|
Secret
Societies - 12th July 2003
(Credit:
The Sydney Morning Herald)
There's a simple reason why 60
per cent of travellers to Australia nominate Queensland
as their primary destination: the Great Barrier
Reef. There are also, obviously, other compelling
reasons connected with virgin rainforest, the
weather, tropical beaches and islands and a tourism
industry geared to excellent holidays in the sun.
But
beyond the glam and glitter of Surfers, Noosa,
Cairns and the reef Queensland contains dozens
of exotic and unusual destinations: the state's
long history of mining, the rough 'n' tumble world
of the outback, the quintessentially Australian
sense of humour that pervades many attractions,
and the secret coastal hideaways that offer visitors
experiences beyond suntans and snorkelling.
South
Long Island, Whitsundays
South
Long Island doesn't really exist. It is just a
small (20 people maximum) resort at the southern
end of Long Island in the Whitsundays. The Whitsunday
Wilderness Lodge (as the resort is known) is special
because it successfully combines ecotourism with
sheer luxury.
Accessible
only by helicopter from either Hamilton Island
or Airlie Beach, the lodge verges on pure tropical
fantasy. It is surrounded entirely by national
park. There is no access for day trippers. Everyone
has their own beachfront cabin with views over
Paradise Bay. The food is five-star and the tariff
includes seaplane day trips to the outer reef
and sailing trips around the Whitsundays.
What
separates the wilderness lodge from all the other
resort destinations on the Great Barrier Reef
is its commitment to ecotourism. Three times each
year it drops the weekly tariff by nearly 50 per
cent on the understanding that all visitors will
help clean up ocean debris from the beaches that
the lodge's yacht regularly visits.
Whitsunday
Wilderness Lodge, PO Box 842, Airlie Beach, Queensland
4802. Phone (07) 4946 9777, email info@southlongisland.com,
http://www.southlongisland.com.
Five nights cost $2990 a person, with each extra
24 hours $400. This includes all meals, helicopter
transfers, seaplane and yacht cruises, use of
all equipment and park entrance fees.
Mount
Morgan
Queensland
has many interesting and unusual mining towns,
ranging from the modern, open-cut expanse of Blackwater
to the historic gold/silver/lead/copper town of
Chillagoe. But none has quite the exotic appeal
of Mount Morgan, 38 kilometres west of Rockhampton.
Time
seems to have bypassed this town and its quaint
timber houses, its huge pubs that recall a bygone
prosperous era and its unusual statue titled "Running
the Cutter", which depicts a boy, with billy
cans of beer, running to quench the miners' thirst.
The work of the "cutter" was a commonplace,
if arcane, custom which occurred at the mine between
1900 and 1918.
Mount
Morgan is also home to a rather handsome classical
revival courthouse - a reminder of the town's
one-time wealth, which yielded more than 300,000
kilograms of gold - and a number of swing or suspension
bridges across the river (there were six at the
height of the mining boom, used for access to
the main mine).
But
it is the fascinating way the early riches from
the mine were used that makes this town so special.
The original syndicate of six men included Thomas
Skarrat Hall, whose brother's widow donated some
of the Mount Morgan fortune to a fund that established
the famous Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of
Medical Research in Melbourne. Another partner,
William Knox D'Arcy, made 6 million pounds from
his share in the mine, then left Mount Morgan
for London, from where he financed oil drilling
in Persia (now Iran). That venture eventually
evolved into the famous BP (British Petroleum)
Company.
See
http://www.mountmorgan.com
and http://www.walkabout.com.au/locations/QLDMountMorgan.shtml
Eulo
There's
something fundamentally Australian about Eulo.
The eccentricity of the locals, and the sense
of fun and optimism amid hardship which still
characterises the town, distinguish it from much
of outback Queensland.
Take,
for instance, the town's "Paroo Track"
where the world lizard racing championships are
held each September. At one side of the track
is a piece of granite with a plaque reading: "Cunnamulla-Eulo
Festival of Opals. 'Destructo', champion racing
cockroach accidentally killed at this track (24.8.1980)
after winning the challange (sic) stakes against
'Wooden Head' champion racing lizard 1980. Unveiled
23.8.81."
Somehow
the spelling mistake, the absurdity of a cockroach
racing a lizard, the circumstances under which
the cockroach was trodden underfoot (by a drunken
punter, perhaps?) all lend a distinct charm to
the town.
But
Eulo offers much more. The Eulo Queen Hotel, named
after Isabel Macintosh - known throughout western
Queensland as the Opal Queen - has existed since
the days of Cobb & Co and boasts a bar that
has been patronised by just about every opal miner
in the district. On the road to Thargomindah there's
a place where the hot mud from the Great Artesian
Basin bubbles to the surface. And there is the
bizarre settlement of Yowah where opal fanatics
from the south (mainly Victoria) spend their winters
hoping to get rich. Yowah has a grassless golf
course, hundreds of temporary homes and an excess
of dreamers. There's no electricity, bore water
only, and the Flying Doctor is still the sole
reliable medical service.
See
http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/rlq/10822.html,
http://www.ahc.gov.au/explore/paroo/eulo2.html
and http://www.walkabout.com.au/locations/QLDEulo.shtml
for details of accommodation and eating in the
town.
McKinlay
The
term "one-horse town" aptly describes
McKinlay, on the Landsborough Highway between
Winton and Cloncurry. It doesn't really deserve
to be the region's premier tourist attraction
because to the south lies the famous Combo Waterhole
where, according to legend, a certain swagman
committed suicide by jumping into the muddy billabong.
Still,
Australia rarely lingers on the past and McKinlay
is a town (a term that exaggerates its status)
that achieved international fame when Paul Hogan
used the local pub as one of the settings for
Crocodile Dundee. Originally known as the Federal
McKinlay Hotel (a rather grand name for a single-storey
building that looks as though it was built from
corrugated iron), after Hogan renamed it Walkabout
Creek Hotel some enterprising southerner paid
the princely sum of $290,000 for it, officially
renamed it Walkabout Creek then set about promoting
it as an international tourist destination. This
ploy might have proved more successful if there
had been more tourists travelling along the Landsborough
Highway.
See
http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/rlq/10876.html
Normanton
As
you drive further and further north on the single-lane
Burke Developmental Road, which connects Cloncurry
with Normanton and Burketown, the feeling that
Burke and Wills were a pair of gross incompetents
becomes quite overwhelming. The land is flat and
sandy. The scrub is low lying. What was the problem?
Then you hit the swampy nightmare that is the
southern edge of the Gulf of Carpentaria and immediately
you understand why neither Burke nor Wills knew
for certain whether they'd reached the northern
coastline.
In
the 1880s Normanton became the port for the gold
rush to Croydon. A decade later the population
ballooned to more than 1000 as goldminers and
abattoir workers poured in. This brief boom caused
a somewhat bewildered and optimistic Queensland
Government to build a railway station and railway
line from Normanton to Croydon.
The
Gulflander is one of the great railway oddities
- it hasn't made a profit since 1907, yet it still
runs between the two towns, leaving Normanton
every Wednesday and returning on Thursday. The
152-kilometre journey takes five hours, including
numerous sightseeing and refreshment stops.
Normanton
also has a piece of pure Queensland kitsch in
the shape of the Purple Pub. It complements the
town's other artistic highlights such as Percy
Tresize's humorous paintings on the walls of the
Albion Hotel bar and the quite beautiful, very
unusual, timber Bank of New South Wales.
More
information at http://www.gulf-savannah.com.au/regions/normanton.asp
and for information about the Gulflander see http://www.traveltrain.qr.com.au/traveltrain/virtual/gulflander/index.asp
Websites
Official
websites
Tourism
Queensland
|
