The ever improving Bruce Highway provides a safe, easy drive to our beautiful Sunshine Coast.

The Elliott Fire Tower between Bundaberg and Childers built in 1970. It is now closed to the public.

Isis Central Mill where a family ancestor worked in the 1910s (CWD’s father). It is a run of the mill place.

Workers cottages at the Mill village where our ancestor and family resided.

Metal cutouts in Childers highlighting the sugar cane industry and the South Sea Islanders who were brought to Australia between 1863 and 1904 to work as indentured labourers in the primary industries. Over 50,000 people came from some 80 Pacific Islands, including Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands, and the majority were kidnapped or deceived into coming. Despite the hardship and discrimination, Australian South Sea Islanders have contributed significantly to the social, cultural and economic development of Queensland.

Torbanlea and its neighbouring town Howard are sited close to historic coal mines founded in 1876. The Miners Arms Hotel at Torbanlea is a remnant of that time. They came here to mine their own business.

Maryborough has pinned its tourism hopes on being the birthplace of the author of Mary Poppins. As a glowing endorsement, Pamela Travers left Maryborough when she was 3 and never returned.

The promise of a spoonful of sugar (or whatever white substance it was) lures nostalgic tourists off the highway to see this bronze statue of Mary about to fly high. There is also a museum dedicated to the writer’s works.

Mary’s late nights out resulted in ocular issues called Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle eye.

Sign at the Mary Poppins museum – I wasn’t expectorating this!

Even the walk signs at the traffic lights are poppin’ with colour.

Mary Poppins’ farmyard animals having a “Jolly Holiday” feature in the main street. People pat them a lot so in COVID times they have to use ham sanitiser.

Another of Mary Poppins’ farm animals – the owner of the luggage tried to sue the goat for the damage but he lost his case.

After saying Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious a few times we were starting to become overwhelmed by the experience and moved onto the park by the river.

Here was a beautiful historic rotunda…

…and beautiful gardens with a huge banyan fig, one of the largest in Australia. I thought it may have been bigger but that was just a figment of my imagination. This magnificent tree is thought to have been planted as early as the 1870s and was part of John Bidwill’s collection of trees. Bidwill was a botanist and has a number of tree species named after him e.g. bunya pine – Araucaria bidwilli.

There was a decent ANZAC memorial….

….and heritage listed buildings near the river.

The Bond Store built in 1864. Being a Sunday afternoon, Q was not at work.

Maryborough Post Office and Post Office Hotel- the large number of stately old buildings on show provided a very enjoyable walk around town.

Maryborough Town Hall

We were looking forward to visiting the Cistern Chapel – a toilet block that was refurbished this year on the side of the 120 year old Maryborough Town Hall – but is was closed. The vision was to create the best public toilet in Australia, maybe the world. Urine trouble if you make a mess here. They will bring in the squat team. From the picture above, this isn’t our favourite toilet in Australia but it’s a solid Number 2.

Before rejoining the highway, the owner of this service station at Tinana gave it his best shot with this eye-Poppin Big Ned Kelly showing that Australians should just focus on what they do best with the eclectic array of Big Things on offer across our great land.

Tiaro is famous for the longest traffic jams in a small Queensland country town, a good butcher and Mr T – a Mary River Turtle (“bum-breathing turtle”). Mr T tortoise everything we know about his local waterways.

Also gracing Tiaro’s main street (the highway) is Tiaro’s beastly bovine bestowed with a knighthood – “Sir Loin” – a prime cut if ever I saw one. If you invest in some of Sir Loin’s stocks, you could become a bouillonaire.

On the stretch of four-lane highway from Gympie is a newer Service Centre with an Aussie icon.

Matilda at the Puma Traveston – Matilda was the mascot of the 1982 Commonwealth Games held in Brisbane. She was built on top of a forklift, 13 metres tall and weighing six tonnes. The wink, wriggling ears and head turning was an exciting spectacle in 1982. I think the medal is for the Long Jump.

Our short Wide Bay-Burnett journey is over and we focus on our house renovations this week and hope to resume our travels after that.