18 June 2011 - Calliope River Rest Area, Queensland

Late morning settled under the awning sheltering from the glorious sunshine; it is indeed the most perfect day here. We woke to about eight degrees and have certainly returned to burying ourselves at night in winceyette pyjamas under layers of duvets and blankets, but are forever appreciative of the clear sunny days that follow.

Today is Kit’s thirty second birthday; I made a very brief call to him conveying my love and wishing him a happy day. Co-incidentally, I spoke just two days ago with his father who had been chasing us for a travel progress report for the last couple of months. We spoke of Kit’s birthday then. It does not seem so many years since Kit came into the world, however seems decades longer since I was with his father. My travel companion seems to have been beside me for ever; it is only the existence of our respective children that remind me this is not so.

A load of hand washing is hanging on my rotary line and my hair is drying in the gentle breeze after having been washed in cold water over a bucket. Very invigorating, I tell you.

Yesterday morning we left this wonderful camp very soon after seven and travelled by a better and more direct road back in to Gladstone. Quite frankly I am not sure how the distance compared with our round about route of the day before. We parked in the same spot on the marina, breakfasted and then went over to the Information Centre as our fellow tour passengers were assembling.

Forty three of us boarded a large tour coach, were briefed by our guide Brian, who had been employed by Queensland Alumina from the time it opened in 1967 until his retirement. We were taken firstly to a look out, resplendent with interpretive panels and a view out across the refinery. Here we were allowed to take photos. While our cameras were not then confiscated, we were on notice that no more photos could be taken. This was a shame because I could have tried for some really arty shots. We entered the refinery and travelled around, remaining all the time in the coach, having the processes explained to us by Brian.

The bauxite is mined up at Weipa which is on the western side of Cape York and shipped the 2,000 kilometres around the Cape and down to Gladstone. We watched a ship being unloaded, and the raw mineral being carried on a conveyor belt across to the refinery. We were shown the great rust coloured tanks, vats and other receptacles where the bauxite is refined step by step down to the fine alumina powder. From there it is taken back by conveyer belt to the wharf and shipped to Japan, America and New Zealand. Some is transferred across again by conveyor belts to the Boyne Smelter, just eleven kilometres away as the crow flies. We were also shown the buildings that housed the laboratory, the canteen, the workshops, the medical centre which houses a doctor and two nurses, and the showers.

Back in 1960, Gladstone lost its one industry; the Meatworks closed its doors. At that time it was still a fairly small seaside town of perhaps 5,000 people. Fortunately for Gladstone, given its sheltered deep water port, nearby rail access and the coalfields at Moura not too far away, in addition to the fact that there were now workers sitting about twiddling their thumbs, in 1964 a consortium of organisations, Comalco, Kaiser, Alcan and Pechiney joined forces and chose to construct their planned refinery here.

Today QAL, which started in 1967 with a production of 600,000 tonnes of alumina, now turns out four million tons a year. It is one of the world’s largest refineries, and of course saved Gladstone from oblivion.

Needless to say, we enjoyed this tour very much and also the one that immediately followed. Col, the driver, took us back to the Information Centre for a comfort stop, then we were driven out to Boyne Island, about twenty five kilometres by road, to the Boyne Smelter. At the gate we were met by another guide, a bubbly woman, who took any aluminium or tin container from the passengers, including inhalers. We had all been instructed to wear long sleeves, sturdy covered shoes, and long pants. Given that we all remained in the coach for the entire time within the confines of both factories, this was all quite ridiculous. However company policy is company policy and it seems that Australian Health and Safety regulations are even more rigorous than those we left behind. (We see that this is being made patently clear by a coal miner who left Pike River Coal just weeks before the disaster last November, who is making sure that everyone knows his opinion on New Zealand’s backward safety regulations.)

Any way, I digress. We drove around the mine and peeked in doorways of the huge buildings hoping to catch glimpses of various stages of the process. Fortunately we had been shown an excellent DVD on the trip out to Boyne Island, and so those things we did see were simply evidence of their existence.

We were back at the marina before one o’clock and drove around to Spinnaker Park on the end of the seawall, formed during the dredging for the marina, where we enjoyed the birds and the lovely views as we ate.

Returning to this camp, arriving soon after three o’clock, we found it to be as busy as the day before. No sooner had we set up, did we receive a visit from Geoff whom we had become acquainted with in Bundaberg. He invited us to join him and Denise, together with the couple they are travelling with for drinks by their camp fire. Chris and I went for a walk about the camp, then spying smoke from the direction of our friends’ camp, took our mugs of coffee over. Charlie and Sue are also from Western Australia, having met up with Geoff and Denise in Tasmania. We thoroughly enjoyed about an hour and a half around their camp fire. When they started to test their foil wrapped potatoes, we decided it was time for us to return and cook our own dinner, the preparation having been done earlier.

We sat up late watching a movie we had missed at the cinema a few years ago, The Last Scottish King, about Idi Amin, and retired later than ever, but knowing that today we had little to do but enjoy this wonderful spot.