How cool are these crossing lights?!
We stopped in Maryborough, about 40km up river from Hervey Bay for a look at the town that at one time was likely to become capital of Queensland. Imagine, I guess it would look like Brisbane!
But it has been wonderfully preserved with some beautiful buildings, a lovely river front and more recently an excellent war memorial to the many Australian and ANZAC soldiers who have lost lives in conflicts and peacekeeping since Gallipoli.
And of course (hands up who knew?) it is the birthplace of Mary Poppins - well it is actually the birthplace of PL Travers, creator of Mary. A second prize for anyone who knew that PL stood for Pamela Lyndon. Anyway, aside from cafes dedicated to helping the medicine go down, and a statue marking the place of her birth the most superb celebration of her contribution to children's literature is those street crossing signs.
I must have crossed the same junction 8 times just to get a good look - and I kept missing the picture because the green Mary kept disappearing too quickly!
So our half hour stop turned into over two hours (coffee included obviously!) and left us in perfect time to hit the Brisbane rush hour when we got that far down. Pity they didn't keep Maryborough as the capital - might have saved us some time!
So, late leaving Maryborough, we hit the actual capital at the aforementioned rush hour and crawled through to Surfers Paradise. We are not used to traffic!!! But maybe it is going to help us get used to coming home - but not yet!
Then we stopped briefly (for coffee, what else!) in Surfers Paradise in the Gold Coast, to look for evidence of Elisa having worked here, many years ago. So is this your lifeguard hut? We couldn't see a plaque, but we decided this one would be it! We were slightly unprepared for how built up it is - the name conjured something more rural, sedate and hippy like. Just looked it up and Gold Coast is a city of over half a million people! Judging by the building most of them live in the sky!
So, what with, delays for good, bad and coffee, we arrived in to Byron Bay well after 7pm, found our delightful beach hotel, and heading in to the metropolis for dinner. A few people had told us that BB was too busy these days - after SP, it is a backwater! We will explore further tomorrow.