Saturday 2nd November 2002

Mackay, the sugar-cane capital of the region is to be another sleep-over town. But in contrast with 'Rocky', here we are staying in the compfy seaside Whitsundays Waters Resort, so we want to get there in time.

En route we pass many sugarcane plantations and often cross the railway tracks of the 'sugartrains' which exclusively connect the vast fields with the sugar factories.

Because of the beautiful weather they can harvest the cane here almost all year round. We pass fields with fresh young shutes, bordering fields with 'ready to harvest' crops. Harvesting is definitely going on, and we often see large dustclouds in the distance (you could mistake them for 'bushfires') caused by the huge harvesting machines. We occasionally pass roadsigns with 'No sugarcane passed this point', which seems a bit silly at first, cause we are always surrounded by sugarcane fields and sugartrains criss-crossing the area. But apparently it should work as a 'quaranteen' restriction ...

We finally get a decent view of the Pacific Ocean at a little place called Clairview, where the highway runs right next to the beach. We pull over to take some pics, have a quick toilet stop (Never wait until you really gotto go! You could drive for an hour before you get another chance ;-) And seeing as there are no signs here prohibiting you to collect shells on the beach ... why not stock up? Some gorgious little jewels lying in the sand here.

We arrive at Mackay around 14.00, and after our usual stop at one of the tourist information offices, we head on down town for a little stroll. And little it was ... a couple of blocks. Saturday afternoon, many shops closed, the main shopping street looks deserted. However, we find an internet café where we can check our mails and the site ... and to our dread discovered that the site's messageboard can't be accessed! Eek! JJ decides to buy a CD-rom which should give us 80 hours of unrestricted internet access, cause it proves more difficult here than we expected to get free access.

We checked into the resort and had a quick lunch on our little terrace and strolled the grounds. Nice swimming pools and gardens ... and a 'rocky horror beach' just out front. No swimming of course. Stingers!

We went to the shopping center and bought some groceries at Woolworths, planning to have a 'nice evening in'. Seeing as the resort was in fact about 8 km from the city, at Dolphin Heads, we didn't have much of a choice ;-)

When we got back there was a wedding reception going on in the garden (Another wedding! Everywhere we go, newly weds ;-) and they partied on till early morning at the poolside bar.

We had a stroll on the 'rocky horror beach' and enjoyed a beautifull but chilly (windy) sunset and had an early night.

night night,

Radica & JJ