Time in Childers and on to Hervey Bay

Today we continued our journey south, heading off from Bundaberg in the morning. We drove inland past green fields until we reached the heritage-listed town of Childers.

We drove past many of the old buildings, admiring how well kept they all were. We visited a small historical village, which is fully maintained and run by a team of volunteers. We had the chance to look inside a schoolhouse, cottage, general store and post office (now housing the blacksmith’s tools of the trade). There was also an original train onsite.

After this we wandered the Main Street and had a bite to eat and we visited the memorial to the 15 backpackers who died in a deliberately lit fire in June 2000 in the former Palace Hotel, which had been turned into a hostel. The backpackers were all fruit pickers on local farms at the time. Three were Australian and the rest came from overseas. The building has been rebuilt and now houses a memorial, including a beautiful painting by a Sydney artist depicting each of the victims (painted from photos supplied) placed in a group in front of a field entitled ‘Taking a break in the field’. There is also a glass memorial wall showing photos of each of the victims throughout their lives. The rest of the upstairs space of the former hostel is now a community art space and gallery.

After our lengthy stop in Childers we continued on to Hervey Bay, stopping at the visitor centre before picking one of the many caravan parks in town. We unhooked and set up the van, had some lunch and a bit of a rest before heading out to explore some of the coastline.

We drove around the shore, stopping at several points before finding Reef World Aquarium, which I had taken our boy to visit 21 years ago, while Gadi did a sea plane flight over Fraser Island.

Finally, we drove to the marina precinct and parked our car (not realising we had parked in the fancy holiday resort apartment area), and we walked around to look at the yachts, framed by the restaurants and apartments on one side, with a backdrop of blue water and Fraser Island behind.

We drove back to our caravan park where I dropped Gadi and Cadbury off and I went to do a supermarket shop (yay Aldi and Woollies!) before coming back quite late. We put everything away - it’s like a jigsaw puzzle when you try to fit groceries into a caravan fridge/cupboards - and ate bbq chicken for dinner.

Time now to see what’s on the idiot box or if we feel motivated enough, to sit with maps and do some rough planning for where we head the next couple of weeks as we inch our way ever closer to home.

Night night from the Fraser Coast!Read more