Bowen August 2013, week 2

August 7^th, Now the pressure is off, as far as helping Val to make her jams and pickles, I found time to visit the local Museum. I did look through this one last time we stayed in Bowen but that was a few years ago. It’s always interesting to me to find out what started a Towns existence and in this case it was a financial reward for whoever could discover a suitable Harbour north of Rockhampton. Originally the Town was called Port Denison but was later renamed, Bowen, after Queensland’s first Governor. One of the biggest events, of recent times, was the making of the film “Australia”, which completely took over the Town. When I looked through the albums of photos, compiled progressively through the making of the film, I realized the enormity and effort that went into the making of that film. My favourite display was the slab Cottage, originally built in the district in 1872 and bought into Town, slab by slab and re-erected and restored at the Museum. What a hard life they must have led at that time! One bedroom, Kitchen with an open stone fireplace, a back verandah served as wash up, boot scraping and laundry and front verandah was were the kids slept. The slab walls were simply butted together and I was told that when it was cold they covered the walls with newspaper to keep out the wind. Incredible, no way would we live that way now.

August 8^th, After chatting with a few of our Caravanning neighbours, I decided that I should try to catch some fresh fish for Val. I was told that the Whiting were being caught at Horseshoe Bay, on high tide. Val has now eaten all the flathead fillets that we had in the freezer and was hankering for more. I headed down to Horseshoe Bay, and discovered that we had stayed in the Horseshoe Bay Caravan Park, on a previous visit, and the Bay was small and full of swimmers and snorkelers, not a fishing spot. So, I went back to that end of Queens Bay, where I spotted other fishermen and ladies along the Beach. I got set up, chair in the shade one rod in a rod holder and after baiting and casting my 2^nd rod I would retreat back to my chair. The weather was perfect, the water was clear, with only little ripples at the edge, the beach sand was coarse but what a perfect , relaxing way to spend a couple of hours. Of course, I was using my traditional cooked prawns as bait and peeling them as instructed. I wasn’t getting any bites and next thing I know all my nearest Fishermen packed up and went home. It was ½ hour after high tide and out of the 4 of us, fishing at this end of the Beach, only one had caught any keepable fish and they were there the earliest. Regardless, I decided to keep trying a bit longer and I was happy to feel a few bites, which lifted my spirits. A little while later, I was relaxing on my chair in the shade when my fixed rod was bending violently and would you believe it, a Seagull had flew into my fishing line and got tangled. He was flapping madly and screeching, not a “Happy Camper”. I took the rod out of the rod holder and wound in the line until the seagull was at my feet in the shallows. I used the line to pull him off the sand until I could reach down and get hold of the tip of the caught up wing. I was able to loosen the line allowing it unwind itself and with the wing free I released the bird and it very happily flew off. While all this was going on, all the seagulls’ mates were flying around in circles overhead, screeching their heads off. Wow!  Why do these things happen to me? I packed up soon after all that excitement and went home without catching anything else. After lunch, I was relaxing at the back of the Van and reading a western when a neighbour came over and introduced himself (Neville). They come up here for a couple of months every year and he does a lot of fishing, so we got talking and he gave me a few pointers about catching whiting. So I have to use a smaller sinker, #2 Whiting hook and pump nippers for bait and he guaranties I’ll catch whiting. Looks like I should buy a yabby pump, which I had been talking about for a while now but not doing anything. The main reason Neville came over to see me was to let us know that he was going to be playing some music from 4pm onwards and to bring our chairs over, if we wanted to join in. So, over we went armed with chairs, table and wine ready to be entertained. The Musical Group was Neville on accordion, his wife Beth on the spoons and Lindsey on guitar and Val and Lois (Lindsey’s wife) as “back up Girls”. It was all old time, sing along music that we all enjoyed for 1 ½ hours.

August 10^th, Val felt like going to the beach, to paddle her feet in the water, so off we went to Horseshoe Bay. I had been down there last Thursday and the water was flat, clear and lots of people in swimming or sunbaking on the sand. Today however, was the opposite, as it was very windy, the water was choppy with little waves and very uninviting. We walked through the Horseshoe Bay Caravan Resort and reminisced about the time we had stayed in this park before. We then drove around to Rose Bay for a look and found another Caravan Park right on the beachfront and couldn’t help commenting on how they would cop the bad weather, when it came. This was a pretty suburb with huge houses and nice lawns and garden, definitely the elite area to live in. We drove back along the length of Queens Beach, great water views, on our way to Mullers Lagoon. Mullers Lagoon is surrounded by Parkland and is a great family picnic spot, in the middle of Town, and a sanctuary for a large variety of birdlife. We went up to Bowen Hill where the water tank was, as I wanted to get a photo of the tank which had been painted with the word “BOWENWOOD” at the time of making the film “Australia”. I

took my photo and we enjoyed the great views of the surrounding area. We were amazed to also see that this hill had a house under construction, at the top of a huge drop and a plan to develop the other hilltop land surrounding the tank. I may be wrong but I’m thinking all this development could reduce the view of the tank with it’s historic sign!

August 11^th, This was a quiet relaxing Sunday for me but Val got stuck into making Apple Jelly, so I had to devise a rig, using an upside down chair,  to suspend the netting lines with a new chux cloth (as we didn’t have any muslin), her cooked green apples to allow the juice to drip into a bowl for 3 hours or more. The result was 2 jars of 375 ml Apple Jelly and a bit left over for tasting. It was good!

August 13^th, We did a little food shopping at Woolworths and Val had a haircut. Each time she gets a haircut she is showing more grey/white hair, which she is totally exicited about and looks good, to me as well. I started packing up this afternoon, as we leave here for Townsville tomorrow morning.