28 June 2011 - General Gordon Hotel, Homebush, Queensland

It rained much of last night; the creek did not flood and we were safe and sound in our little home. It was very soon after eight that we broke camp and came further north. The road continued as it had the previous afternoon, but the cattle farms were replaced by sugar cane fields the further north we came.

Last night, in the absence of television, we watched a couple of travel DVDs we have, with particular attention to the Mackay episode of Spider Everitt’s “The Great Australian Doorstep”. We had seen this at least twice before, however it was all the more pertinent given that we were closing on this city of more than sixty thousand, about ten thousand less than Rockhampton. And it was just as well that we did because we were keen to do a tour through a sugar mill and knew that his wife Sheree had done so somewhere near Mackay. Wonder of wonders, it was at Sarina, the place we planned to stop and gather local maps from the Information Centre. The Sugar Shed is part of the complex on the southern entry to Sarina called “Field of Dreams”, a very fancy name for the Centre, the Shed, an Art Gallery and a museum. The Plane Creek sugar mill stands beside this “field” billowing out great clouds of steam; a living monument to the region’s industry. The next tour was due to start within the hour of our arrival, so we signed on at once. Again Chris’s Queensland’s Senior Card proved useful; it is surprising how often this comes in handy.

The tour is actually around a mini mill, one that replicates the processes but in miniature. An excellent DVD explaining the industry, the processes, and promoting the Mackay area as a tourist destination starts the tour and then we were led about a manicured garden to see machinery used in bygone years in the harvest of the cane, some of which have simply evolved with time and technology and are otherwise in use today. The guide then took us into The Shed and explained the process, demonstrating with real cane, extracting real juice and allowing us to taste the results of his labours. We were then led to a further tasting section where we were able to try liqueurs, schnapps and sauces manufactured within this mini factory all manned by volunteers. Neither Chris nor I were tempted by the products on offer but had both enjoyed the tour very much.

The information highlights for me were:

• The sugar cane after being harvested is left to shoot again year after year, and will do so successfully for about four or five years. Sometimes the ground is left fallow for a year, sometimes replanted in an entirely different crop. When it is replanted, the canes are laid horizontally in the ground rather than vertically as I would have expected.

• I was interested also that the mill next door produces raw sugar for export, some of which finds its way to Birkenhead’s (in Auckland) sugar refinery. That in itself is not surprising but what is surprising is the following: the raw sugar produced in this mill is not able to be sold for consumption in that form because it is an open working agricultural mill. When it is refined elsewhere, the true raw sugar it receives from here is white. The refinery then melts it down, and goes through the extraction process again to reach crystal form. Simply, the fine sugar that falls through the sift is sold as icing sugar, the less fine, as castor sugar,  the regular sugar as white sugar and the larger sized crystals are coloured  with molasses and sold as coffee sugar or raw sugar. That means of course that the raw sugar one buys in shops is actually more processed than white sugar and thus probably less healthy.

Hay Point

The rain had persisted all morning; we ducked back to the caravan between heavy showers and had lunch before heading to our next destination. We were keen to see the port at Hay Point which is one of the biggest and most efficient coal ports in the world. Unlike Gladstone, there are no tours of this port however there is a lookout with excellent explanatory panels from which the two separate coal terminals, the Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal and the Hays Point Services Coal Terminal can be viewed. They operate independently, each with their own rail loading equipment, stockpiles with stacking and reclaiming equipment, conveyors and ship loaders on offshore wharves. Their combined throughput totals 88.5 tonnes of coal.

We turned into the road on which this lookout is situated, to find that caravans and trailers are banned from travelling beyond the sign. There was a suggestion we could unhook and drive on, but we decided to simply park and walk on. Rain threatened yet again so we donned raincoats and set off. A government vehicle pulled up beside us and we asked how far the lookout was. He in turn asked us if we would like a lift to the top. We accepted of course and he, an employee of the Quarantine Service, went out of his way to run us up the very steep but relatively short road. A wonderful gesture; yet another from the wonderful people that live in this land.

A squall came over as we arrived at the top so we sheltered out of the wind until it passed. Below us lay the industrial scene. It was a shame the weather was not better however we were able to make out over a dozen coal freighters waiting out on the horizon to be guided in by the pilots, who are all helicoptered out, as in Gladstone. We walked back to the caravan in the sunshine, away before the rain recommenced.

We set Tomtom for Homebush, with no other description or GPS co-ordinate. The Camps Australia 5 had this hotel as a low cost camp, the cost undefined. Tomtom had us wandering about the cane fields through narrow potholed roads, and then emerging far from any hotel. Homebush does not have a centre; the school and the hotel are at least two kilometres apart. We stopped at some kennels to ask directions and were duly rewarded.

The view from our kitchen window

The hotel is an old two story wooden structure, poorly maintained and partly camouflaged by wandering vines, situated between the road and fields of sugar cane. We went in to the bar to ask if we could stay and the proprietor, a portly middle aged woman who does not waste her time beautifying herself, came out of the kitchen, took our ten dollars and offered the facilities of the shower and toilets, up the top of the back stairs. Chris checked them out and was duly shocked at the run down state of the amenities. Needless to say we showered in our own bathroom tonight as normal.  

After dinner, we rang through to a camping ground in the centre of Mackay, booking for a couple of nights. Tomorrow we will enter the city and find out what else it has in store for us.