Wednesday 18th April 2018

The moment we walked up the steep marina ramp we knew we were somewhere different. The sweet perfume of grass confronts us, a smell previously so familiar but rare to us now. In front of us are neat fields of uncut grass, the seed heads shimmer and wave in the breezy sunshine. And it was not just the scent of our surroundings that felt foreign, it dawns on us that here for the first time in a long time, the land is completely flat. Even the normal hills and mountains, that are forever on the horizon, have gone.

The occupants of the marina are different also, instead of being almost exclusively full of local boats there are plenty of cruisers here, including one Irish and three UK yachts. It is back to sundowners and ‘where to next’ conversations.

Having arrived in Bundaberg a week or two earlier than planned, we have no pressure to achieve anything in particular. So when we discover that the chandeliers can organise to get our rusty anchor delivered to the hot dip galvanising unit, we jump at the opportunity.

That looks a bit better.

Rick settles in, with relish, to potter around the boat, fixing all the little things he has been meaning to get around to for ages and in some cases since we left Southampton. He boxes in the new freezer compressor, services the Davits, washes the sails, properly wires the nav lights, cleans and sorts the dingy………

I tackle the ever present paperwork, work on the navigation for the next part of our trip and clean. How is it there is always so much cleaning to do?

The marina runs a courtesy bus the 15km into town each day, so Monday we hop on and head for downtown Bundaberg. The road in reminds us of a tidy Fiji, fields and fields of sugar cane line each side of the road. This is the sugar capital of Australia and famous for its large distillery producing Bundaberg Rum. In recent years crops have diversified, what at first glance we assume is a vineyard turns out to be rows of tomatoes vines, we spot a field of melons but not the macadamia trees that are also in abundance here.

Bundaberg City was mostly just an urban sprawl, with most buildings being of indifferent late twentieth century architecture, we search in vain to find any character. We wander uninspired for a while before abandoning our quest and heading for the supermarket. The branch of Coles here is large and as always full to bursting with fresh food. We stock up and take a taxi back to the boat.

I have continued to ‘power’ walk each day when I can. I’ve been enjoying the exercise as well as the side effect of getting to explore the local area. Leading from the marina there is a riverside path that run’s out towards the sea. Unlike the pathways I have been using all the way up the coast from Sydney, here I am alone in my lycra and trainers, just meeting the odd dog walker or angler.

On the surface it’s rather a featureless walk with the wide brown Burnett river one side and the dead flat meadow like fields the other. However, of course, the more you look the more you see, the sky is huge and ever changing, the river has small bays of dark sand and at low tide there are mudflats full of birds.

Dark beach at the mouth of the Burnett River

Around our pontoon are the normal groups of cormorants and flocks of gulls, on the mud flats I spot a tall elegant white heron, which google tells me was probably a Great Egret and perched on the marker above him what I think is a type of Kite.

Amongst all of these are the huge, ever present pelicans. We took the dingy for a run up the river and while on a crocodile hunt amongst the mangroves on the far bank, (probably still a little south for crocodiles but thought it was never too early to get some practice in) overhead a flock of pelicans, Jurassic like with their oversized beaks, gave us a magnificent demonstration of formation flying.

A flock of Pelicans always remind us of pterodactyls.