Day 61 – Saturday 18 September 2021 – ? Km

Bowen is beautiful, it is a tidy town with nice wide streets, well-kept gardens & lots of beautiful beaches & bays. The sea has the most amazingly beautiful azure colour. Our day started with a short drive to Horseshoe Bay, a very pretty little bay with a small beach & rocky ends. We walked on to both ends of this small beach & soaked in the views, the rugged large rocks & swaying palm trees add to the overall look. There were a few people in swimming & a lifeguard on duty. Next we drove around to Murray Bay and walked along a bush track then over rocks onto this beach, again it is very pretty. There are two properties in the back of Murray Bay, both with stunning views & nice gardens. We decided to walk along the track towards Horseshoe Bay until the next little rocky bay. Very picturesque with the backdrop of a mountainous Gloucester Island looming across the water.

Another short drive to another beautiful bay, this time it is Rose Bay, spoilt a little by the large apartment blocks backing the beach. Again the beach is book-ended by massive granite rocks at each end, again it is very picturesque. This beach has a dominant rock formation with a large granite tor standing out on the hill & its name is Mother Beddock Rock. We drive around the suburb of Rose Bay & the other beachfront of Kings Beach that extends a very long way towards Flagstaff Hill & Bowen Harbour. The tide is out a very long way & the beach has a huge expanse of sand. The access to this beach has the warning sign for crocodiles, so no swimming here either.

Our next stop is Flagstaff Hill & this has a great 360 degree view of Bowen & surrounds. It is a great vantage point & the council are in the process of completing a new visitor centre on top of the hill, the construction is nearly complete. The views are very impressive & again we enjoy the views of Bowen & the surrounding waters & islands. Across from Flagstaff Hill is a small island with a lighthouse on it that is accessible by walking to it at very low tide. The tide is not low enough today.

We drive around a collection of houses on the point enclosing the boat harbour & pick out the house with the best location, it would have great views. Next we drive to the boat harbour for a look at the yachts moored there & find the Bowen Fisherman’s Co-Op with attached seafood shop. We stop here & order a seafood basket then wait at our table overlooking the boat harbour & watch a heron catch a fish along the rock wall below us. The seafood is very tasty & it is 2pm by the time we leave.

The Bowen waterfront has a large concrete hardstand that was used by Catalina seaplanes during World War II, the small memorial has an interesting short history & is laid out very well. It is a small attractive building. The Port Denison Sailing Club is next to it, this club was established in 1864, making it one of the oldest sailing clubs in Australia. There is no activity at the sailing club on a Saturday afternoon, very unusual, I suppose because of the very low tide, the water is very far out. We drive along the rest of the foreshore around to Doughty Creek with two boats resting on the sand deep amongst the mangroves due to the low tide.

Back to the long wharf & it is begging to be walked on. This wharf has been used by many ships over the years & has been the lifeblood of Bowen. Now it is used for recreation plus one finger of the wharf has some large working tug boats used for shipping at the Abbott Point coal loading terminal just north of Bowen. We spot a beautiful little Azure Kingfisher gulping down a meal on the rocks of the causeway on the walk out. It is extremely windy & we hold onto our hats on the walk out. This wharf is popular with walkers & there is a family group fishing out on the end. The walk back is slightly easier as the wind is pushing us back in. This wharf & the area onshore immediately nearby, not Darwin, was the scene for the Baz Lurhmann film “Australia”, an extraordinary transformation.

As we drove back through a very interesting main part of the old Bowen town, full of beautiful old buildings on very wide streets, we notice the water tanks on the hill over town. These water tanks are covered in murals depicting the wildlife & scenery around Bowen so we drive up there & have a look. The murals are very large & very well painted. The views from here are also very good, again 360 degree views over Bowen. We drive slowly back to camp past Mullers Lagoon, our destination tomorrow morning, it looks very nice. A coffee & game of Yahtzee then a light dinner before showers & bed. Something that we found out about Bowen is that most of our fresh vegetables in winter come from this region. Another great day.