Bowen

Bowen has always been Somewhere Else.

When I was a kid in Carmila, I learned about Bowen in grade six. Apparently there was a time when it had been considered as the capital of Queensland. This was because of a combination of reasons to do with its central location, and its harbour.

Longreach has been viewed in the same way - it's a pity that the idea was discarded. Perhaps if either Bowen or Longreach were the capital, we might develop an ethos in government more in tune with Queensland's needs... but that's another story.

Later when I lived in Townsville, I often attended conferences in Bowen. Invariably they were held in seaside locations and there was plenty of alcohol consumed. It was usually warm, and always difficult to get enthusiastic about anything much. In hindsight - Bowen was probably not the right place for serious conferencing.

We also used to stay at Bowen on our annual trip north with children. We generally didn't have time to do much except transit, although I have unearthed old photos of the kids playing in the sand at Horseshoe Bay - so we obviously had a day or two there.

On this trip we decided to stay at Bowen for reasons of nostalgia, and booked a basic unit which fronted the bay. You could walk from your front door to the beach in thirty paces. It was warm, people ambled by at first and last light, and dogs and kids played on the beach. The walls were thin, and the couple next door were amorous and noisy. Somehow it seemed entirely in keeping with the environment.

Bowen was discovered with the shooting of "Australia". This has resulted in an influx of Japanese backpackers. They're generally decorative, spend money, and are probably good for the place. Bowen has an atmosphere of its own - a bit like an old woman - once beautiful - but now looking faded. Generally, it's charming and laid back.

We walked, ate, slept and enjoyed the seascape. I wonder what you'd pay for a block with a sea view?

An Experiment in Demographics

I've always maintained that northerners are different.

This is one of the reasons that southern pundits (those who don't live north of the tropic) haven't got a clue when it comes to forecasts of voting trends. The last Queensland state election is a good example.

I lived the early part of my life in North Queensland, went south as a boarder to attend high school, and didn't get to live in the North again until I was in my thirties. I married a northern girl, and spent two stints in Townsville as a school principal, and then went west (Mt Isa) for a few years.

Combined with the twenty or so years I've lived in the south-east corner, I've picked up what I believe to be an accurate understanding of the differences in attitudes of the inhabitants of the north and south of this state.

My dad, who had a similar experience as a bush schoolie, used to mutter, when we drove across the tropic on our annual Christmas holiday in the south - "back to the land of narrow minds, square heads, and shallow pockets".

I didn't understand what he meant back then.

I do now.

I conducted a small experiment in demographics on our recent trip north to examine this hypothesis.

I have an out-of-date concessional fuel card. It entitled me to 2c per litre off the price of LPG when produced. It's been out-of-date for a while, but this hasn't bothered me, as when home I can buy LPG cheaper from another outlet bringing the price paid to less than the 2c concession.

This is not the case away from home, and the further north you travel, the higher the price, so I packed it just for the hell of it.

Between Toowoomba and Rockhampton, the discount was refused, usually with a curt explanation, and a disdainful glare. At Mackay, the attendant said "That's out-of-date mate - you'll need to get it renewed". She still gave me the discount.

The same occurred at Bowen, Innisfail, and up on the Tableland. I got the discount every time. The other thing I noticed was that nobody up there wished me a "nice day" - very refreshing.

It has something to do with a characteristically northern approach to bureaucracy. They see it as something to be defeated - to be got around. It's not universal, but pretty close to it.

Up there, people generally can't be bothered with laid-down procedures of any kind. They make it up - very successfully - as they go along.

No wonder I feel out-of-place in Toowoomba.

Corrugated Iron

During our wanderings north, we called in on some rellies. As I’m one of six, and my wife one of eleven, there are plenty.

Two of them (a niece and a sister-in-law) have built homes in spectacular environments and clad them in corrugated iron.

My niece’s new house is a gem. It’s built on a hillside with sea views (and the all-important sea breeze) in the Mackay hinterland. There are also views to the west across the Pioneer valley. As the sugar cane season proceeds (called the “Crushing” up here) – the landscape changes daily. The perfume of the valley wafts up the slope when the wind is in the right quarter. In short – a beautiful environment.

The house is environmentally friendly, and is self-sufficient with the exception of electricity. My niece and her husband had intended to install a solar system, but were defeated by the bureaucracy, and the fact that the concept was a little too novel for the local council.

To me, there’s something quintessentially Australian about corrugated iron. It’s tough, durable, flexible, unpretentious and functional. These are understood as characteristics that are part of our national ethos.

It also looks pretty good when used by professionals, and recent refinements to how it’s finished have made sure that it lasts. It’s also lightweight, inexpensive and practical.
As a material, it has also been used by prize-winning architect like Glenn Murcutt. His Marie Short House at Kempsey has made us look differently at this once humdrum building material.
When I was a kid, we used to make canoes with corrugated iron castoffs. You needed tar to plug the ends, and they were buggers of things to cut yourself on, but they were light and easy to make.

Lucinda

There's something about the name “Lucinda” that has always held a special magic.

When we lived in Townsville in the nineties, we often drove north through Ingham to visit family on the Tableland. There were always two rituals – fish and chips on the beach at Cardwell, and a family debate as to whether we should detour through Lucinda.

We always managed the first, but never the second. This was probably because we never felt we'd arrived in FNQ until we did the Cardwell thing, and the fish and chips was inevitably of high quality. Lucinda remained a mystery.

This trip, however, was done for the first time without children, so we were a little less driven by practicality and a little more by whimsy, so we took the Lucinda detour.

I'm glad we did. The road narrows and meanders through a vivid green landscape of canefields, art-deco houses, and scattered cane harvesting machinery. Everything shrinks in scale, the road takes unexpected and eccentric angles, and the sights and smells take me back to my childhood.

The smells particularly, are something else. There's a mixture of the characteristic odour of decaying cane trash, diesel, sarsaparilla grass and mould. It's a unique combination – experienced nowhere else but here.

We drove through Halifax and finished up at the Lucinda Point Hotel where we had a coffee, outdoors in the fantastic sunshine. The boat ramp just down the road was crowded with people – it's a great springboard to the Whitsundays.

We joined the Bruce Highway and continued north. The rest of the trip was uneventful with the exception of a strange encounter with a tinnie sitting forlornly in the middle of the road near Tully.

There was a gaggle of fishy looking characters with anxious expressions standing around an empty boat trailer by the side of the road. I guess there were two issues under discussion. One would have been who forgot to tie the tinnie on the trailer – the other how they were going to get it off the middle of the road.

I had no ideas and there were more than enough of them to lift it, so we kept driving.

The best fish and chips at Cardwell can be found at Annie's Kitchen.

FNQ

I'm writing this in an internet cafe in the main street of Herberton - FNQ.

FNQ was the abbreviation used by my wife to address her mail home forty years ago, when as a young student teacher she was living in Brisbane.

This part of the world has an irresistible pull for both of us. In her case because she was brought up here - together with her ten siblings, in mine because I'm also a child of North Queensland, and I lived most of my early live north of the tropic.

Our journey north in June was once a family ritual. In part - to escape the winter in the south-east corner - in part to link up with family again. My wife calls it her annual "sister hit". She has, after all, six sisters.

It hasn't disappointed. Driving north and feeling the ever-intensifying sunshine through the windscreen - smelling the cane fields - the bagasse - and tuning in to the NQ accent (the interrogative "hey" at the end of each sentence) - all these things are a tonic for the soul.

Meeting up with some old cronies in Townsville and cleaning up a threesome of good reds was also enjoyable. This meeting culminated in a job offer. It will be interesting to see whether it holds now that we've all sobered up.

Unfortunately, we'll just be getting accustomed to the laid-back sanity that holds in this part of the world, and we'll have to head south again.

Maybe our dream of a northern retreat isn't such a bad idea. We wouldn't need much - a block and a shed initially. We could live up here from May until October.

So What Else is New?

Sometimes it pays to simply sit and observe.

Given what’s been going on in Federal Parliament during the last week or so, this is such a time.

One side of the house has been accusing the other of impropriety - specifically that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer were attempting to assist a constituent in financial difficulty. The extent of this seems to be that there were some phone calls and emails (at least one bogus) drawing the attention of one official or another to his plight.

The other side (the government) has accused the opposition of using information leaked from a mole in Treasury to embarrass them.

I’m confused.

Since when has either of both of these actions been anything more than commonplace and par for the course in federal parliament? Maybe I’ve missed some significant revival of basic ethics in political life. Maybe suddenly both sides have been seized with a severe attack of morality flu – a bit like swine flu, but not quite as contagious.

Give me strength….

In the meantime, issues such as the plight of carers, the state of superannuation funds, rural poverty, and the Murray Darling basin seem suddenly to be on the media back-burner. At least it hasn’t drowned out coverage of the State of Origin.

It does point out some home truths. The media generally behave like a pack of school children watching a brawl, ego and power are all that matters and truth is a misunderstood concept.

The community can basically go to buggery.

Who Cares?

This is a book with clout.

It's not an exciting read, by any stretch, but this volume should be required reading for any Australian who wants to understand the daily realities faced by the approximately 2.6 million carers in this country.

It was loaned to me by the mother of two highly dependent teenage girls. This woman was telling me about her recent holiday - the first one she's had in more than ten years. Because she lives in a provincial town, respite care for her daughters is very hard to come by. She often has to save it up and book it months in advance, only to find it is withdrawn at the last minute because of an emergency situation where (for example) another sole carer becomes suddenly ill, which bumps her back to the end of the queue.

It's a hell of a way to live.

I encounter literally scores of these situations in my travels in the South-west, and there is a backlog of suffering around this issue that the general community treats with stoic disregard.

The book itself is a report on the inquiry into better support for carers conducted by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family, Housing, Community and Youth.
The committee was chaired by Annette Ellis, and its members were Judi Moylan, Tony Abbott, Louise Markus, Jodie Campbell, Julie Collins, Sophie Mirabella (from 10/11/08) Scott Morrison (from 25/9/08), Sussan Ley MP(until 10/11/08), Brett Raguse, Kirsten Livermore and Chris Trevor.

What this means is the committee crossed party lines, and for me this adds credibility to the report.

Published in April this year it lists thousands of narratives about situations involving carers, taken as extracts from 1305 submissions from all over the country. Public hearings were also held in all state capitals.

To me, apart from the 50 recommendations coming out of the report, the kicker is on page 147. It refers to an appeal by Ms Liz Kelly, mother of a child with severe disabilities. She urged the committee to support the submission for a National Disability Insurance Scheme that came from the 2020 Summit.

Despite the derision directed at this summit by the cynics, this was one initiative coming out of it, which, if seen through, will be transformational.
Update: Grendel has sent the link.