Our drive today takes us out of Emerald and 328KM further west into the Central Queensland Outback. We thought we had seen straight roads but these were something else. As far as the eye can see the road continues into the distance.

This is termite territory and all along the roadside and into the bush are termite mounds and some a little out of the ordinary. It appears a local pastime involves dressing termite mounds as if they are people sitting by the road. Maybe it’s the summer heat or something in the water? At least it gave us something to look at as we drove along.

Soon the trees and termites gave way to open fields and then tree covered mountains as we started the climb into the Drummond Range, which seems to go on forever. Just as we reached a crest another one appeared further on, and then another. A lookout provides a good view back along the range and gives an idea of how high we had already climbed. I also gave us a welcome break from the road and a chance to stretch our legs.

Finally reaching the top of the pass and before us a long, long, straight road downhill before levelling out to a flat plain. Gone was the greenery of the mountains to be replaced with dusty dry fields and cattle ranges. The only break in the road being a sweeping bend as we drove into the small town of Alpha and then more straight road before yet another sweeping bend but this time it marks the end of the Great Dividing Range that we have been crossing for many days. To the East of the Great Dividing Range, rain water runs towards the Coral Sea but falling to the West and it winds its way southwest to the seasonal Lake Eyre. Just beyond is the very small town of Jericho and on again, straight ahead for many more kilometres before another sweeping right and left bend for no apparent reason. Maybe the early settlers had drifted off or had a few too many the night before. Either way it helps keep you alert.

The controversial Cube

And finally in the distance was our stop for the next few nights – Barcaldine and what on earth is that beside the road? Called a monstrosity by some and a work of art by others, this is the Tree of Knowledge… or what’s left of it… and then some.

It all began long ago

In 1890 sheep shearers were being divided between union and non-union labour. The union were trying to prevent non-union staff working with those within the union. On January the 5th 1891 union members went on strike demanding protection of wages and workers rights. When non-union shearers continued to work, conflicts began leading almost to civil war in Barcaldine with the strikers taking up arms and building camps surrounding the town. The army was brought in to protect the working shearers and many strikers were arrested – some of who became politicians after release from jail.

The A.L.P

On May the 1st, while the strike was still in effect, a march of union members took place with 1340 men parading through Barcaldine. Within the same month the now penniless and hungry strikers realised the strike had failed. But witness to all the events was the Tree of Knowledge, which became a symbol to the strikers efforts for a fair deal. And from this small town the seed was sown for what is now the Australian Labour Party.

Having survived for more than a century in the harsh outback conditions, the tree was poisoned in 2006 by an unknown person. The dying tree was removed and sent to Brisbane to be preserved and when it returned, rather than build a simple shelter to protect the tree, the town went into overdrive and what resulted was a $5 million 18-metre square cube. But not just any cube, this one has a glass roof from which 3,600 timer beams have been strung to recreate the tree’s original canopy. Free to move in the breeze they also create a haunting sound. At night the ‘cube’ lights up to represent the green leaves of the canopy. And sat, suspended through a glass panel, are the preserved remains of the tree and its roots lit from below. It’s certainly a curiosity and if you get the chance it’s worth waiting until dark to take a photograph.

It may not be obvious at first but eventually you will catch-on that Barcaldine’s roads are all named after types of tree.

Towns in and around the Gem Fields have produced some interesting name signs displayed as you enter each town. Laser cut from COR-Ten steel and showing topical images for each location, it’s a nice change from the usual sign on a post.

Each town also has some form of unusual attraction for passing visitors. And Emerald has a particularly unusual one – the largest Vincent van Gogh Sunflowers painting in the southern hemisphere… and probably the largest easel too.

Located behind the Visitors Centre the 7 x 10 metre panel weighs 4.5-tonnes and requires an equally hefty easel to support it.
So why a van Gogh? Well, Emerald used to be a major grower of sunflowers and what better and well known sunflowers could there be?

Lake Maraboon

While at Emerald we have been staying at the Lake Maraboon Holiday Village. Not the easiest parking spot for us to access but the staff here know the sites well and without asking will guide you as you reverse park. Very helpful. We were right next to a small section of bush that leads directly down to the lake. Such a contrast to the past few nights with absolutely no noise other than from the wildlife and a few boats heading out on the lake for a day’s fishing.

Meet the Red Claw

Lake Maraboon is well stocked with fish but also has a local speciality – Red Claw. These are a form of fresh water crayfish often called yabbies and they thrive here. Of course we couldn’t leave Lake Maraboon behind without trying some Red Claw for ourselves in the form of the speciality pizza at the Holiday Village restaurant. And what does it taste like? Delicious!

The lake forms the Fairbairn Dam, which is the second largest lake in Queensland, except right now it is in trouble. With very little rainfall during the summer the water level is now at its lowest since the dam was constructed in 1947. As a result wildflowers have grown on the banks that would otherwise be submerged by several metres of water. It is so low that the water no longer reaches the dam wall. By contrast, the floods of 2010/2011 saw the dam at 176% capacity resulting in a wall of water 5.5-metres high running over the spillways. The dam owners are currently taking advantage of the water level and performing some major repair work to the dam walls.

The lake also provides some great photo opportunities with many varieties of water birds both seasonal and local and ideally positioned for sunrise and sunset photographs. Unfortunately that also means contending with the flies and mosquitoes.

Heading West

Today is our last day in Central Queensland and we’ll be making our way further into the Queensland Outback towards the town of Barcaldine, which has its own very unusual attraction.

Today we’re about to do something on our list of adventures. We’re going to strike it rich in the Outback Gem Fields!

Australia has many mines and is well known as a major producer of coal, copper, gold, uranium and opal. Lesser known, though, are the extensive gem fields and one of the biggest is right here in Central Queensland.

We’re currently in Emerald and you’d expect the town to be named after, well, Emeralds surely. Sadly that’s not the case but the neighbouring townships, or rather settlements, of Sapphire and Rubyvale are more descriptive of their origins… or are they? Things are not quite what they seem out here.

There’s Anakie out here

The gateway to the Gem Fields is via a township called Anakie. Or rather the crossroads at Anakie where a sculpture has been erected with coloured elements to represent the multitude of colours that the gems here take on.

Just to the north is Sapphire and for once it bears the name of what can be found here. First discovered in a creek in the 1870’s, high quality sapphire gems have been mined here ever since. And here too in the Gem Fields are seven sites that the Australian Government have allocated for treasure hunters to try their luck at fossicking for valuable gems. All that is required is a license, a spade, a filter, water and time – as much as you can bear in the blazing summer heat.

Formed in Volcanoes

A cooling process deep within a volcano allows the minerals that produce gems to crystallise. Then, over a period of millions of years, the volcano is eroded by the elements depositing the hard crystals in a sand/pebble mixture known as ‘wash’. In places the wash is exposed in creeks, as was the case with the first sapphire discovery, but mostly the wash is buried by subsequent rock erosion and the only way to access the gems is to dig.

Sapphire and its surrounds are peppered with mounds of dirt from claims that have been mined and the process is still continuing today. Anyone can stake a claim to mine on a commercial basis – if you have the money. A license, a bore drill, washing machinery, mining tools, your white claim marker post and a large pair of brave trousers are required. And the only way to determine if you are going to find anything is to drill a narrow bore hole and look at the dirt spoil for telltale signs of the ‘wash’. Once you find it it’s time to climb down the bore hole and start digging outwards.

Many of the miners make a living from selling cut stones from their mines and there are many shops along the road through Sapphire to explore. We had read of a ‘walk-in’ mine open to visitors in the next township of Rubyvale. But first, time for a coffee.

If you are ever in the area drop by Muggachinno’s cafe on Keilambete Road. It is a little green oasis of treasures serving Merlo coffee with a side measure of port and the best Austrian cherry strudel this side of Austria.

Miners Heritage Walk-in Mine

The Miners Heritage mine provides easy access tours around a once active sapphire mine. Originally opened as a tourists and working mine, successive governments and red tape have restricted the mine to tourists only for ‘safety reasons’. On a positive note it means the mine tunnels are big enough to walk through without being on your hands and knees like the miners.

The guided tours are a must and the knowledgeable guides will take you down to a depth of 17-metres along a dusty path beside the crumbling tunnel walls. Don’t be alarmed though, the tunnels are regularly inspected and, as the guides say, if it wasn’t safe they wouldn’t be in the mine themselves.

Several tunnel offshoots show rough sapphires that are still embedded in the wash and the guides point these out as well as some less obvious ones. A short video explains the process of mining through to a polished gem. So much work and no guarantee of finding anything at the end of it. But it’s the chance of the next bucket bearing your retirement fund that keeps you going.

The tour takes in 400-metres of the mine altogether at a depth of 17-metres, which doesn’t seem that deep until you take a look up one of the original bore shafts. And at the end of the tour a visit to the gem shop may tempt you to buy a piece of jewellery for your loved one or a gem stone to set in your own design. We bought a bag of dirt instead. Not that that is a bad thing. It is guaranteed to contain a cut gem and the possibility of many more sapphires or zircons… but you have to work for it.

Outside the mine is an area set aside for fossicking – the process of extracting gemstones from the wash. We were shown how to filter out the larger waste rubble and then wash the remaining smaller stones, much like gold panning, before tipping the remaining stones onto a drying bed. Here we manually pick through the hundreds of small stones looking for the ones that shine. And after a few minutes we started finding them. We’re rich!! In all we had found 17 rough sapphires of various colours and four zircons. Total value? Well, nothing really but it was great fun.

Where are the Rubys?

Well, as mentioned, not is all as it would seem. The first discoveries at Rubyvale later turned out to be red zircons and not rubys as originally thought. And would you really want to call a place Zirconville?

The Black Star of Queensland

The world’s largest Black Star sapphire, the Black Star of Queensland, was discovered right here in Rubyvale by 12-year old Roy Spencer in 1938 who noticed the interesting black crystal in a pile of wash that had already been examined. He showed the crystal to his father, a pioneering miner in the gem fields, who dismissed it as just a black crystal of no value. It spent the next decade as a doorstop before Mr Spencer, the father, realised sapphires could indeed be black and worth a fortune. It weighed 1,156 carats. It was sold in 1947 for the then princely sum of $18,000 dollars and made its way to America. It was then cut and polished and valued just two years later at $1-million dollars. The Star of Queensland was recently offered for sale with a reserve price of $88-million dollars.

Something strange is going on on the beaches. Millions and millions of tiny balls of sand are appearing on the beaches on each turn of the tide. We’ve seen lots of these balls along the beaches of Sydney but in Yeppoon things are on an altogether grander scale.

Here on Farnborough Beach at Yeppoon extending 17km long and approximately 200-metres wide, these tiny sand balls are taking over the beach. And what is creating them? Sand crabs. Now just think of the scale of this. The crabs are tiny at around 1.5cm across. When the tide goes out the crabs tunnel up to the surface of the beach collecting sand on the way, forming them into tiny balls and depositing them in an organised pattern around their tunnel. Four sand balls just fit into one square centimetre. The area of the beach entirely covered is approximately 3.4 million square metres, which means these incredibly industrious crabs are creating 13,600,000,000 sand balls twice a day, day after day after day only to get washed away with the next tide.

Double Head National Park

Adjacent to Keppel Bay Marina is Double Head National Park, which, as its name suggests, has two peaks reaching out into the sea. Of the two, Fan Hill is the easiest to access with great lookouts on the way up the steep track and from the top looking in all directions. Both hills are the remnants of volcanic activity in the area and are comprised of hexagonal columns of basalt bent and twisted over the years.

Even if you are not interested in the geology of the region, a walk to the top is definitely worth the effort for the views alone, and at the time we were here in June you’ll be surrounded by butterflies and moths. Access to the walk is from the right of the marina. A new car park is being constructed and the walk starts to the left of the new car park.

The name Fan Hill originates from the shape of the rock formation visible at the first lookout of the walk.

Though it may not be too clear from the photograph of the lava formation, a central column of magma broke its way through the earth’s crust and radiated outwards. The lava cooled slowly and eventual cracked into the hexagonal patterns we see today. Where it is now exposed at the lookout a fan shape has formed where the surrounding rock has eroded or broken free.

Blueberry Pancakes

We had spotted a nice looking cafe as we drove along the Yeppoon seafront yesterday and decided to give it a try. Called Lure Living, the cafe is a relaxing place to spend a couple of hours especially for breakfast where the best Blueberry Pancakes I’ve ever tasted can be savoured. I’m not sure how they make them so light and fluffy but they are very highly recommended. The coffee is pretty good too. One thing to note though, in Yeppoon most places close early so get your orders in before 2pm or you will be disappointed.

We’d also highly recommend ‘Flour’ cafe on the main street for excellent salads, quiches, cakes to die for and Toby’s Estate coffee.

BBQ Pizza

Having cooked our first steaks on our Weber Baby Q recently, which were a revelation, we decided to give the Pizza stone a try. We normally use Lebanese flatbread for pizzas at home but they’re too large for the mini Weber. Instead we bought a pre-made pizza bread thin base made by Bazaar, which fitted the pizza stone perfectly. And what a great pizza the Weber makes. It takes almost twice as long as our home oven and doesn’t quite melt the cheese as much but it produces an excellent crisp base without drying-out the tomato paste.

We’ll be trying our own pancakes soon but first a long walk along Farnborough Beach to walk-off some of our recent treats.

It was an interesting four and a half hour drive drive from Bargara Beach to our new location at Yeppoon northeast of Rockhampton. Shortly after leaving the cane fields behind we were travelling on undulating country roads through a mixture of open pasture fields and thick forests. Still green but not the lush vegetation of late and no longer the deep red and brown soils.

We joined the Bruce Highway at the small crossroads town of Miriam Vale. But while quite straight it is hardly a highway by the normal description with just 2-lanes. Frequent overtaking lanes at least allow faster traffic to pass as well as the odd idiot trying to overtake our caravan when it’s clear the lanes are merging ahead.

At Fairy Bower, just south of Rockhampton, the Bruce Highway joins the Capricorn Highway and we’re now at the most southerly point of the equator where the sun reaches directly overhead at midday in December. This line of latitude, know as the Tropic of Capricorn, is not in a fixed position as you would expect but is moving northwards at a rate of 15-metres per year as the earth continues to wobble on its axis.

Rocky – Literally

Rockhampton was our gateway to the coast and the final leg to our next site at Yeppoon. Then a sudden change of scenery surprised us. Dry grass, dusty fields, flat in every direction but then mountainous rock domes rising near vertically out of the fields. These and the surrounding mountains are responsible for the change in weather pattern here creating its own climate zone. We’re back in volcano country and the rock domes are granite plugs leftover from the days when the region was volcanically active. And, as usual, there’s nowhere to pullover to take a photograph.

One final hill and we were descending into the small town of Yeppoon. Like many small towns in Queensland, Yeppoon’s high street is very wide with angled parking on both sides of the road and even more parking in the middle. If only Sydney was this spacious.

Yeppoon

Our site for the next week is just 10-metres from the beach, perfect. Except 5-metres behind us is the main coastal road. After the peace and quiet at Bargara Beach, though, and with views like this I’m sure we’ll get used to it.

House Viewing

It was a little showery last night so we decided to head down to Emu Park just south of Yeppoon. High on a hill are new houses, some overlooking the marshy estuary and some with magnificent views of the Coral Sea with the Keppel Islands just offshore. Some vacant plots were still for sale but looked difficult to build on with a steep drop down to the sea. Plots with views like these would cost millions anywhere near Sydney.

Blowing in the Wind

High on a cliff sits the aptly named ‘Singing Ship’. More a large sail-styled white concrete structure. The ‘ship’ has several large and smaller hollow pipes suspended on wires that create notes when the wind blows across them, much like when blowing across the top of a bottle. It’s a curious thing and quite a haunting sound but worth a visit. It was built to commemorate Captain Cook’s discovery of the bay in 1770 – though, of course, it was discovered much before that time by the Darumbal Aboriginal mob, who lived here.

Yeppoon’s harbour is also worth a visit being the ferry point for the Keppel Islands as well as for Whale watching tours in season. Sadly we’re a month too early but there’s still plenty to see and do here. And the forecast for tomorrow looks good.