Sugar Cane Train

It is Saturday noon, and we are in Bowen. 

As we drove south from Cairns we passed from tropical bush to Gum trees, dried grass and large fields of sugar cane. The sugar cane is in bloom and ready to cut. Often along the road are railway tracks. Sugar cane trains are used to transport the cane to the mills.

Tony Porter at Airlie Beach

Sugar Cane Train

We spent a lovely day on Friday with long time DBDOC customer Tony Porter as we looked around Bowen and then we went for a late lunch at a nearby beach. For supper we went to a Chinese restaurant, The Cove, on a beach facing the Pacific Ocean. It was lovely to watch the sun dip under the horizon as we had supper.

This afternoon we started down the coast to Mackay for another night's stay before we get to Gladstone on Sunday night. On the way we passed many more fields of sugar cane, and finally a sugar cane train. See the pictures with the cane mill in the background.

People here do not seem to drive these distances often, although the roads are paved, two lane roads with frequent passing lanes. The people are very friendly, and it reminds me of rural communities in western Canada.

A Change from Canada

We are finally in Australia and enjoying the beautiful weather. Our flight from Guam was delayed five hours. We were scheduled to leave at seven in the evening and arrive in Cairns, Queensland at midnight. However, a violent storm at Saipan (an island forty-five flight minutes from Guam) pinned the plane down and it returned to Guam at midnight. Hence, we arrived in Cairns at five am, arriving at our hotel at least three hours before our ten am checkout time!

However, from there things started to look up.

We moved Friday afternoon to a beachfront apartment on Trinity beach. Here we have remained on Friday and Saturday nights. During the day on Saturday we drove to and visited the tropical rain forest north of Cairns -- a great day. Now Sunday we are preparing for our flight to Gove and out first week of DBDOC workshops and training.


A picture only an engineer could love. We crossed a large river as we approached the Daintree Tropical Rain Forest.  The ferry winched itself across the river and back.  This is a picture of the cable mechanism.



A look out view over the forest as it extended down the slope towards the ocean.