What is sweeter than sugar?

-

Is there anything sweeter than sugar?
Driving through North Queensland today, bound for Airlie Beach, the so called ‘Dry Tropics’ are not all dry. Having endured the driest November in a hundred years, most of the landscape is painfully parched. Dust seems to be the only outcome for a farmer ploughing her fields in the midday sun.
Approaching lunchtime, however, the picture changes in an instant. Brown is replaced by green. Water flows through deep channels. Pipes carry moisture into thirsty fields. The Burdekin Shire boasts wonderfully fertile irrigated land. Green acres as far as the eye can see, disappointingly, boasts just one crop, sugarcane.
There is one thing sweeter than sugar and that is water. The Burdekin is blessed with a vast underground aquifer that brings the land to life. The western diet is increasingly criticised for including too much sugar. Sadly, this incredibly fertile district, which could be producing vast amounts of nutritious food, is only satisfying our sweet tooth.
Thankfully there are also many, many mango trees. A quick stop at a roadside stall provides the juiciest, ripest, richest mango imaginable.
No big day on the road would be complete without encountering an Aussie big thing. Fortunately, it was the Big Mango not a big sugar cube.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Down, over and across- Tick!

-
Image
Down, over and across … Down -Cairns to Melbourne. Tick. Over -Bass Strait to Devonport. Tick Over- Bass Strait to Melbourne. Tick Turn Left. Tick Across – Victoria, SA and the Nullarbor to Perth – TICK. God is good and we arrived safely in Perth, 36 hours before Richard is due to start work. The Nullarbor, once the road was open, is quite a journey. The word Nullarbor means ‘no trees’ in Latin and at the start of the expansive plain, that is a fitting description, however we soon discover that the Nullarbor is actually quite a diverse landscape. Several things really surprised us. Firstly, much of the early part of the drive hugs the coast. Although it is not always obvious, the road is within a few kilometres and occasionally within a few hundred metres of the cliff tops of the Great Australian Bight. There are a several photo opportunities to view the Southern Ocean, but sadly we were so far behind schedule that we don’t stop but push through....
Read more

Hurry up and wait

-
Image
The news is that the Eyre Highway will open tomorrow, so we push forward to the Nullarbor Roadhouse at the start of the vast Nullarbor Plain.  Our powered site awaits us and looks a little like a dirt drive-in movie site without the big screen. There is a power connection, but no water. We have enough food and water for 4-5 days, we can pay $1 for a shower and they have plenty of fuel at $2.13 a litre. We set up next to the only tree, plan to survive the afternoon heat as it approaches 40 degrees, have a good sleep and set off west on the Eyre tomorrow as soon as it opens. The landscape is flat with low bushy vegetation in every direction, as far as the eye can see. In 1 865, Henry Kingsley wrote that the area across the Nullarbor and Great Australian Bight was a ‘hideous anomaly, a blot on the face of Nature, the sort of place one gets into in bad dreams ’. Modern science explains that the 200,000 square kilometre plain was once a giant sea bed now expos...
Read more

Uplift

-
Image
After seven and a half years Richard yesterday completed his eighth posting in the Navy. So tomorrow is uplift . Uplift is a word every ADF member knows too well. The packers arrive, the truck moves out and the road trip from Cairns begins. A road trip down, over and across. Down the east coast of Queensland, New South Wales, ACT and Victoria to catch up with four generations of Quadrios and Allertons. Over the blue waters of Bass Straight to Tasmania to have Christmas with family. Across Victoria to South Australia and then the Nullarbor to HMAS Stirling, Rockingham WA. We will share the driving. Wendy will be chief photographer. Join us vicariously on our journey as you follow our blog. All we need now is a bit of Bruce (Springsteen that is) to get us on the way!   The highway's jammed with broken heroes On a last chance power drive Everybody's out on the run tonight But there's no place left to hide Together, Wendy, we can live w...
Read more