Mackay

---

Happy Friday 13^th!And happy birthday to Nici and Barbara xx



We arrived in Mackay after a four hour drive from Capella and, despite Dean doing all the driving, I was completely shagged by the time we got there. That may possibly have been the longest drive on this trip so far! The scenery was lovely tough: we drove through the beautiful Peak Downs area, marveling at the hills and cotton fields. The surreal cloud formations only added to the mystique.



After stocking up on food – we had munched well and truly into our reserves during those delays at Theresa Creek and Capella which, bizarrely, didn’t have any food shops – we went for a swim and found a picnic/BBQ area for dinner.



As we were in a city again, I jumped at the chance to do some pilates/yoga classes and found myself very achy (but happy) for the next few days. Dean found a new air filter for the van so that’s that one ticked off the list! Ironically, this is the first time I would have liked to switch on our air conditioning, but that will just have to wait for a while. You could tell that we had arrived in the tropics and Mackay was both hot and humid.



We spent some time in the newly developed Caneland shopping centre (retail heaven!) and visited the small ‘Artspace’ gallery before crossing the Pioneer River to North Mackay for a visit to the marina. It’s quite an impressive harbour which boasts a 1.5km breakwater which you can drive along. After the hot and humid city centre, we welcomed the cool fresh air at the harbour and spent the afternoon relaxing there. By the evening a fog was starting to roll in and a few hours later it had moved south and engulfed the city too. The next day was torrential so we spent pretty much the entire day in Caneland. Both of us felt that we had reached a bit of a lull in our travel… Perhaps it was the crappy weather or the lack of inspiration, but we didn’t seem to be very active or focused and rather slow at making any plans or decisions. That said, we went for a bit of a ticky tour around the town and suburbs in the evening, had a walk along the northern beaches and met some other travelers at a rest area which became our camping spot for the night. There was another couple from Victoria and a group of five backpackers of various nationalities. Incredibly, they had met on their travels and joined up to hire a van that wasn’t much larger than ours. Imagine sleeping in such close proximity with four other people, fitting everyone’s travel gear into such a small space and having to make every decision together… and god forbid if anyone ate a lot of baked beans! :-)



The next day I did the self-guided Heritage Walk around the city centre. In contrast to its mining and agriculture (predominantly sugar) industries, Mackay has an abundance of heritage buildings. Due to fires in 1915/1916 and a devastating cyclone in 1918, many of the city’s destroyed buildings had to be replaced and the style of the moment was Art Deco. We had been oblivious to many notable buildings during ours strolls around the city centre but, equipped with my map and guide, it was fun to learn about them. Apparently, after the fires, the local council introduced a policy to replace all timber commercial premises with masonry structures and a population explosion as well as a growing economy meant that Mackay needed developing. We were certainly surprised at how far the city centre extended. Despite its roman grid system, it’s really quite large and busy. At its heart is the popular Show Bar which caters to the large number of workers in the area. We couldn’t quite figure out whether it was the same establishment as referred to in my brothel manager job alert. After my walk, we continued with our travel lull by spending a blissful afternoon in the big, relaxed Coffee Club, treating ourselves to coffee and cake.



Before leaving Mackay, we were lucky enough to catch the first of a series of lunchtime concerts which were part of the region’s annual Festival of the Arts. It was very sweet; forget the polished performances that you’d see in Melbourne and imagine, instead, a few handfuls of school clubs putting on a show of dancing, singing and piano playing. We were in complete agreement on how bad a mother I would make as I cringed when a violin was seriously out of tune and when an over-confident boy got carried away with a rendition of ‘We Will Rock You’. It was nice and fun though! And the definite highlight was listening to songs by Courtney Young. This gorgeous young lady is a very talented musician/singer from Mackay who already has a couple of albums under her belt. Her songs are quite melancholic and gentle, but very beautiful. Do check her out on myspace: http://www.myspace.com/courtneyyoung123

---