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.
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| New temporary office... Agnes Water Beach Caravan Park |
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| ...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.
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| Chinaman's Beach, Agnes Water Qld |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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,
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| 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.
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| Small Cove. Round Hill, 1770 Qld |
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| 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.
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| View to beach from our van. Agnes Water Beach Caravan Park Qld |
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