Agnes Water / Town of 1770 28 August to 2 September 2019

Agnes Water / Town of 1770 28 August to 2 September 2019

In some respects, Agnes Water is the main attraction for us in Queensland. And with a spot in the van park on the beach with this view and access, who can blame us?

Judy relaxing into the 'vibe' that is Agnes Water

The shortest of walks down the grassy path brings you to this:

Agnes Water Beach, looking north from our van park as the moonlight plays upon the gentle ripples...

Or you can take a 3km stroll up the beach before breakfast, take a snap and stroll back. Breakfast can wait, may as well have a swim in the crystal clear waters as well...

My favourite beach is Chinamans, just down the road, just a quick drive and park right at the beach. Provided the tide is not too high, it's a delightful walk, and before 730 in the morning, deserted. 

One set of feet out, and the same ones back. Chinamans Beach, Agnes Water

Or if you are early and can take the time to sit and play with your camera, you can amuse yourself trying to get the sun through the waves as they crash upon the rocks

Chinamans Beach, Agnes Water Qld

But it's not all beaches, one other little spot is the Reedy Creek paperbark forest walk The first year we saw this, 2016, there was a heap of water which made the stepping stones fun. Since then it's been dry, not bone dry obviously or it all would dead, especially the wild maiden hair ferns that are climbing all over everything. 

The stepping stones are still fun, even if a misstep isn't going to end in a great photo. paperbark walk,. Agnes Water Qld

Judy in one of her favourite places, Reedy Creek Paperbark forest trail, Agnes Water Qld

 

Apart from walking along the beach, or swimming in the ocean, there's a range of coffee shops a short walk away (provided you desperately need a change from the excellent Holiday Cafe in the van park itself). As a diversion this year, to satisfy my need to collect Parkrun Tourist kudos, and because the nearest one to Agnes Water is in Bundaberg some 125km away, we went into town on Friday night and stayed at a motel, chosen as being close to the said Parkrun and described as 'the best in town'. Later, while checking for the location of Parkrun, we discovered that there are two in Bundaberg, the one near us and the other at Bargara Beach, Bundaberg's closest beach, about 12km to the east. After an inspection of the nearby track, we went over the Bargara Beach, which also happens to be the site of the main caravan park and the best cafes, and had a look at their track. 

Sorry lovely Bundy Parkrun people, it's a no brainer: runs three times around a gravel / dirt / grass / hilly, confusing track in an uninspiring scrubby park, or run one lap out along the esplanade path toward the north, turn around, come back and go the same sort of distance out the other way with the ocean and views to one side, on nice proper paths and boardwalks, enjoying the sea-breeze and scenery? Our only gripe was that if we had been more thorough in our search, we would have stayed in one of the several hotels overlooking the ocean and beaches.....

Highlight of our big night out was the 2-day charity craft extravaganza held in the Bundaberg community centre. As its was for a good cause I tagged along and spent a half hour or so as we wandered past stall after stall of the same stuff: candles, essential oils, knitted this, crocheted that, ad infinitum (it's a big hall). One thing that amused me was that all the stall holders must have been to the same two courses: one to teach them how to open up a sales pitch: 'oh what a lovely dress / handbag / husband' and the other was obviously macrame, as they all had some, the theme this year was door curtains, similar in style to the lurid blue plastic one we had in our first flat in Hornsby. And of course every conceivable accessory for your pampered pooch, a must have at any show/ market.

We went in search of dinner, and after being left speechless while stopped at the red light when one of the local hoons drove past at highspeed using the right-turn only lane to pass us and drove straight through the red light, we settled for the 'Spotted Dog' tavern, just over the railway tracks from our motel. (Did I mention the many trains that all blast their horn at the crossing, or the groaning loo plumbing?) The Spotted Dog appears to be an exercise in eat-in fast-food. Its busy, packed actually, and your food arrives before you've sat down and cleared away the moment you put your cutlery side-by-side on your plate. It had zero atmosphere in its lurid green plastic interior and the obvious intention was to get you out and another punter in as soon as possible. 

Back at our own little piece of paradise, we shouted ourselves to dinner at the 1770 hotel for Fathers' Day, where we have eaten before, but this time it was not so good: Expensive (note the capital 'E') and in the case of the barramundi, almost in need of a second helping to get a feed. Very disappointing.

Undeterred, and mainly because its such a lovely place, we went back to the pub the next night to drink wine on the balcony bar and watch the sunset.

Sunset. Town of 1770, Qld

Sunset. Town of 1770, Qld

 Fortunately for us, the van park has adopted a new 'grace' policy, which means you can keep your spot for the next year even if you won't be there. But only the once. The upshot is that 2021 is booked, yeah, can't wait.

Agnes Water Qld 4 September 2017

There are some very noticeable changes and money is obviously being spent inside 'our' park at Agnes Water: the toilets are being fully renovated and a new prefabricated office building is due in soon. They have set up shop in a new ‘demountable’ on the other side of the entry road and are waiting for the workers to come and remove the old office.

New temporary office... Agnes Water Beach Caravan Park

...and out with the old. Agnes Water Beach Caravan Park

It took them two attempts to get this small office out. The first time they gave up for some reason and went away, including the crane, for a few hours, the second time they managed to struggle it out into the street, but were oblivious to the overhead power lines. The moment they took some notice of a caravan park full of people yelling at them, they decided that enough was enough and instead of taking it down along the road a hundred metres and then up into someone's back yard, it was dumped on the front lawn of the nearest house. The cowboys haven't been seen since. I'm pretty sure that the park manager lives in the house and can only hope his cars were out of the garage. The new fully prefabricated office is due in anytime, promising more fun and entertainment, but we wont see it until we come back next year.

Just down the road from the town is Chinaman's Beach and despite it being close and easily accessible, its mostly near-desserted. As a point of interest, right down the far end is a whale's head skull, complete with some do-gooder's hand written sign warning the would-be souvenir hunter of the dire consequences of interfering with an animal of a protected species, even if it is dead and reeking to high heaven.

Chinaman's Beach, Agnes Water Qld

Whale's head skull. Chinaman's Beach, Agnes Water Qld

Also down Springs road is the paperbark forest, which has a short track leading through a wetland and these fabulous paperbarks and climbing maiden hair ferns. Sadly, the wetland is bone dry, as is everything up here in Queensland. After we left here we drove a small bit further down and turned around, only to spy a pair of Rainbow Bee Eaters. And then another pair, and another.

Rainbow Bee Eater. Agnes Water Qld

Back at the van, we had a very unusual visitor come sniffing about before passing under the back of the van.

Goanna. Agnes Water Qld

One of the nice things to do here is to drive the 7km down to the Town of Seventeen Seventy and perch up at the bar of the pub and sip a nice glass of cold bubbles and watch the sunset. Actually , you can't see the sunset anymore due to the vegetation, but a very short walk across the road gives a decent view,

Sunset. 1770, Qld

We had dinner at the restaurant at the pub, called 'The Tree' and it was magnificent. We were kept amused by the couple next to us who seemed to have a plan to get out of paying. It started with them moaning about not having their order taken quickly enough, and then waiting 'an hour' for food (it was only 35 minutes) and ended with her having a hissy fit about the scallops which she pronounced as dry, hard and inedible. I was expecting her to find a cockroach in the salad at anytime. I don't know how her claim that she wasn't going to pay for one meal, even though she ate the lot, was handled, but we we glad to see them go. We heard the staff breath a collective sigh of relief as they walked off into the darkness. 

Further around from the hotel is Round Hill, which has a nice little walk through what was once a butterfly infested forest to a whale watching platform and back via another viewing platform over a small but pristine cove. Again we saw that the vegetation is really suffering form lack of rain and we can only hope they get some soon. We also saw a whole flock of Rainbow Bee Eaters cavorting around in the top branches of a near dead Casuarina tree.

Small Cove. Round Hill, 1770 Qld

Small Cove. Round Hill, 1770 Qld

Sadly, we cannot stay past our 8 day allocation and we'll just have to content ourselves with memories of beach walks, swimming in the ocean, sight-seeing, coffee drinking and generally relaxing. Here's one last look at the view from our spot in the van park.

View to beach from our van. Agnes Water Beach Caravan Park Qld

Rockhampton to Agnes Water Qld 27 Aug 2107

Finally, we had to leave the Big4 Adventure Airlie Beach and head down to Rockhampton. We weren't looking forward to this drive as apart from Mackay, about 140 km from Airlie Beach, there’s not much else on this 480km run down the coast. First there is Sarina, which is 20km south of Mackay, but its too soon to stop and we don't need fuel yet. So we push on through a raft of places that are not on the map and barely exist in the flesh; they are mostly off the road toward the coast. 

Last year we stopped at Camila for fuel and a cuppa, but forwent it this time and pushed on. After 300km I was starting to get a bit weary and hungry, so the signs for an up coming roadhouse looked enticing, but, it was closed and has been replaced with two self-help pumps attached to a container which I suppose holds the tanks. We didn't stop and headed for St Lawrence 20km further on, except it’s 6km off the road and once you get there its not a much to look at. It had a campground on the outskirts, which was surprising full, and a tired and mostly dead-looking swimming pool and toilets on the other side of town. We parked under a tree and had a drink and rest. We did one lap of the one street and were impressed by just how run down building could be and still be used, such as the pub, which might have once been a shearing shed or some other farm type building.

Back on the road we headed for Marlborough which itself is off the road somewhere, but did have a fuel stop, so we did just that, stopped and fuelled, the car, not us, we could wait until Rockhampton rolled around.

Which it did in due course, just 6 hours or so after we left Airlie Beach. I have to say, having reread previous things I’ve said about this trip that today was fairly pleasant by comparison; not one roadwork to be seen almost no traffic, probably because it’s Sunday.

I had another look at our dodgy van brakes, and finally found the broken wire that just had to be there; right in the exact middle of the van and hidden behind the chassis member. I tossed the connector away and soldered the three wires together, let’s hope that helps things in the braking department.

A park on the south side of Rockhampton, right near the van park. Rockhampton Qld

No rush to get going this morning, but soon enough we are back out on the Bruce and right into roadworks! The traffic was heavy as can be and we crawled along. We resigned ourselves to a long day to cover the 200 odd kilometres and just drove with the flow. Surprisingly, the roadworks only went for about 20km, but the traffic got worse if anything. The problem turned out to be this pair of clowns taking a load of new caravans from the recent show in Rockhampton back to wherever they had come from. One was a truck with van on the tray and another hooked on the back, the second vehicle was another smaller truck towing a medium sized van, but they were doing 80kph flat out except up the hills, and they left exactly no space between them. Needless to say, the string of six other caravanners behind them had no chance to overtake and the few cars showed no inclination either.

Finally I let it rip up one of the overtaking lanes, no more Mr Nice Guy and letting cars passed - we finally got clear of these two idiots and frankly they should be ashamed of themselves. Later on even their mates from the show were talking about them on the radio...

Anyhow, we turned off and stopped for a cuppa at Miriamvale as does everyone, before heading down to Agnes Water proper. We were a bit nervous about what to expect, even though you book, you never know. But or fears were unfounded and here we are settled in. *Sigh* It's tough, but someone has to do it.

Our spot. Agnes Water, Qld

Agnes Water Qld August 8 -14 2016

Agnes Water Qld August 8 -14 2016

You all know that Agnes Water was named after the local dairy farmer's daughter (or so one story goes) and that it's just down the road from a place called 1770, named after a bloke called Cook who thought it'd be a good place to plug up the large hole in the bottom of his boat before he sailed back to England, so I'll not bore you with the history lesson.

So, what to do in Agnes Water, when you sitting in a caravan spot right in front of the main beach?

Our prized and coveted spot at Agnes Water Caravan Park

You could catch up on the latest goss, well, as late as the latest magazine available from the caravan park's laundry, that is

Judy catching up on all the goss that's fit to print, and maybe some that they shouldn't have.  Agnes Water Qld

or watch the local retired surfie teaching 30 at a time how to surf (thats him in the red cap out in the water). It costs just $17 and takes 3 hours and every single person gets to stand up and ride a wave. I'm told that the local kids come down and do it just for fun, even though they learnt to surf in the bathtub before they could walk.

Surf's up!  Agnes Water Qld

or take a stroll along the 5.5km of uninterrupted beach front. I never did make it to the end and back, but did manage 4km out, and 4km back. If you go before 7am, you think you're pretty much on your own - until you turn around to come back and you can see the hoards of walkers and dogs surging toward you. Four km is a bit much for most, so as you start to walk back, much of the mob turn tail in front of you as they reach their individual limits

Main Beach.  Agnes Water Qld

or if it's all too much take a coffee and cake in the park's cafe

Agnes Water Qld

Not happy with one beach, I regularly took myself off down the road, not far but away from the madding crowd nonetheless, to either Chinamans or Springs Beaches. You can drive right to Chinamans but there is a decent walk down a steep boardwalk to get to Springs. Neither are very busy and more likely than not will be deserted, especially at sunrise or coming up to dusk

Environmental vandal -mine are the only footprints on the sand of Chinamans Beach.  Agnes Water Qld

Sunrise @ Chinamans Beach.  Agnes Water Qld

From the far end, still not a soul in sight.  Agnes Water Qld

Chinamans Beach.  Agnes Water Qld

Chinamans Beach.  Agnes Water Qld

The rocky end of Chinamans Beach.  Agnes Water Qld

High and dry on Chinamans Beach.  Agnes Water Qld

Too much excitement? Perhaps a drive down to Round Hill at 1770 and a walk around the two viewing platforms, keeping a sharp lookout for whales and / or butterflies. There are one or two whales floating past, way out on the horizon, and we saw a precious few butterflies despite the claims of there being 100s, no 1000s, of them. Or maybe that was last year...

Nice little bay out on the headland. 1770 Qld

Just scanning the horizon for whales. 1770 Qld

Not much to scan for really...  1770 Qld

Butterfly. 1770 Qld

I caught this school of Screw-eyed tinfish on the way back

Faux-fish. 1770 Qld

We found one hidden little gem down the end of Springs road, called the Paperbark Walk. It's not long at 400m for the round trip, but a really beautiful and tranquil place, right there of the side of the road, and no one goes there because no one is told about it. Probably a good thing!

Remand forest of melaleuca. Paperbark Walk. Agnes Water Qld

First some stepping stones... Paperbark Walk. Agnes Water Qld

...then some boardwalk. Paperbark Walk. Agnes Water Qld

...and a few more stepping stones through the wetlands. Paperbark Walk. Agnes Water Qld

The one thing they have up here in the tropics is lots of orchid-type flowers, and as the local Orchid Lover's & Flora Fancier's Society had gone to the trouble of filling up the Community Hall next to the CP with them, we thought we'd take a look. Judy couldn't help it and bought a few Bromeliads, even though they don't really do well in the cold. At $3  & $4 a pop you might as well risk it!

Flower Show Chinamans Beach.  Agnes Water Qld

Flower Show Chinamans Beach.  Agnes Water Qld

Flower Show Chinamans Beach.  Agnes Water Qld

Flower Show Chinamans Beach.  Agnes Water Qld

Hell, might as well risk the tea at a $1 a pop and the cakes at $2 the plate

Cake and tea for 2. Agnes Water Qld

If that's not enough to keep you from going ga-ga, you could always swim in the surf (well, ripples really), wander up to the shops, drink coffee and eat cakes or maybe go to the pub and watch the sunset while sipping on cold apple-ciders. While your there you might as well stay for dinner.

Yet another market to visit on Sunday morning, even though you've been to 100's and they are all the same, they are always interesting as well, and you just never know when you might find a bargain.

I still haven't made the 2 1/2 hour walk to Red Rock yet, and we may be brave enough one year to drive through the Deepwater National Park on the dirt and sand track to Wreck Rock, or maybe I'll join that surf school. Next year, we'll do them all, next year.

Agnes Water Qld August 13 2015

Agnes Water Qld August 13 2015

Six days since the last post? That's what happens when you chill out completely!

Here's a typical day in what we've come to call "home".

Me up at 7am for a 5km walk along the beach, Judy catching up on her beauty sleep. I have to laugh though, it's not exactly cold here, even at 7am and I find swimmers adequate whilst others think track suits, fleecy tops and scarves are required. One woman even had gloves on... By the time i get back toward 815, the sun is decidedly warm and a swim in the ocean is required to cool off.

We pull the chairs out into the sunshine and eat breakfast of cereal and fruit, washed down with a cup of tea.

Maybe read a book, do a crossword, do a sudoku, fiddle about on the computer.

Another swim to freshen up, followed by a coffee at the nice cafe just down from us inside the van park. Decisions, decisions. Do we sit in their lounges and look out over the beach, or go back to our van, sit in our seats and look out over the beach?

A bit of a wander about, maybe up to the shops and back, and then lunch. More decisions: eat in or eat out? It's running 50/50 at this point.

After lunch it's time for some quiet time and maybe some more reading etc. Judy might decide to paint, or play on the pewter or grab nap. I have been doing more beach walking: I must be up to about 10km a day.

Come 3pm, do we have arvo tea? No we go for another swim and maybe dry off in the sun and then maybe go exploring or drink more coffee, or sip a wine at the 1770 hotel overlooking the estuary.

When the dinner question is decided, maybe another walk around to the shops for this 'n that and back for a bit of a rest. We ate out one night at the 1770 hotel, beautiful meal but a bit special, so most nights Judy cooks something special in the van. She can knock out almost anything from a full roast to pizza. Ah, pizza, that's what I can smell now, and I'm sure i can hear the wine chilling in the refrigerator.

Here's a last snap of the view from the caravan. That pink ting in the waves was intriguing me, I went down to try and capture the colour and the action.

Sunset. Agnes Water Qld

Pink ripple. Agnes Water Qld

Just hate to go, but then again, we've already booked again for next year.

Agnes Water Qld. August 8, 2015AgB

Agnes Water Qld. August 8, 2015

An uneventful run down from Rocky to Agnes Water, with an obligatory stop at Miriam Vale for a cup of coffee and to slow down to Agnes Waters time. It’s only 50 km off the Bruce, but a world away. Naturally, we had reserved a place at the van park right on the beach, and this time we are literally right on the (walkway to) the beach

View from our van. Agnes Water Qld

Went for a bit of a stroll along the beach, all the ruined boardwalks and pagoda I took snaps of last year are gone, you just have this lovely beach

Beach. Agnes Water Qld 

Beach. Agnes Water Qld

I went for walk up to the look out and took a few snaps along the way, including this goanna. I assume it’s a goanna, might be a big lizard for all i know

Go Anna. Agnes Water Qld

Headland walk. Agnes Water Qld

Headland walk. Agnes Water Qld 

Headland walk. Agnes Water Qld

Workman's Beach. Agnes Water Qld

Chinaman's Beach in distance. Agnes Water Qld

Headland walk. Agnes Water Qld

Anyhow, that’s what we've let ourselves in for, for a whole week. Yipes, can we cope?