In 1860 John Mackay ventured north from Brisbane found the Pioneer river and its natural deep water anchorage and travelled in land and built himself a homestead which is now called Greenmount on the edge of the town of Walkerston which is close to Mackay. Cattle were introduced to the area and did well in the relatively lush pastures around the Mackay area. It was decided that sugar cane might be a good crop so it was planted and it thrived. Sugar mills dotted the landscape in the late 1880- to 90's and Mackay was booming. The fair skinned settlers of European descent found it hard doing the manual labour required of cane farming in that era, with hand harvesting and planting so it was decided to hire labour in the form of South Sea ... read more

Held each Labour day weekend for the last 11 years near Mackay is this wonderful music festival. It started off as a tiny local event for the folk muso's in the area, and now it has become a huge four day event with guest artists from all over Australia. It is held at Cameron's Pocket which is north and west of Mackay on private property skirting the foothills of Eungella National Park. Jenny Drake and Chris Cann were the initial organisers who have been fantastic enough to give so much of their own time, money and energy each year to run this wonderful event along with thousands of volunteers and friends. This year Bob Eden came on board as festival organiser. 2007 brought fantastic acts from all over Australia singing a range of music from ... read more

Around the world in 6 days Europe » Iceland » Reykjavík By rosy59March 22nd 2007Rosemary Shanks Had a very surreal travel experience in March when i spent 2 days flying to Iceland from North Queensland Australia, 48 hours staying there and then 2 days for flying back again. So i left on Thursday morning at 6-45am and arrived in Iceland on Friday 4-00pm their time, via Brisbane, Sydney, Hong kong, Heathrow and then into Iceland. In 48 hours i managed to see most of what was on offer in Reykjavik, thanks to Barbara and Jana, Asta and Solveig and Rosa and her family. I stayed in a wonderful apartment in the old part of the town, got driven around all the tourist an... read more