Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Day 20-21 Bowen- 28-29 June 2009

4222kms, 26 degrees C



Those who have suggested we should slow down will be pleased to know that we had a couple of days by the beach in Bowen, home of the Big Mango. The town is still basking in the reflected glory of having Baz Luhrman, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman in town to film the “Darwin” scenes for the movie Australia.
We had our first “disaster” of the trip. A spider had made its way into the car and jumped onto Nicky’s leg. The following happened in very quick succession:-
1 Nic left the car
2 Nic wanted Stuart to sell the car
3 as the spider was seen in the passenger seat, Nicky offered to do a lot of driving

It is amazing how people live. We found a camp site in one of the less touristy areas of Bowen as the main sites were fully booked. Our neighbour has lived in his caravan on this site for 10 years. He told us about local employment – many travellers look for work and in Bowen that means picking tomatoes (or mangos when in season), at $2 per 15kg bucket. A “little Indonesian fella” can do 340 buckets per day, and earn $680, shifting over 5.1 tonnes of tomatoes. That is a lot of pasta sauce.


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