was Tannum Sands. It’s on the way to Gladstone and practically one of its suburbs. Our Lonely Planet didn’t even give it a mention and we sure hadn’t expected it to be as stunning as it was. Endless pristine beaches made for a beautiful walk before we stopped for lunch at the lovely park on Millennium Esplanade.

The origin of the name Tannum Sands is pretty funny. When a group of children returned quite sunburnt from a Sunday School picnic, the comment was made that "we can really tan 'um over there". One of the people present worked for the Queensland Land Department and, thinking it would be a good name for the area, registered it.

Next, we drove on to the industrial port of Gladstone. This city’s industrial nature cannot be missed – if, by some miracle, you were oblivious to the power station and numerous plants and refineries, the fact that literally 50% of the population is wearing high visibility jackets and work boots is a dead giveaway. That said, it’s a friendly city and there’s a certain calmness and down-to-earth-ness in the air. Considering that there is a population of just under 30 thousand, we had expected there to be a better infrastructure and more retail outlets though. Most of the shops and bars are in the vicinity of the Goondoon and Auckland Streets. The latter name (there are also the Auckland Hill Lookout and the Auckland Point Wharves) is not actually derived from the New Zealand city, but rather from the vessel ‘Lord Auckland’ which carried some of the first settlers to the Gladstone area in 1847.

Gladstone’s major industries are Queensland Alumina, the NRG Power Station, Boyne Smelters, the Gladstone Ports Corporation, Rio Tinto Aluminium Yarwun and Cement Australia. There are a number of free industry tours, sponsored by the various companies, so we went on the ‘Mine to Market’ tour, featuring a visit to Queensland Alumina Ltd and Boyne Smelters Ltd. Being Friday morning, I took the tour’s title a little too literally and thought we might finish off at a nice farmer’s market… but no, the market they were talking about was the aluminium manufacturing market.

Queensland Alumina extracts aluminium oxide from the reddish brown rock that is Bauxite and produces an average of 11,000 tonnes of alumina per day. In the 19^th century, after the presence of aluminium was officially recognised, this element was considered extremely valuable and was more expensive than gold. Napoleon III proudly displayed aluminium cutlery at his state banquets and even had an aluminium and gold baby rattle made for his son!

Boyne Smelters processes alumina into aluminium metal by subjecting it to an electrochemical reaction. This part of the tour became a bit too technical for me, but the bottom line is that it takes 14,000 DCkWh of electricity, two tonnes of alumina and half a tonne of carbon to produce one tonne of aluminium. The eco-aware part of me still wonders whether such resource depletion is really necessary and whether more sustainable materials could be used for at least some of the items that our modern life demands.

As our tour guide said, the purpose of the tour was “to learn how the brown stuff is made into white stuff, and how the white stuff is made into shiny stuff”. And that we certainly did.

With all the booming industries around us, we thought it a good opportunity to revamp our CVs and search for some work (unfortunately that time has come!!). It was a rather painful process, especially when we clad ourselves in corporate wear to visit the many recruitment agencies. In hindsight, there was really no need for us to do so as everyone else turned up in scruffy singlets and boardshorts. I must say I have no inclination to go back to office work on a permanent basis. My feet hurt in those shoes, I couldn’t comfortably climb steps in my pencil skirt and… I think I’ve put on a bit of weight as my shirt didn’t fit me so well anymore… All I wanted was to get back into my shorts and t-shirt!

As some of you already know, I have been pondering a career change for some time and am progressing in my decision to study nutrition with a view to having my own clinic, doing consulting work and writing about the subject. It was never a conscious choice of mine to go into office support so I feel the time has come for me to do something that interests me and that I feel passionate about. Watch this space for my progress!

Whilst we’re travelling, on the other hand, we are both quite happy to do any kind of work (aside from fruit picking, the prospect of which we’re not that excited about) but we soon cottoned on to the fact that it would be smarter to wait until the end of June when the current Australian financial year finishes, as hardly any companies are hiring new workers in the meantime. So we promptly got back into our shorts and drove out to Gecko Valley to do some wine tasting!

Gecko Valley is a lovely little winery featuring an outdoor café, a gift shop and a tiny gallery. Sadly last year’s bushfire wiped out much of their vineyards so they are grateful for any support from locals and visitors. Further up the road are the Toondoon Botanic Gardens which we wandered around. Countless turtles live in their pond and it was fun watching the little critters do what they do, which is basically swim around kiss each other. That’s what it looked like anyway.

Whilst in Gladstone, we spent a fair amount of time (mostly for lunch and dinner) at the marina and the Spinnaker Park. These areas are beautifully designed and maintained with lots of green and space. It was here that I did the Australian thing of ‘throwing a shrimp on the barbie’ for the first time!

I also went to a couple of beautifully relaxing yoga classes with a gorgeous Argentinean teacher. If you’re ever in Gladstone, go see Gabriela for some Zen! http://www.gladstoneyoga.com.ar/

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Comments

[Steve]

Thanks for the article and a correction
Hi, Thanks for this review of Gladstone. Very useful as they are hard to find. A small correction - the population is just under 30 thousand, not 30 million! Cheers!