It’s very warm up here at the moment, according to the locals. 

The downturn in the coal industry is very evident around here. The caravan park is down on numbers. This is good for us, there’s plenty of room. Many of the big sheds in the industrial area just up the road are empty from mining service businesses that are no more. Unemployment in Mackay is about 17%. 

The coal terminals on the coast from Mackay shipped about 115 million tons of coal in 2014/15.  So coal is pretty big in the area. Historically this is about 2/3 of what Newcastle Port does. 

http://www.portsaustralia.com.au/aus-ports-industry/trade-statistics/?id=9&period=14

And then there’s sugar cane. Lots & lots of cane fields everywhere.  In QLD up to 35 million tonnes of sugarcane is grown on about 380,000 hectares annually. This sugarcane crop can produce up to 4.5 million tonnes of raw sugar, 1 million tonnes of molasses and 10 million tonnes of bagasse annually. Approximately 85% of the raw sugar produced in Queensland is exported, generating up to $2.0 billion in export earnings for Queensland. Whereas New South Wales sugar is refined and sold into the domestic market. 

Cane harvest up here starts on the 1st June, so it’ll get busy around here soon. The only difference is that the hired help will be paid around $22/hr instead of $44/hr as per the coal equivalent… Better than having nothing but still tough on the area.

More info at http://asmc.com.au/industry-overview/

We spent a day wandering about the Mackay Home Caravan & Camping Show. 

A less than highlight of the day was “Epic Darren”, a non death defying motor-cross clown of sorts, who enjoyed poking fun at the daredevil industry.



Both of us were fairly well behaved. We did look at a lot of vans but didn’t buy any. It’s amazing how easy it is these days ( now that we know what we are after) to sort the wheat from the chaff in the available new caravan market. It’s hard work but we were saved by the coffee van.

We made a trip back to Newy for Jayne’s Board meetings. Here’s Jayne with her serious business board directors.

We extended our stay to attend the funeral of my 97 year old Aunty Peg. A very sad occasion, but also a great opportunity to catch up with a lot of cousins we hadn’t seen for a long time. About 2 years actually, which was when Aunty Mary passed away. Sad that it takes a death to bring people together. That’s life.
Heading North again on what Jayne considers a smaller than comfortable flying thing making our way back to Mackay

Then before we knew it we were (via Brisbane & toasted sandwiches at the Qantas club) back in Mackay

I’m also pretty sure we would not have made the trip safely without this guy

Glad to be back in the van in Mackay & ready for some more reef exploration. Airlie Beach here we come.

29 May This entry was published on 29/05/2016 at 8:46 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.