July 26-28         L.A.X. – Auckland Transit Area – Brisbane [rented car] 

 

July 28              Brisbane north to Hervey Bay (Woolshed Backpackers)

 

July 29              Hervey Bay north and west to Emerald (Central Inn)

 

July 30              Emerald area (car)

 

July 31              Emerald area – Blackwater (Bedford Weir campground-car)

 

August 1           Blackwater east via Rockhampton to Emu Park (Emus Beach Resort)

 

August 2           Ferry from Rosslyn Bay to Great Keppel Island (GKI Holiday Village)

 

August 3-7        Great Keppel Island (GKI Holiday Village)

 

August 8           Ferry from Great Keppel Island to Rosslyn Bay (Emus Beach Resort)

 

August 9           Emu Park north towards Byfield, then south to Agnes Water (Cool Bananas)

 

August 10         Agnes Water/1770 (backpackers)

 

August 11         Boat from 1770 to Hoskyns Islands.  To Bundaberg.  (Cellblock Backpackers)

 

August 12         Bundaberg south to Brisbane [returned car] (Banana Benders)

 

August 13-16     Brisbane (Banana Benders)

 

August 17         Brisbane.  Ferry from Cleveland to North Stradbroke Island (Manta Lodge)

 

August 18-21     North Stradbroke Island (Manta Lodge)

 

August 22         Ferry from North Stradbroke to Cleveland.  Brisbane (Banana Benders)

 

August 23         Brisbane – Auckland Transit Area – L.A.X.


Report on the 2009 Queensland Expedition

 

Rationale and Overview

After 20 years in DC and after grinding through the very long and intense 2008 presidential campaign in I determined that it was time for a break.  During the grinding days of the campaign, I had envisaged going as far away as possible once it was over.  I wanted to go overseas.  Stuart Island sounded good.  I did not want to hear about Obama or domestic politics.  It took until mid-2009 to wrap up work on the campaign.  Meanwhile, for several months I checked airline websites.  Airfares to Australia and New Zealand seemed to be at historically low levels, around US$700 round trip including taxes and fees. 

 

August is sweltering in DC, and it is a good time to get out of town.  However, in the southern hemisphere it is winter.  Although New Zealand was my first choice, the temperatures there were in the single digits (degrees C).  I determined to go to Australia with a general idea of looking for gold and getting to the Great Barrier Reef but no specific itinerary.

 

I flew in and out of Brisbane on Air New Zealand.  The flight from L.A.X. to Auckland takes about 12 hours and 40 minutes, there is a layover of several hours in the transit area, and it is another 2 hours and 30 minutes to Brisbane.  (Brief glimpses of New Zealand coming and going into Auckland looked very tempting.  I asked about adding a stopover, but it would have cost too much).  Arriving in Brisbane, I rented a car for two weeks and set out immediately.  I did not want to sort through Brisbane hostels to find a suitable place. 

 

I had some notions of driving up to Cairns, a distance of about 1,681 km (1,043 miles).  The vast majority of the driving was on two lane roads, with opposing traffic oncoming at 100 km/h (62 mph).  I learned the meaning of the phrase “the tyranny of distance.”  Queensland is a little larger than Alaska and slightly more than four times the area of California.  I did not get much further north than the resort city of Yeppoon, less than half the way to Cairns, and only saw the southern part of the reef.  (The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority produces 18 zoning maps that cover the reef starting north of Bundaberg and going up to Cape York at the northern tip.  The places I visited were covered by the bottom two maps and further south, out of the Park).  All told I drove 2,691 km (1,672 miles) in 15 days. 

 

My plan was to stay in hostels or backpackers.  These typically run about A$26 per night and offer dormitory style accommodations and kitchens.  Many of hostels have bars and promote a fun party scene; I tried to avoid that.  Because of snorers, I generally did not sleep too well. 

 

Hostels are largely populated by young people traveling around the country on working holiday visas.  This program, begun in 1975, allows people aged from 18-30 to work and travel for a year.  New Zealand also has such a program; Australia’s version extends to about two dozen countries.  The most common nationalities I met were Germans, lots of them, as well as French and English.  My understanding is that there are 90-100,000 people in Australia on working holiday visas.  Typically, a person might do housekeeping at a hostel for three hours a day in exchange for accommodations, or get paid for picking fruit or doing gardening.  After several weeks he or she might then take the Greyhound bus and head to another location.  Working holiday makers fill some of the jobs that illegal immigrants do in the United States.

 

In addition to the backpacker scene, I encountered several other types of voyagers.  Sailing is big.  People will take some weeks and sail from the Brisbane area up to the Whitsundays.  I met a couple of people who built their own sailboats (for example a 65-foot catamaran).  On land, many retired people like to go caravanning.  They don’t seem to use RVs as much as in the States, but rather pull one of the trailer-thingummajiggies.

 

The hostel route was not the only alternative.  Camping might have been cheaper, although it requires a bit of planning as one has to make reservations at least a short while in advance over the internet or by phone.  With proper planning one can even camp on some of the islands of the Great Barrier Reef.  In any event, I didn’t have camping gear.  Also some of the campgrounds require driving over unpaved roads; I didn’t have 4-wheel drive and didn’t want to get charged for dings and scratches.  Another possibility would have been to rent a van or camper and sleep in the back.  There are several companies that do this.  The most noticeable are the Wicked vans, which are painted with graffiti-type art and sometimes vulgar slogans.  Another possibility would have been to buy a used car.  In some of the hostels one could find ads for used cars, often with well over 100,000 or 200,000 kilometers on them. 

 

As one can fly from the U.S. to Cairns, it might have made sense to do a Cairns-centered trip.  I did not hear too much good about Cairns itself, but by all accounts tropical and far north Queensland are spectacular.  It might have made sense to skip Brisbane and focus on the Whitsundays, Port Douglas and Cooktown, which is as far as the paved road goes.  Several people told me that Port Douglas and the Cape Tribulation areas are especially beautiful.  Of course the further north one goes the hotter it gets; the average high temperature in places such as Cairns and Cooktown exceeds 30 degrees C (86 degrees F) from November to March. 

 

Context

The political scene in Australia is quite different from when we were there in 1980-1.  At that time Malcolm Fraser was prime minister leading a Liberal-National (i.e. conservative) government.  Bob Hawke (Labor) and Paul Keating (Labor) followed him.  John Howard (Liberal) served for over a decade, starting in March 1996.  The Howard era was transformative for Australia in a way comparable to the Reagan or Thatcher years. 

 

An article The Monthly (March 2006) argues that the Howard government accomplished not quite the Americanization of Australia, but the dominionization of Australia, in the sense that Australia used to be a dominion of the British Empire.  Howard supported President Bush’s war on terror, and his government negotiated a free trade agreement that left some Australian agricultural interests displeased.  Howard also took a strong stand against illegal immigration.  This largely co-opted a nationalist movement that had arisen in the late 1990s under the leadership of Paula Hanson (One Nation Party).  The Liberal government was ousted in the federal election of Nov. 24, 2007.  Kevin Rudd (Labor) became prime minister, and he has led the government since.

 

A major topic of discussion during my visit was the carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS), which was being debated in the Senate.  The opposition argued that the scheme is ill-designed and would hurt the nation’s economy and that Rudd wants the bill as a plum he can take to the climate change conference in Copenhagen this December.  Rudd in turn said that the opposition did not have a clear policy and has offered nothing more than a “magic pudding.”

 

State government has also changed since 1980-81.  Joh Bjelke-Peterson (National), a legendary and autocratic figure, served as premier from 1968-87.  He ended up caught in corruption.  Anna Bligh (Labor) became premier in September 2007, and was elected in her own right in March 2009.  In Queensland there is just one opposition party, the Liberal National Party, following the merger of the Liberal Party and the National Party in mid-2008; this has not occurred in other states or nationally.

 

The population of Australia has grown from about 14.8 million in 1980-81 to 21.9 million today; the population of Queensland is 4.3 million.  Australia and Queensland seem largely to have escaped the global economic crisis that has afflicted the United States and other countries.  Unfortunately the U.S. dollar was at its lowest point in one year.  I had to be very careful.   

Aug. ‘08

Jan. ‘09

Feb.

Mar.

Apr.

May

Jun.

Jul.

Aug. ‘09

1.134

1.484

1.543

1.503

1.401

1.310

1.246

1.243

1.198

(I also learned that it is not wise to exchange all one’s money at the airport; there are places in the city that give a better rate and do not charge fees).

 

In other respects the timing of the trip proved to be excellent.  The temperatures were moderate and on some occasions getting into the mid-20s degrees C (close to 80 degrees F).  This was winter; it must get quite unbearable in the summer.  When I was inland it did get a bit cold at night.  It only rained a couple of times, briefly, while I was there.  The winter school holidays, which run from late June to mid-July, were over so crowds were small.  Also of note, in 2009 Queensland is celebrating its sesquicentennial, marking its independence from New South Wales. 

 

Fossicking

Given the state of the dollar, my first objective was to find a giant gold nugget or gem.  I determined to go fossicking.  The day I arrived in Brisbane I drove north to Hervey Bay, and the next day I went further north and then inland to Emerald, about 300 km from the coast.  This is coal country and there is also sugar cane and cotton.  The drive went past the Carnarvon Gorge, which I should have visited as it is supposed to be spectacular.  Emerald is on the Capricorn Highway.  Going further west one can get to the true outback; to the east, towards the coast is Rockhampton, the beef capital of Australia.

 

I stayed out in the Emerald area a couple of days looking for sapphires.  There are a number of outfits that will help people look for these gems.  Keith of Fascination Gems offered the set-up that seemed most authentic.  He has been bringing folks in to work along a dry creek in the Glenalva Fossicking Area and has equipment set up and ready to use.  All one needs to do is pick away at the dirt, shovel it into buckets, screen out the bigger rocks, and then run it through a Willoughby.  You put the dirt on a couple of screens and use this device to dunk it up and down in a barrel of water.  The action has a sorting effect similar to panning for gold.  Then you flip the screens and look for the sapphires, which resemble broken glass.  I found some tiny sapphires (“bordering on the ridiculous” and “ant’s earrings”), and got some blisters on my hands. 

 

I seemed to do better at first, and not so well later on, and I noticed this may have been the case with other people who were there.  Early on one digs at the top soil and below it, but later on there is a tendency to carve out deeper, on the theory that the heavy sapphires have sunk.  In retrospect, I think it would have made sense to focus on the middle or upper middle area.  Or maybe it just wasn’t a good area to look.

 

Reef Visits

Now I wanted to get out to the reef.  Driving east on the Capricorn Highway I reached Rockhampton and stopped in at the Information Center.  Queensland has a very well developed system of information centers, all marked by a distinctive yellow “i;” they are jammed with brochures on area attractions and accommodations.  When I learned that I could get accommodations on Great Keppel Island for A$35 per night I determined to go there.

 

Great Keppel Island is about a 12 km off the coast of Yeppoon/Emu Park, which is about 500 km north of Brisbane.  Captain James Cook sailed through Keppel Bay in May 1770.  The ferry runs from Rosslyn Bay.  Great Keppel is a continental island 1,454 hectares in size (3,592.8 acres; 1 hectare=2.47 acres), with 17 beaches (it takes quite a walk to get to many of them) and some fringing reefs.  It is in the south of the Great Barrier Reef.  Although it is part of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park much of it is privately held.

 

For some hundreds of years the Woppaburra people lived on several of the Keppel Islands.  In the latter part of the 19th century many of them were exterminated, and in August 1902 the remaining few were moved off the Great Keppel.  They have regained the rights to some of the land, but there is not much evidence of their presence beyond a plaque and a shell midden. 

 

Goats were introduced and sheep were raised until the early 1940s.  In addition to the goats, which remain, I saw an opossum, small lizards and butterflies.  More than 80 species of birds can be found on the island.  Habitats range from open eucalyptus forest to wetland with mangroves. 

 

I went snorkeling several times.  Although the water looks nice and clear, it is a nippy 20 or 21 degrees C.  A wetsuit is a good idea.  I had difficulties with water getting in the mask, and after I finished streams of water would flow out of my nose.  It was difficult to tell how healthy the fringing reefs were.  The colors were somewhat muted and the diversity probably less than up north.  The predominant coral was a brownish staghorn coral.  A few more colorful and distinctive coral types were scattered around, and there were plenty of colorful fish and sea creatures to observe.  Occasionally a small ray would dart away over the sand. 

 

The Island has a number of lodging places and some vacation houses, mostly on the northwest side.  The biggest, Great Keppel Island Resort, is now closed.  This resort opened in 1967 and included such amenities as a conference center and a golf course.  It employed over 100 people, and had at least one generator running around the clock, but it was getting a bit run down.  In 2007 Terry Agnew of Sydney (Tower Holdings) acquired the resort.  In July 2007 Tower proposed a major redevelopment including two championship 18 hole golf courses, three new 205 bed hotels, an airstrip, a 500 berth marina, a retail village, a Woppaburra cultural center, a housing subdivision (approximately 1,300 lots), and town houses and apartments (approximately 1,300).  That did not fly.  Agnew closed the resort in February 2008.  Current plans are to tear it down and build something eco-friendly, but a specific plan has not been issued.  Although the Island is a lot less busy than formerly, a pizza place and a souvenir shop were still operating. 

 

The place I stayed, Great Keppel Island Holiday Village, is billed as “the quiet alternative.”  You have to bring your own food, and they turn off the generators each night.  During my six days here I only saw the front of one newspaper, heard no radio or TV and never went shopping.  For all but the last day I was the only person in my room.  If I didn’t have to return the car, I might have stayed here longer.

 

Returning to the mainland I drove through Rockhampton and south to Gladstone.  The coal from the Bowen Basin is shipped out of Gladstone and there are other heavy industries operating here.  I stopped to look at the port before driving on to Agnes Water/1770 on the Discovery Coast; this area had been recommended to me by a person at Great Keppel.  The Discovery Coast was the second place Captain Cook landed in Australia.  From the 1770 marina one can get to Lady Musgrave Island and other reefs and islands of the Bunker Group.  Eurimbula National Park is nearby, but I didn’t go there. 

 

The tours to Lady Musgrave seemed too touristy, and the boat to Flinders Island wasn’t running, so I chose a smaller outfit, 1770 Undersea Adventures.  Their boat, the Narcosis, a 48’ West Coast cray boat outfitted for diving, was going out to Hoskyns Islands.  There were about 18 people, half diving and half snorkeling.  The two Islands, East and West, are about 32 km from shore; it takes two hours to get out there.  It was pretty amazing to go all that way and come upon these islands.  The boat stopped the water 6-8 meters deep in two different places.  I went in several times.  The water was again in the 20-21 degrees C range.  The island itself is off limits to protect turtles, but one could swim in to where it was less than a meter deep.  The sparser growth and more dimly lit scene in deeper water gave way to a crowded and more brilliant ecosystem closer to shore.  When I got out the final time, a swarm of small but harmless jellyfish were all around the ladder.  There were manta rays and turtles in the area; I did not see any when I was in the water, but from the boat I saw one of the rays gliding away.

 

The boat returned to the marina at low tide and it was necessary to take a tender to get to shore.  I then continued driving south, overnighting in Bundaberg.  Bundaberg is famous for aviator Bert Hinkler and for sugar and rum.  Sugar production in the area has actually been declining as the rich soil is good for other crops.  Backpackers find a lot of work doing fruit and vegetable picking.  The next day I drove through to Brisbane in order to get the car back on time.

 

City

I spent about five days in Brisbane staying at Banana Benders backpackers near the Victoria Barracks and Caxton area.  There are many hostels in the area and it is within easy walking distance to downtown and a big Cole’s supermarket.  The city feels a bit like San Francisco.  Brisbane is the third largest city in Australia, with a population of over one million, or, using a broader definition, about 1.8 million.  There are a lot of tourists.  The Brisbane River runs through the city, and they are building a couple of new bridges over it. 

 

I took in various attractions--the cultural area (Queensland Library, Queensland Museum, Art Museum, Museum of Modern Art), South Bank, the West End, the Queen Street mall, the view from Mt. Coot-tha and the Botanic Garden, and the Castlemaine-Perkins brewery tour.  I wanted to go to the Ekka (Royal Queensland Show), but it was quite expensive; fortunately someone gave me a ticket.  I did not make it the port, however, as it proved to be quite inaccessible without a car.

 

Straddie

Wanting to get out of the city, I decided to go on a four-day mid-week special to North Stradbroke Island in Moreton Bay off the coast.  Another option was Moreton Island, which has some boat wrecks one can swim around, but the Stradbroke package sounded the better deal.  Straddie extends over 27,500 hectares, and is, after Fraser Island to the north, the second largest sand island in the world.  One can take the train from Brisbane to the end of the line at Cleveland station, and then catch the ferry out.  More than a dozen ferries run each day.  On the ferry, I learned that the aboriginal name for the island, Minjerribah, means “place of mosquitoes,” but they were not much in evidence.  Many people come out from the Brisbane area to Straddie to go fishing or for holidays.  The population of the Island is about 3,200, but during the holidays it swells to the tens of thousands.

 

The package included a snorkeling trip to Shag Rock.  Although the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park does not extend this far south, there are still reefs in the area.  The water was still cold, in the 20 to 21 degrees range.  The underwater highlight was a Wobbygong shark.  The water was very clear and one could swim right up to where the waves were hitting the island and peek up at the birds.  On this third time snorkeling I finally managed to do it without getting water in the mask; Vaseline helped.  Had I been out there a bit longer I would likely have taken a scuba diving course.

 

Straddie is a good place from which to observe whales.  From the shore early one evening, albeit at a considerable distance, I saw humpback whales splashing their flippers and jumping as they made their way north.  The island has a variety of wildlife.  There are dugongs and koalas and swamp wallabies, which I did not see.  I did see a dangerous but not too happy looking snake on Main Beach, and a large lizard rapidly climbing a tree and some flattened toads on the road near Brown Lake.

 

There is a significant sand-mining operation on the island, and during my visit the main Brisbane newspaper, the Courier Mail, ran several articles about it.  A two-page spread “Believe it or not, this is Straddie” had several large photos showing a “barren moonscape.”  Sand mining started in the 1950s; the sand is processed for rutile, a form of titanium dioxide.  According to the articles, Consolidated Rutile Limited, which started in 1966, has markedly increased its activity over the past decade, and processes some 50 million tonnes of sand per year.  It was recently acquired by a Belgian concern.  Another threat to the island’s natural state is asparagus fern, an introduced plant which has become well-established in some areas and smothers the native plants. 

 

All in all this is a nice island, at least when it is not in the peak of the tourist season.   If I had known about it earlier, I might have stayed out there longer.

 

Closing Notes

 I wanted to get away from the news and was generally successful in this.  I bought only three or four newspapers during the whole trip.  I occasionally listened to the radio when driving.  American news does feature fairly prominently; the headlines would often include one story from the States.  I listened to the debate in the Australian Senate on climate change legislation, and I heard a bit of the Ashes (Australia versus England cricket match). 

 

I did not get as much reading or drawing done as I would have liked.  I think the dormitory style of hostels is not quite my cup of tea; it is definitely not conducive to sound sleep. 

 

My camera gear was wholly inadequate.  It would have made sense to take a functioning digital camera along rather than the erratic film camera I had.  For shooting underwater, the disposables simply do not cut it.  A professional set up with a professional underwater flash is necessary.

 

The highlights of the expedition were the visits to the three islands and the snorkeling.  The water was rather cold, and it took some practice to do snorkeling properly, but seeing several examples of reefs, coming at them from different approaches, and taking in the diversity was extraordinary.  Wow. 

              

                     9/7/09