Australia: Gladstone to Brisbane
- Will Boddington
- Apr 16, 2019
- 3 min read
Gladstone was next on our list, and we spent a day visiting Spinnaker Park, Round Hill lookout, Happy Valley lakes and Happy Valley park fitness trail - a route with various gym equipment spread out along it. This kind of thing seems to be very popular in Australia, and they provide us with some good entertainment as we try and use them!
We continued down to Lake Awoonga for a couple more lookouts, one of which we also saw wallabies.
We took a quick walk along the lake and saw there was a $5000 reward to the people who caught the few barramundi that had been released into the lake, before heading to our next stop; the small tourist town of Agnes Water. Our first activity was the Paperbark Forest boardwalk, a 30 minute walk through a paperbark forest (mostly along a boardwalk, funnily enough).
.
We stayed at Horizons Kangaroo sanctuary for the night, our only paid camp site of the trip. Horizons is run by a couple who have dedicated their lives to raising, rehabilitating and releasing orphaned joeys. We had just missed the kangaroo feeding but we were able to spend some time with the kangaroos around the campsite which was pretty special.
The next morning we drove to the Captain Cook monument in 1770 and took the Butterfly Walk to the lookouts (named because of the migration of blue tiger butterflies in the autumn and winter). We also did the Discovery Trail, a walk with views over Workman's Beach and Agnes Water Beach, before meeting for a group surfing lesson in the afternoon. We were taken down to a quieter beach and both managed to catch a few waves - it's just a shame the GoPro photos and videos taken by the instructor were lost due to a computer crash. It inspired us to rent a couple of boards for the next 24 hours and stay near the beach we had our lesson at as it was a good beginners beach and a lot quieter than Agnes Waters' main beach. We had such a nice few days here we were both quite sad to leave, but we still have a lot of places to look forward to!
Hervey Bay was our next destination, and we spent an afternoon walking along the esplanade into the town and having a nose at the houses for sale in the estate agents. It's crazy what kind of house you can get in Australia for the same price as a small house in England! We headed back via Urangan Pier, where we saw a ray swim under the pier and Julie made friends with a very happy chappy.
We managed to make it to Reef World Aquarium on the other side of town for a quick visit before they closed. It was only a small aquarium, but they had an outdoor tank at the back with some turtles and an exhibit on sharks which was pretty interesting.
The next few days were filled with lots of little stops: we went to Kimbombe Falls, explored walks around the falls and saw the Big Pineapple.
We also visited Bellingham Maze and the amazing Australia Zoo!
We made it down to Brisbane but due to the high parking charges we didn't stay long! We had to go into the bank in the morning to set up our accounts, then spent a couple of hours in the afternoon walking through the city and visiting the Museum of Brisbane in the City Hall. There was an interesting exhibit there which showcased the individuality of the people who make up Brisbane. There were various displays and videos showing general and individual responses to questions such as age, occupation, nationality, and views on social and political questions. We even got to participate through an iPad survey and saw how our responses compared to the rest of the sample.
While we were in the building, we were hoping to be able to take a tour of the clock tower but it was fully booked until the evening and we had to get back before our parking ticket ran out.
Comments