21 June 2011 - Calliope River Rest Area, Queensland

Fog surrounded us when we rose this morning and it was not until we drove up and away from our camp site that we were sure of yet another sunny day. Chris reckons the thermometer read 4 degrees this morning; I won’t bother disputing that. It was temperatures such as these that drove us into caravan parks west and inland of Sydney all those months ago; we are either hardening up or just buoyed by the fact that we are moving north, albeit slowly.

Our Industry Tour this morning left the Information Centre at 10 am. We called by Calliope proper and dumped before heading the twenty something kilometres into town. Again it was a small bus, but full of English and Australian tourists from the southern states. Sue, the tour guide from Gladstone Ports Corporation lacked personality, at least in the role of guide, and read out an absolute encyclopaedia of facts as we drove out to the R G Tanna Coal Terminal, then through the marina, the town and around to the Auckland Point Wharf. The scale of material in and out of this port is mind boggling and all the facts transmitted were very interesting, but after half an hour of such out-pouring, I have to admit turning off, or at least down. This was all the more frustrating when the very small child of perhaps a year, if that, decided that sitting in a bus, looking out the window at piles of coal was too tedious and decided to revolt. I can see that there is great merit in parents taking their touring holidays without small children, especially when they would otherwise subject them to non-child-friendly activities (which probably means anything that does not include food, playgrounds or swimming pools). However, in saying that, I thought of eight year old Jackson as we watched the huge monster bulldozers teetering on the apex of great coal reserves; he would have loved it!

After an hour travelling about this fascinating cauldron of activity, we returned to the Information Centre and on disembarking were handed a goody bag which included a smart ball-point pen and two glossy brochures summarising some of the points worth remembering.

Of course the port was first discovered in 1802, when Matthew Flinders popped up in his ship from Sydney. He spent about three days sussing it all out and returned with the good news. While the port was busy exporting wild horses and meat to India way back, and later meat from the abattoir, it was not until the 1960s that things really got going. This of course coincided with the refinery, the smelter, the power station and everything else that now makes Gladstone such an important place. 

Coal makes up over 70% of the throughput of the port, alumina following at about 24% , followed by cement, petroleum, aluminium, grain and then other bits and pieces. When coal was first handled through the port in 1925, the ship loading rate was 100 tonnes per hour; now it is loaded at 6,000 tonnes per hour. This goes on almost 24/7 because, as I mentioned earlier, ships are lining up outside the harbour ready to be guided in and filled up.

Stock piled coal

This PR woman was voluble about the great works of the Port Corporation for the people of Gladstone, the labour that is provided free of charge for so many projects, the wonderful environmental systems they have in place, and on and on. Between them and Rio Tinto, it seems that they have the whole town tied up.

Chris and I drove over to Barney’s Beach on the southern side of the CBD where there is respite from the industry; a sandy beach and a very pleasant park, no doubt courtesy of the Port Corporation. We picnicked on a hill overlooking the bay, the water glistening in the sunlight below us.

As we finally left this surprising town, we called at Coles and stocked up after wandering around the Stockland’s Shopping Centre, and made our way back to our delightful camp here by the river.

Chris has made an attempt at removing the worst of the dirt from the caravan and so we will look relatively presentable as we pull away on the Bruce Highway tomorrow morning, heading north toward Rockhampton.