Burrum Heads greets us with grey skies and the ominous feel of the weather closing in. The skies darken further during the day, the wind increases and we receive downpour after downpour. Around 300mm of rain falls over the next few days, flooding local roads and turning the blue waters of the river to a muddy brown. We don’t see the sun again for 4 days and start to catch cabin fever from being couped up in the caravan.
When the bad weather breaks we take the hint and head out to look at the local area which includes Maryborough, Hervey Bay and Toogoom.
A walk around Maryborough shows us a pretty town right on the Mary River that is steeped in history which we weren’t expecting. The author of the Mary Poppins series of books, Helen Lyndon Goff writing under the pen name Pamela Lyndon Travers was born in Maryborough in 1899. Moving to England when she was twenty-five where she began writing the Mary Poppins series, eight in total, in 1933. The city pays tribute to the author with statues depicting the characters, streets named after places found in the books and even the local businesses are on board with one particular cafe named “A spoon full of sugar cafe”. Impressively, the walk signals at the local traffic lights have been changed to use Mary Poppins as the stop and go symbols.
Apart from the celebration of the author the city highlights its river port years and has beautiful parks such as Queens Park that provide large shady trees and plenty of entertainment for the family. This includes a set of three xylophones under a large Moreton Bay Fig tree. Stacey and I work out that we don’t possess the talent required to make music with these devices so move away quickly before anyone notices where the cacophony of noise is coming from. The park also hosts a miniature steam train set with narrow tracks heading in all directions. We didn’t get to see it in action but it looks like an extensive setup so would be a big attraction when it’s running.
From Maryborough we head out to Hervey Bay and walk the Urangan Pier which is a historical structure that was built in 1913 to provide the ability for the area to handle cargo and exports of coal, timber and sugar. To reach the deeper water necessary for the cargo ships the pier, when built, was over 1107 metres in length. Over the years the pier has been shortened to its current length of 868 metres which is still a good long walk out into the bay.
The next few days at Burrum Heads gives us a feel of the beauty that it holds. The river is still recovering from the rains and has that murky brown look about it but you can see through that and realise that even the flooded lands around the area present photo opportunities.
Time to move on to the next town.
Stoneworx Photography 