8 February 2000

We said our good-byes to Trish and Jenny a bit after 8:30 this morning and made our way into Rockhampton the plan being, as per yesterday's report, to visit the Art Gallery, Botanical Gardens and Zoo and some of the beautiful churches and cathedrals. We went to the Art Gallery (which, dare I say it, was hardly worth the effort) and proceeded on to the Botanical Gardens and Zoo. The weather, however, which was already bad (again with very heavy overcast and frequent heavy showers) would not let up and so we decided to abandon our plans and head for Bundaberg. On the way out of Rockhampton I noticed a sign to Mount Morgan and as I had previously intended to go there (but had since forgotten about it) we decided to go and have a look - it was only about 40 kms away.

Mount Morgan is an old gold mining town, larger than I expected but still fairly small nonetheless, which has, I read somewhere recently, the largest excavated crater of any open cut mine in the southern hemisphere. The town is rather spread out over a series of hills and has many examples of turn of the century achitecture in various states of repair which give a glimpse of an elegance and affluence which is unfortunalely no longer there. After driving slowly around seeing everything we headed for Bundaberg, arriving there about 4:00 p.m. after having lunch at a quiet little place called Miriam Vale.

What a surprise! Bundaberg is quite a large, apparently thriving city complete with high rise, far removed from the quiet backwater I remember from when we holidayed here years ago (although I was only very young at the time). It was too late to do anything this afternoon by the time we found somewhere to stay, so we will set about exploring it tomorrow.