We had a pleasant stay at Emu Park, but we left on Monday and drove 30kms through Rockhampton and a further 100kms on to a free camp at Calliope (pronounced Cal-i-o-pee) River. Calliope River is located about 25kms inland from Gladstone. There were still warnings this far south and inland about crocodiles. It was a beautiful day and we leisurely set up camp. More travellers arrived during the afternoon and we ended up with a motorhome in front of us ... it was the motorhome that Rick helped out of the sand bog back at Carmila Beach.
On the Tuesday morning the motorhome in front of us moved to the other
side of the river as they felt there would be less mosquitos over there
... fortunately we hadn't had a problem with them ourselves. After
brekky we walked across the closed bridge over the river to the Calliope
Historical Village and spent a couple of hours wandering around. We
had lunch there before heading back to the van for a quiet afternoon of
reading. I fished for a while later in the afternoon with no luck. We
had been advised not to eat anything we caught anyway as there is a
disease called Red Spot in a lot of the fish around the Gladstone area.
On Wednesday (day 250 of our trip) we drove a short distance (6kms) into
the township of Calliope ... we didn't realise how close it was and how
big it was. We found the toilet dump point easily and drove around for
a bit of a look. We left Calliope and headed 25kms into Gladstone to
see what was there. Gladstone is a large 'go-ahead' town and very
industrial. We had a look around at the Marina which is the departure
point for Heron and outer reef islands and then drove to the Auckland
Hill Lookout. Gladstone's major export is coal, but includes Calcite,
scrap metal, Magnesia, Grain, Containers and general cargo. Calcite is a
high quality limestone which when crushed is a pure white product. It
is stockpiled ready to ship to Geelong, Victoria where it is used as a
filter in plastics, paper glossing and toothpaste. We looked around for somewhere nice to have lunch on the waterfront,
however we didn't find anything enticing so we settled for a shopping
centre hot-dog. We shopped (again) and then headed back to van on the
river. On the way back we spotted a rather quirky letterbox and
couldn't resist taking a photo. I fished for a while on our return and managed to land a nice 30cm
Bream. Sadly, it appeared that he had the dreaded 'Red-Spot' disease,
so he was quickly sent to Fish Heaven. Very soon after that I landed a
larger Cat Fish ... a bit of fun for the afternoon. Thursday was spent very quietly ... just reading and relaxing in the sun.
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| The view of the Calliope River from our van |
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| Looking back toward our van from the other side of the river |
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| The closed bridge across the river to the Historical Village |
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| Water rushing down toward the ocean |
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| The Historical Village run totally by volunteers |
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| There were four of these cute little guys in one of the historical buildings |
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| Panorama of the Gladstone wharf area showing a heap of Calcite in the foreground |
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| Ned's guarding the mail in the letterbox |
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