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Date: 21 May 2010 03:19:12
Title: The Tea Lady, the Taxi Driver and a Meat Pie - Mackay Marina, Queensland, Australia
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21:06.787S  149:13.627E
 
On May 4, we left Northeast Percy Island as planned and made our way to Mackay.  It was a long seventy mile ride with a slow first four hours motoring in light wind, but then the weather gods smiled down on us and the wind came up enough for us to sail the last seven hours.
 
Picture 1 - The last few hours of our sail were spent weaving our way through the fifty or so empty bulk coal carriers sitting at anchor twenty miles outside of Mackay's harbor.  The area surrounding Mackay is big on coal.  We didn't see them, but there are massive coal strip mines just to the north of the city.  The coal is transferred to the Mackay harbor by train and then loaded on to the bulk carriers, most of which then head for China.  Australia likes to boast that the global financial crisis barely touched their economy and it's true that this country never entered an official recession while the rest of us around the world were (and still are) suffering.  Part of the reason for this is the massive amount of coal and other treasures that are dug up out of Australia's mines and sent to China.  Australia is literally fueling China's booming economy.  Mackay's harbor is a good example of how China's demand for coal has increased.  The reason there were fifty freighters waiting to be filled is because the harbor's loading facility can't keep up with the demand.  The capacity of the harbor loading facility will be doubling in the near future, which should reduce the number of empty freighters hanging around and make China happier.
 
Mackay is known for three things, or at least three that we know of - coal, sugar cane, and its position which serves as the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands and the start of the Great Barrier Reef.  As much as we would like to say that coal and sugar cane interest us, it's really the Whitsunday Islands and the Great Barrier Reef that we care about.  We spent five days in the Mackay Marina preparing for our cruise through the Whitsunday Islands and beyond - one day for laundry and the internet, one day for boat jobs, one day for provisioning, one day for sightseeing and one day to wait out a particularly nasty weather system.  All went per the plan except for that last bit.  Waiting out a nasty weather system is never high on our list of things to do, but when a sailboat arrived in the marina with its stern covered in vomit after having sailed through part of that nasty weather system, we decided waiting was a good plan.
 
Our arrival in Mackay was also a milestone for us - 500 miles down, 1500 more to go on the road (or water) to Darwin.  Have I mentioned that Australia is a big place?
 
Picture 2 - The city of Mackay is not all that large with only 80,000 people, but the marina is huge.  It's a good place to have a boat with the Whitsunday cruising grounds only 25 miles away.  It's a huge marina with huge tides.  Fifteen feet is common, but 20 feet or higher can happen.  This is why the poles that hold the floating docks in position are so tall.  Not only do they have to keep the docks in place for the normal tidal range, but because Mackay is right in the middle of cyclone territory, the dock poles also have to withstand the water height that comes with a cyclonic tidal surge.  They were tested this past March when a cyclone came ashore only a few miles north of Mackay.  Glad we weren't there when it happened.  (Don't worry, the southern hemisphere cyclone season runs opposite the northern hemisphere hurricane season.  It begins in November and ends in March - so we are in the clear).
 
Picture 3 - Low tide at the Mackay Marina.  There are three of these ramp structures in the marina leading from land down to the docks.  We tried to time our arrival back to the marina after our provisioning trip with high tide so we wouldn't plummet down the steep ramp with our loaded carts full of precious tonic water, beer and yogurt making mix.  (Did I mention that we bought the apparatus necessary to make our own yogurt before we left Scarborough?  We figure Southeast Asia won't be big on dairy products.)  Only by sheer dumb luck did we arrive at the dock near high tide, so no one plummeted down the ramp or had an oversized fully loaded cart run over them.
 
Picture 4 - Australia is full of characters.  Quite a few of them were stationed at this pub when we stopped for lunch in a rental car on our way through Pioneer Valley in search of Eungella National Park.  The Harley gang was out in force and it did our hearts good to see that Australia has the same leather wearing, weekend warrior Harley-Davidson enthusiasts that we do in the US.  Bet they paid a heck of a lot more for their bikes over here than we would at home though...
 
Picture 5 - What's a pub without a meat pie?  That's John and Sue admiring their particularly fetching pies with fancy fluted edges.  Don went for the chips (fries) and gravy for an additional $2 while John stuck with the traditional mushy peas extra.  Who would willingly pay extra for mushy peas?  We're not sure, but mushy peas are a British thing that Australians adopted (or simply brought with them when they migrated).  We can only wonder why.
 
Picture 6 - Pioneer Valley as seen from the 'sky window' walking trail in Eungella National Park.
 
Picture 7 - The Tree Arch - another sight seen along one of the Eungella National Park walking trails.  We were happy to see that it was labeled 'Tree Arch' - otherwise we might have wondered what it was exactly.  At the end of our walk in the rainforest, we were also happy to see that there were no leeches attached to our toes.
 
Picture 8 - The Tea Lady's Garden.  After our walk, we decided to stop for tea at Suzanne's Tea House, located conveniently between the finish of one of the national park walking trails and Broken River, the home of Australia's revered platypus (which we did go to see, but the platypus pictures didn't turn out well, sorry).  The Tea House was really Suzanne's home, part of which she uses for a restaurant and part of which is a gallery for her own and her friends' artwork.  Suzanne, a tiny willow of a woman of indeterminate age, with long skinny legs covered in tight red hotpants and dusty blonde hair tied up in a messy updo, served us tea in china cups and an apple strudel to die for.  It didn't hurt that she is from Germany.  The longer we lingered at the tea table, the more she talked about her time in Australia and her experience living through the recent cyclone.  Later, and more reluctantly (almost apologetically), she talked about her art.  Even she questioned whether her creations were really art, and claimed she started her sculptures,  'just to keep busy and then it got out of control'.  You might say it got out of control.  Her home, her restaurant and the entire surrounding grounds were filled with colorful two-dimensional sculptures made with colored glass...not beads, but buttons - flat on one side and curved on the other.  There were butterflies and big birds and flowers and peacocks mounted on stakes and tree stumps.  There was a walkway through her garden and each area of the garden had its own sculpture theme.  Shown here is the butterfly area.  The garden was also wired with sound speakers so that when she allowed us to take a stroll through it (a real feat since there was a big sign proclaiming it to be 'Private!'), she put on the mystical music for our additional enjoyment.  Aterwards, John and Don proclaimed her to be nuts, but a little off-kilter might be a kinder and gentler description. 
 
Speaking of off-kilter people...
Sid, our Mackay taxi driver made our first afternoon in Mackay very interesting indeed.  Sid is a Kiwi (New Zealander) who migrated to Australia in 1965 after he got out of the New Zealand military and found there were no jobs to be had near his home.  He arrived in Australia "with $1.65 Kiwi in my pocket, and wondered what on earth I was going to do!"  He ran into 'another bloke' in the same predicament who suggested fruit picking was the answer.  So Sid went fruit picking.  He picked fruit from 1965 until he retired in 1985.  "At first me and this bloke slept in tents, then I met a girl and moved into her caravan - been living with her ever since!"  This followed by a generous laugh.  Then, after we asked him to take us to a liquor store he claimed, "Oh I don't drink anymore.  Now when I go fishing I only take half a slab (case) of beer with me!"  Another chortle.  He drives a taxi to pay the bills and works five or six days a week from 3am until 3pm.  We asked why 3am and he said the taxi company splits the shifts that way "so no one driver has to take all the drunks.  I get the really, really drunk ones and the bloke who drives this taxi the other part of the day gets the early drunks.  It's no problem though, the Pacific Islanders (Fijians, Tongans, etc.) and the blackfellas (Aboriginals) are good about it when I ask them not to drink in the taxi because I could get fined.  It's the white blokes that can be nasty."  Mackay is a booming mining town and that means lots of blokes come here to work for the mining companies.  They work hard and play hard and Sid drives them home.
 
Anne
 
 
 

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