They use large American utes to pull the smaller boats , the biggest get pulled by semi trailer , here's an F Truck for you - an F 650 - it even runs truck size wheels & tyres , as well as a truck size fuel tank down below the doors - it's a monster truck !!
Golf was interesting , the course is only 9 holes , so you play them twice from different tee positions. I played with a local , a guy from the central coast of NSW and another from Home Hill - further north of Bowen . Not the best game , 28 points , but some good golf amongst the bad .
Sunday , the first race was at 10:30am , so we headed to the marina again and found a suitable rock to sit on . The course wasn't too far away , we could see the finish line in front of us . All the boats came out for a sighting lap prior to the race , idling out of the marina & onto the course , then opening up the throttles , sending up a rooster tail of water over 50m long !!
Then there were the other class of outboard motor powered boats . These boats are much smaller , but not a lot slower .
After their sighting lap , it was all go , the motors roared as the came down the straight to the finish line , spray shooting out the back , it was an impressive sight .
They raced for 30 minutes before the chequered flag came out .
They had a helicopter taking footage of the race , a stunt plane doing aerobatics - pretty tame ones we thought , and other entertainment for everyone watching .
The race winner was the 222 boat pictured above . The race over , it was back to the van and some Bbq fish for lunch . Bowen has quite a few murals on buildings in the main street , here are a few .
Bowen's major industry is vegetables , so we drove out through the Don River valley to check it out. The drive was quite amazing , we passed a waterhole and I jumped on the brakes so I could take a photo -
There were hundreds & hundreds of Whistling Ducks - they are very social birds , normally in groups , but we've never seen this many in one spot before - and they were whistling & quacking away - it was quite loud !!
We continued on passing mango orchards , sweetcorn crops , tomatoes , chilli's , capsicum , pumpkins and quite a few others we didn't recognise . We got to the end of the road and found a track down to the river , and found river sand from one side to the other , only a small channel of water about 10m wide on the far side , only about 200mm deep . There were wheel tracks everywhere , people & farmers use it as access across the river . Getting out , we locked the hubs , selected 4wd and headed into the softish sand , it slowed us down and we stopped deciding whether to carry on or not . Selecting low range 4wd , we continued on to the edge of the water , checking the depth , we hit the water and cruised up the track back into the soft sand and then out onto a gravel track again . Job done , we unlocked the hubs and headed off like nothing had happened - it hadn't , we made it across easily .
Further up the track we found processing sheds , all seemed to be in use , one was processing sweetcorn - a semi trailer load of it !!
Back to the Bruce Hwy and across it , we drove around several more crop growing areas , more mango trees & tomatoes & capsicums . We crossed the river another 3 times , this time on rough tracks and causeways - no sand or water involved .
Back in Bowen , we went up to a water tower at Mt Nutt to check out the views -
If you're eating tomatoes & capsicums at the moment , chances are they are coming from here .
This is the view out to Queens Beach , the golf course is on the edge of the beach where the palm trees are .
We missed out on going to Rose Bay the other day , so that's where we headed . A nice beach facing Gloucester Island .
Rose Bay is at the end of King's Beach , here's another view of King's Beach .
Bowen has many options for lookouts , we have been to 4 of them in the last few days , here's the last we visited , the view is out over Muller's Lagoon .
That's it for today , here's a map link :- https://drive.google.com/open?id=1GzQ-XniO01i0UNRWVv7N1RgSAhU&usp=sharing
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