Park Benches Adventures: Farewell Mackay

Our last day of work at Sugar Australia was 4 December, next stop Moranbah to spend an awesome couple of days with Zoe. There was not alot to do in Moranbah but we found a couple of parks to kill a bit of time, one being a rest area where we spent a couple of night kipping. We met Dave, Fiona, Kam and Xanthe and where treated to a very nice meal - they were very welcoming and great hosts - thank you.

Play time

flooded river

Musical instruments at Town square Moranbah

From Moranbah we had an emergency trip back to Mackay as george was not well, after a few attempts we found a mobile mechanic who was able to look at him that afternoon - the source of the problem was when the new timing belt had been fitted they had failed to renew the timing belt tensioner and it was f.......d. Sooo a new timing belt and tensioner and a few hours labour later we were ready to hit the road.

thank you Ricky

The next morning, early, we hit the road for Rubyvale, passing close to some awesome open cast mines along the way, stopping at Capella for lunch and arriving just short of Rubyvale by evening.

open cast mine on the way to Clermont

lunch at Capella

Next day after breakfast in Rubyvale and meeting a new wee friend

we went exploring the wee mining town hoping for some knowledge on fossicking - Rubyvale being a sapphire area. After visitng 2 shops and taking some advice we decided to do the Miners Heritage Museum tour - an underground tour of an old sapphire mine. after the tour we purchased a 10 litre bucket of dirt and I had a fossick through, having many hours of pleasure playing in this small pile of rubble from the Heritage museums commercial mine. To my enjoyment i found many pieces of sapphire in my lucky dip bucket, sadly though none big enough to warrant cutting and setting. An awesome experience and I can see how people become addicted.

fossicking area

could this be the one.....

After leaving Rubyvale we drove on to Barcaldine, passing through many little settlements and arriving in the later part of the afternoon, awestruck by the cleanliness of this little town with the biggest attraction being the monument of the destroyed Tree of Knowledge (awesome monument and was very expensive to construct). We stayed the night at a rest area just out of Barcaldine and took some more photos of the Tree by day.

Our next destination was Longreach, stopping on the outskirts to visit the Qantas Museum - an all day event. We started the tour at 11am and the 3 plane tour took approx 4 hours (an extensive Boeing 747 tour plus the 707 and DC3) it included the wing walk on the 747 which was an experience not to be missed. Then it was through the museum which contained lots of historical information, including visual displays. Something Ryan would definetely enjoy.