Flooding at Marlborough Sarina Road

Day 69 – Rockhampton via Middlemount and May Downs

Rockhampton via Middlemount and May Downs

Mackay to Rockhampton is an easy about 4 hours drive in normal conditions. However, due to the approaching storm and increasing rainfall, Bruce Highway had been affected. “Worry not”, the meanwhile seasoned hinterland-road-yoda on the team said. “I got it covered.” We’ll drive to Sarina and hit the Marlborough Sarina Road there. It runs in the back country parallel to Bruce Highway and rejoins Bruce at Marlborough. Said – done.

On the highway between Mackay and Sarina, we met an interesting transport. It was a huge excavator shovel, probably being shipped to a mine. The size of this shovel becomes more obvious, when you compare the size of the Toyota SUV to its right.

After driving a few dozen kilometers on the picturesque, slightly winding road through the Sarina Range, we passed the junction of Oxford Downs Sarina Road.  On we drove for a few kilometers, when we reached a flooded bridge, which you see in the picture above. No way we can make it across there.

So we had to drive back to the Oxford Downs junction and turn even further west and away from Bruce Highway. We took Fitzroy Development Road (#67) south to Middlemount. Honestly, I was a bit worried whether the ‘development road’ would be in good condition. No problem. It was perfect tarmac all the way to Middlemount.

Middlemount

Middlemount is a miner’s town known for its coal mine producing  low volatile pulverised coal injection (PCI) coal and hard coking coal, which is exported via Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal and Abbot Point Port.

We had a late lunch at the local Subways, filled up at the only petrol station in town and then headed further south on the Dingo Mount Flora Road (#67). When we reached the junction to May Downs, we had the choice of continuing south to Dingo or take a short cut via May Downs to Marlborough and back to Bruce Highway.

May Downs

The road to May Downs looked well tarmaced – at its beginning -, so we decided to take the shortcut. Since distances in Australia are never short, the road turned into gravel then sand/gravel about 15 kilometers later. — Turn back now? No way!

After driving for a while through fairly dry grass land with a few rare animal sightings like some cranes chilling alongside a small bushy wood patch, a car approached on the opposite side of the road.

We both stopped, turned down the side windows and chatted about road conditions and which roads were still open or had been flooded. It turned out that our road friend was coming from Rockhampton and going to Sarina. So he shared important information for the rest of our trip and we did vice versa. After having a good laugh about the unusual weather conditions, we waived goodbye and drove on.

Rockhampton & Emu Park

About 10 kilometers before we hit Bruce Highway at Marlborough, our road turned into tarmac again. We had booked our overnight stay in Emu Park, which is on the shore east of Rockhampton. Because we had to take a major detour today, we were running very late and basically driving straight on to Emu Park. We arrived there around 8pm. The rain was pouring again. Time for late dinner and then take a rest.

On the next day, before we we departed for Hervey Bay, our base camp for Fraser Island, we visited Kele Park and its ‘singing ship’ statue. The singing ship is a stylized sail with different sized steel pipes attached to it. When the wind blows, this thing basically turns into a huge panpipe. Impressive.

Kele Park, Emu Park
Kele Park, Emu Park

When we left Emu Park, the road back to Bruce Highway showed what the rain has caused to the area last night:

Roads and flat patches of land had been flooded. So the trip to Hervey Bay via Bundaberg was a bit challenging in the beginning. But it became a nice day after all the further south we went.

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