Another Day Driving South to Maryborough

Well, it rained steadily all day today. It was cool and we had our jumpers back on. The weather had difficulty making it to 15C. I think that the temperature in Melbourne was actually one degree warmer today.

We took a few minutes before leaving Gladstone to see the main street and some of the important buildings in the town. On one hand, there was the modern building of the Gladstone Regional Council that replaced the original old town hall building.

On the other hand, there was Kullaroo House. It was originally the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney Ltd building, these premises were built in 1911 – one of the oldest buildings in Gladstone. From the early 1960’s it was occupied as a boarding house. That was when it became known as Kullaroo House. It now serves as a cultural hub and visitor centre.

Because it was raining steadily, we decided to just get on with the day and drive toward Maryborough where we will spend the next two nights. The rain did not let up for the entire day.

The first notable town we came to was Miriam Vale. This is the location of the road junction off the Bruce Highway to the resort town of Agnes Waters on the coast. Across the road from the main street was a large park where we could make a coffee. By 11.00 am, Jill gets rather jittery without her daily coffee fix so a picnic table under a shelter was just what we needed.. 

We stopped for lunch at Gin Gin and found some food at the Caltex Roadhouse. Nothing flash, but it filled a hole and we were only out of the car and in the rain for a moment. No one is sure what Gin Gin means or where the name comes from. There is an argument that it is the same as Gingin in Western Australia. Alternatively it may be an Aboriginal Gubbi Gubbi word meaning “thick scrub”. 

From there we continued south. Because of the rain, there was nowhere to stop except at one point we were able to get a quick view across this cattle grazing area. 

The highlight of our day was to see the town of Childers, some 60 km north of our destination at Maryborough. There were two reasons for this.

One was that my old Vietnam Veteran mate Bill Newton had relocated there about twleve months ago to be near his grandchildren. Although we had a litle difficulty making contact, it was wonderful to spend some time catching up together. We eventually met Bill and his wife, Joan, at the local RSL. I think that I have only seen Bill once since we both left Vietnam in April 1970 and that was at the Vietnam Veterans Welcome Home Wekend in Sydney in 1987. We had a lot of catching up to do.

The second reason was the charming town of Childers itself.

I didn’t know that sugar cane was grown this far south but the town of Childers originally came into existence as a service town for the surrounding sugar cane fields. Today it is pretty much a touriist town due to the fact that the town has a wealth of historic buildings. In the surrounding area, avocadoes and macadamia nuts are grown.

Many Australians will remember that in 2000 an itinerant fruit picker, Robert Long, who had a pathological hatred of backpackers and who had recently been removed from the hostel, started a fire in the downstairs recreation room at the Childers Palace Backpackers Hostel. It killed a total of 15 backpackers – nine women and six men – most of whom came from England and Holland. Long was captured and jailed for life. A memorial to this sad event now exists in the town.

I spent a few minutes walking around in the rain to capture some of the historic character of this town.

It was still raining when we checked into our motel in Maryborough but fortunately there was a pub directly across the road for dinner. We’ll see what we do tomorrow.