Gympie days

Another weekend, another round of parkrun tourism, or so I hoped. This weekend’s plan was to get the Brisbane suburban train all the way to the end of the line in Gympie, stay overnight, do the Victory Heights trail parkrun in the morning and get the bus home (the train timetables did not align for a return by rail). So after over three hours of slow rattling we got into Gympie North station around lunchtime Friday. The weather was overcast with rain forecasted, as I found my nearby Airbnb and walked 3km into town. I crossed fingers the parkrun would not be cancelled.

On the way, I passed Gympie station, which is prettier than the functional Gympie North and much closer to town, but is sadly no longer on the main line. A station first opened here in 1881 to connect Gympie’s goldfields with the port of Maryborough and within 10 years there was a connection to Brisbane. The current building, designed in Pagoda style with multiple layered eaves, dates to 1913 and is the largest timber railway station in Queensland. Gympie’s station became neglected with the rise of car travel and in 1989 Queensland Rail built Gympie North in an 8km diversion on the newly electrified Brisbane-Rockhampton route. Freight stopped coming through Gympie by 1995. The station got a new lease of life in 1998 when QR leased it to the Mary Valley Heritage Railway. The Valley Rattler steam train now plies the route to Amamoor.

Gold was first found 4km south of Gympie in 1867 and Scottish prospector William Ferguson named the area Monkland for a locality west of Glasgow. By 1873, there were shops and four hotels to serve the goldrush and the railway station was added in 1889 on the Brisbane line. Like Gympie station, it was bypassed a century later though the Valley Rattler still trundles through.

Goldrush memories are preserved in the nearby Gympie Gold Mining and Historical Museum. The tagline outside reads “the town that saved Queensland” and that’s not too much of an exaggeration. When Queensland left New South Wales in 1859, the parent colony took the treasury leaving the northerners broke. Unemployment was high, railway works had stopped, and the Bank of Queensland failed, leaving the new colony to survive in hand-to-mouth fashion. Then the Brisbane Courier announced in 1867 the discovery of gold at “Gympy Creek”. Prospectors poured into the region and found large deposits of gold. Within 12 months, Gympie had 30,000 people. Queensland’s unemployment problem vanished overnight.

The Upper Mary River goldfield was officially proclaimed in 1867 in a 25 square mile radius. But the finds were so good, the radius was expanded to 120 square miles in 1877. By then the alluvial gold was exhausted. Shallow and deep reef mining commenced and by 1881 intensive gold mining marked a new era of wealth and prosperity. While payable gold ran out by the 1920s, there is still a fossicking area nearby. The museum’s No 2 South Great Eastern shaft is accessible via a reconstructed gantry. It contains an operational boiler house and steam powered winding engine, air compressor, generator and anciliary machinery.

The museum also features exhibits from the timber industry, dairy, agriculture, gems, transport, and military and social history including the relocated cottage of early Australian prime minister Andrew Fisher. Fisher, aged 10, came to Australia with his Scottish family during Queensland’s goldrush. He moved to Gympie in 1888, worked in the mines and was a trade unionist and Labor party activist. He help found the Gympie cooperative, and in 1891 became secretary of the Gympie Joint Labour Committee. He was elected to Queensland’s assembly as the member for Gympie before winning the seat of Wide Bay in the first federal election in 1901. He became Labor leader in 1905 and served three terms as prime minister in 1908-09, 1910-13 and 1914-15.

Near the museum is Lake Alford, an important bird sanctuary, named for neighbour Frank “Tiny” Alford (nicknamed in Australian fashion because he was very tall) who helped develop the park. This was a swampy area which Gympie Council drained and filled with water. The lake is home to numerous bird species. The signature black swans (Cygnus atratus) are completely black except for the red bill and white flight feathers on their wings while chicks are light grey.

I wandered down a wet track to the Mary River. The river rises at Booroobin west of Landsborough and flows north through Gympie and Maryborough before emptying into the Great Sandy Strait near Fraser Island. The river was important to the Gubbi Gubbi people who called it “Moocooboola” (not to be confused with Mooloolaba which has a different root). The Gubbi Gubbi named a tributary creek for the gimpi-gimpi, the fearsome stinging tree found across the region. Europeans encroached onto Gubbi Gubbi lands in 1842 and found what they called the Wide Bay River. Five years later NSW governor Charles FitzRoy renamed it for his wife Mary. Settlers were attracted to the rich cedar which they threw into the river and exported to Sydney via Maryborough. After gold transformed the region, the Gubbi Gubbi were reduced by massacres and disease and were eventually forced into reservations at Fraser Island and Cherbourg.

The first Gympie Volunteer Fire Brigade was formed in 1876 but lapsed before re-forming in 1901 with a fire station built in 1902. The current magnificent brick and concrete fire station dates to 1940. The station is believed to be haunted by the ghost of a fireman who died in a fall from the lookout on the tower in 1943. In 2023 the state government announced plans to build a new station south of town.

Gympie was gazetted as a town on January 26, 1880 and a reserve for a town hall was soon created. The original town hall and clock tower dates from 1890 and witnessed the creation of Gympie city in 1905. As gold production declined, Gympie transformed into an agricultural service centre. The building received a makeover in 1939 with a post office and reception hall added. It was heritage listed in 2011 for its original structure representing the importance of a highly profitable gold mining town and its 1930s extension reflecting Gympie’s evolution as the service town of an important dairy and agricultural district.

The town centre winds its way up from the river along flood-prone Mary Street. The Cullinane brothers started a drapery business in 1868, a year after the town was founded. They established a large presence on both sides of the street selling everything from dress material and accessories to china, linen and household goods. Gympie’s worst flood was in 1893 with a peak of 25.45 metres, inundating many businesses to the rooftops in lower Mary Street. On November 6, 1939 Cullinanes’ store burnt down with damage estimated at £60,000.

The influx of money and yield of gold was reflected in the redevelopment of upper Mary Street during the 1880s and 1890s. Derry-born architect Richard Gailey built the neo-classical Bank of New South Wales in 1890–1891 to replace a branch on the goldfields. In 1940 the bank sold the building to Widgee Shire Council which administered the rural area around Gympie. In 1993, Widgee amalgamated with the city of Gympie and the building became the Cooloola Shire Council Chambers. In 2008, Cooloola, Kilkivan and part of Tiaro were amalgamated into Gympie Regional Council. The building is now the Gympie Regional Council Chambers. It is heritage listed as “physical evidence of the evolution of Gympie gold mining, a major contributor to the wealth of Queensland”.

Around the corner on Channon St is the original courthouse and now home to the Australian Institute of Country Music. Irish-born Henry Edward King was appointed gold commissioner for Wide Bay in 1867 and conducted business on the Gympie goldfields until a Court of Petty Sessions was established in 1868. A new court was erected on Channon St in 1876 and it became the land office when the court house moved up the road in 1893. It continued to be used by state departments until 2002 when Cooloola Shire took it over and made the building available to the AICM.

Across the road is the old bank building. The Queensland National Bank established a timber branch here in 1872, and enjoyed the gold bonanza, purchasing over 6000 ounces in its first three weeks. Three years later the current brick building was erected. When Gympie’s commercial centre moved to eastern Mary St the bank sold the building. It was used by industries until Widgee Council bought it in 1990. It is now used as council offices.

Further up Channon St is the new courthouse. In the 1890s local MP Andrew Fisher pushed for a larger replacement to the old courthouse. In 1900 colonial architect Alfred Barton Brady, who designed Brisbane’s old Victoria Bridge, selected the site and commissioned fellow architect John Smith Murdoch to design the building in Federation Free style. The building was designed to be seen from across town and the clock tower dominated the landscape. It has been heritage listed as a significant landmark with high quality design and workmanship.

Gympie’s third important colonial-era bank building is the Royal Bank of Queensland. A great fire in 1891 destroyed many timber buildings on Mary St and this neoclassical single-storey building was one of many permanent structures erected the following year. The Royal Bank was established to help Queensland farming and mining investors who could not get loans with other banks. In 1922 the Royal merged with the Bank of Northern Queensland to become the Bank of Queensland and then merged with the National Australia Bank in 1948. NAB closed this branch in 1979 and it became commercial premises, and offices for the Gympie Muster. It is heritage listed as a “good example of a masonry structure in a classical style”.

The following morning I went out to Victory Heights Trail Network, which comprises 60 hectares of eucalypt forest and 25km of mountain biking trails. It also hosts Gympie’s parkrun. While Saturday was perfect for running, the damage had already been done and Gympie Regional Council asked organisers to cancel it to give the course time to dry out. I sadly trudged the 3km back to town to get my bus home.

I had breakfast at a Mary Street cafe and admired the nearby “Lady of the Mary” statue. The statue honours British aristocrat Lady Mary Fitzroy, who moved to Australia when her husband Charles Fitzroy was made governor of NSW in 1846. In 1847 Fitzroy renamed the Wide Bay River and Maryborough in her honour. A few months later, Lady Mary was killed in a carriage accident in Sydney. The 2017 statue imagines her dipping her feet in the Mary river, which she never saw.

The parkrun cancellation gave me more walking time and I checked out St Patrick’s Church. Many Irish Catholics joined the Gympie gold rush and priests followed them, with the first Mass in the new town in 1868. Gympie’s early churches were basic affairs until the massive sandstone St Patrick’s was constructed on a prominent spot on Calton Hill in 1883. The architect was prolific Scottish-born government architect Francis Drummond Greville Stanley, who also built Brisbane’s GPO, Roma St station, Toowoomba’s courthouse and post office, and some of Charters Towers’ grand buildings. Queensland’s first Catholic archbishop Robert Dunne officially opened St Patrick’s in 1887. It is heritage listed as a good example of 1880s church architecture, “influenced by Gothic revival styles and of the ecclesiastical work of the prominent Queensland architect, FDG Stanley.”

It is appropriate that a city associated with country music was once called Nashville. A Memorial Park monument celebrates Wiltshire-born James Nash “who discovered the Gympie Goldfield 16th October 1867.” Nash emigrated to Sydney aged 23 and became a labourer and NSW gold prospector. Nash moved to Calliope, Queensland in 1863 then to Nanango. He was attracted by the news of a £3000 government reward for a new gold field, and set off from Nanango to Gladstone. As he came down from Imbil, he thought the Mary River might be payable. Nash found quantities of gold and reported his findings in Maryborough. Within a month, the port town was full of excited prospectors “off to the diggings” at what was soon dubbed “Nashville, Gympie Creek”. However the miserly colonial government haggled with Nash before granting only £1000 after twelve months’ debate while the field quickly shed his name and became Gympie. Though Nash and his brother earned £7000 from their claims, they lost their winnings in poorly-performing mining stock and an ill-fated drapery store. The government finally helped the near penniless Nash in 1888 it made him the local powder-magazine keeper at £100 a year. He died in 1913 in Gympie, aged 79, suffering from bronchitis and asthma.

The bus back to Brisbane stopped at a service station in Traveston, 20 minutes south of town. In the car park was a glorious piece of 1980s Queensland kitsch. The 13-metre-tall Matilda was the kangaroo mascot for the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane. Matilda became a favourite when she was wheeled into the opening ceremony, turned her head, wiggled her ears and winked at the crowd. In 1984 Matilda was placed alongside the Pacific Highway at Wet N Wild, Oxenford. Matilda Fuel Services bought the namesake kangaroo in 2009 for their Tugun outlet but the massive marsupial breached Gold Coast planning regulations. The owners moved her to another travel centre at Kybong, 20km south of Gympie. Anticipating the Gympie bypass, the Traveston Service Centre was opened 5km away in 2020 and Matilda made the short hop south down the Bruce Hwy. She gave me a sly wink before sending me on my way home.

Toowoomba days

Once a month I try to attend a new parkrun venue. The original idea for March was a train to the Sunshine Coast and cycle to Caloundra for an ocean swim before doing the run on Saturday morning. However early in the week, my bike played up and the bottom bracket broke, a part my local shop said would take a fortnight to get. Cooling my heels I decided on plan B, a bus to Toowoomba for a run in the Garden City. And so an hour and a half after leaving Roma St station we were trundling up the range 700 metres above sea level, on the road shown below. Toowoomba was a few minutes away at the top of the hill. This was the main Warrego Highway west until the Toowoomba bypass was built to the north in 2018.

Emerging from Neil Street bus station on a gorgeous Friday afternoon I pass by the heritage-listed old court house. As the sign on this classical building states this was Toowoomba’s court house between 1878 and 1979. Toowoomba was surveyed in 1852 as a replacement for the settlement of Drayton as it was closer to the edge of the range. Toowoomba is thought to be named either after a property in the area in the 1850s, or from an Aboriginal word meaning “place where water sits” or “place of melon” or “place where reeds grow” or “berries place” or “white man”. Whichever it was, Toowoomba became the main town on the Darling Downs when Queensland became a colony in 1859. A small court opened in Margaret St in 1863 but wealthy Downs citizens commissioned this imposing replacement of locally-quarried stone in 1876 designed by prolific Scottish-born government architect Francis Drummond Greville Stanley, who was also responsible for Brisbane’s GPO, Roma St station and some of Charters Towers’ grand buildings. When Toowoomba’s court moved to a new building in 1979, it was used as government buildings before being sold privately in 2000.

Nearby is Toowoomba’s former post office. The post office was also designed by Stanley in classical revival style and complements the Court House in form and material. The post office opened in 1880 as a major staging point on the intercolonial telegraph and operated for 120 years before Australia Post moved to a new building in 1999. It functions now as a cafe and offices.

The third major heritage-listed building in the Margaret-Neil St precinct is Toowoomba’s police headquarters. This Raymond Nowland designed-building is of later vintage than the other two, dating to 1935, replacing an earlier timber structure. There are four parts to the complex: a police station, garage, watch house and keeper’s residence. The Heritage Register says the impressive form is indicative of Toowoomba’s importance as “Queensland’s second city in the urban hierarchy of the state.”

I decided on a long walk from the city to Picnic Point. I passed Queens Park where I would be doing the parkrun in the morning. The 25-hectare park was gazetted as a public reserve in 1869.

I then took the long walkway besides East Creek. There are a number of parks along the creek, all with unimaginative numerical names. Below is East Creek Park 2 between Margaret and Herries St, a pretty and popular lunch destination for city workers with barbecue and picnic facilities. The park is the start of the East Creek cycle route to Spring St, Middle Ridge.

A feature of Park 2 is the Mothers Memorial Garden. The Mothers` Memorial (rear of image below) was the site of military recruitment during the First World War and where Toowoomba’s Anzac Day commemoration has been held since 1916. After the war bereaved mothers sold flowers to raise funds for a Mothers’ Memorial which was originally at the corner of Margaret and Ruthven St in 1922. Calls to move it away from its busy location began in the 1960s and after much controversy it was moved to its present peaceful location in 1985. The trachyte stone memorial is unique in Queensland.

I followed the East Creek path to Long St then diverted up the hill to Picnic Point. These lovely parklands are at the top of the range looking east towards the Lockyer Valley. It is the home of many native birds including the red-browed finch, striated pardalote and pale-headed rosella.

Carnival Falls is an artificial waterfall below the Bill Gould lookout (where the first photo in this blogpost was taken). A bluestone quarry was established here in 1890 to provide stone for roads and buildings including the post office and court house. The quarry closed by the 1940s. The Carnival of Flowers Association built the falls in 1965 in the disused quarry as a planned beautification to attract more carnival visitors. Nearby a Camera Obscura was erected in 1967 with two six-inch lenses offering views of the city and the valley below. It was closed in 1990 and demolished three years later.

Along the path are markers for a scaled model of the solar system. I first spotted Neptune (4.4 billion kms from the sun) and gradually passed most of the remaining inner planets in the next few kilometres. The only sign I missed was the one for Uranus. Perhaps the model had taken Neptune’s elliptical orbit into consideration and Uranus was hidden somewhere beyond it. The marker for Mars (213 million kms from the sun) was just around the corner from Earth, Venus, Mercury and the sun.

Below is the view from the Tobruk Memorial Drive Lookout. On the right is Sugar Loaf and left centre is Table Top Mountain. Over millions of years Table Top eroded leaving only the flat-topped basalt plug and scree slopes. Local tribes knew the mountain as Meewah and in 1840 a white land overseer shot dead Aboriginal men dancing on the mountain peak. The incident unleashed attacks between white and black. By 1843 an alliance of south-east Queensland tribes tried to starve white colonists out. Multuggerah led 100 warriors to ambush a convoy of drays up the Range from Grantham. Angry settlers followed them to Table Top but wandered into a trap of hurled boulders and stones in what became known as the Battle of One Tree Hill. Clashes persisted until 1850 when superior weaponry and the introduction of native police turned the tide.

Walking back to town, I diverted again to Queen’s Park’s Botanic Gardens. Every September the gardens are a centrepiece of internationally renowned Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers. Each year, thousands of seedlings are planted in attractive geometric-shaped garden beds to ensure their blooms peak in time for the Carnival.

A short walk from the Botanic Gardens is “Whyembah” on Campbell St, Toowoomba’s “Grand Lady”. Built around 1896 for commercial traveller John Rosser, the weatherboard house is heritage-listed because it “demonstrates the principal characteristics of an 1890s ornate timber house in Toowoomba”. Rosser was a first class cricketer for Victoria in the 1880s. He also enjoyed lawn bowls and installed a bowling green on the property, though this is now long gone. Rosser died in 1925 and his widow Margaret continued to live there until her death in the 1940s.

As the evening closed in, I passed more heritage-listed buildings. The Strand Theatre on Margaret St was built as a cinema in 1915. Toowoomba councillor James Newman commissioned Brisbane architect George Addison to build it on the site of picture gardens. The American-derived design with its large semi-circular glazed arch was similar to cinemas from the same era in Brisbane and Melbourne though the top level was designed as additional accommodation for Newman’s next door Crown Hotel. Pioneering movie exhibitor Mary Stuart “Señora” Spencer (billed as “The Only Lady Cinematograph Artist in the World”) leased the theatre and named it the Strand like her theatres in Brisbane and Newcastle. The April 5, 1916 Darling Downs said “SEÑORA SPENCER seeing no reason to doubt that the high class features, style, and novelty, that characterise the enormously successful Cinematograph Exhibitions conducted by her at the Strand Theatre, Brisbane, would prove immensely popular with the Toowoomba public.” Though Spencer sold up in 1918, the Strand flourished through the golden age of cinema and still shows movies. Its heritage listing hails its demonstration of “the emergence of cinema as a 20th-century social phenomenon.”

On Neil St is the art deco Empire Theatre. Like the Strand, the Empire was built as a cinema by Brisbane entertainment promoter EJ Carroll in 1911. Although destroyed by fire, substantial sections were included in the 1933 rebuild. Brisbane’s TR Hall & LB Phillips was architect for the new building which accommodated 2500 people, the second largest venue in Queensland. The cinema declined with the advent of television and the local council bought it in 1997 and restored it as a performing arts venue. Its heritage listing calls it “rare and important evidence of the increasingly sophisticated expectations of interwar cinema audiences”.

St Luke’s Anglican Church on Herries St is another heritage-listed building. A primitive church was established on the site in 1857 as Toowoomba began to replace Drayton as the leading town on the Downs. The foundation stone for the current bluestone structure was laid in 1895 and the church opened two years later. St Luke’s was designed in traditional Gothic revival style though it took several phases to complete. A stained glass window is a replica of one at Chartres Cathedral and the church retains a magnificent Norman and Beard pipe organ from 1907. The heritage listing hails St Luke’s as a major work of 19th century English-born ecclesiastical architect John Hingeston Buckeridge, who built 60 churches in Queensland.

The first elected Toowoomba Council in 1861 petitioned the new colony of Queensland for a land grant to build a town hall, originally on the corner of James and Neil Sts. The city expanded greatly that decade with the arrival of the railway from Brisbane and the founding of the Chronicle newspaper. In 1898 the School of Arts on Ruthven St burned down and Council hired English architect Willoughby Powell to design a new city hall on the site in 1900. The new building also incorporated a school of arts, a technical college and a theatre. It opened late that year with the clock added in 1901, which remains a focal point of Ruthven St. The building was heritage listed in the 1990s as its “generous size and grand character provide evidence of the prosperity and importance of Toowoomba as a major regional centre at the turn of the century.”

The White Horse Hotel on Ruthven St is also heritage-listed. The July 7, 1866 Chronicle reported that the hotel “lately opened by worthy Boniface Daniel Donovan” was “capacious” with 19 rooms and built of brick on stone foundations. The hotel changed hands a number of times and in 1912 new owners decided on an ornately detailed rebuild including a new facade and remodelled wings. The pub closed in 1986 and the ground floor is now shops. Its heritage listing promotes its importance as an early 20th century hotel, “in particular the flamboyant facade and interior elements such as the main stair, pressed metal ceilings, doorways, and fanlight.”

I was up early on Saturday morning for my run. I wandered across to Queen’s Park, just 10 minutes away, accompanied only by occasional pedestrians and four-legged friends.

There were a lot more people at the Margaret St end where the parkrun begins. Toowoomba is one of the biggest parkruns in the world and there were over 800 participants the prior week. For reasons unknown, there were a “mere” 550 runners this week but it still made for a crowded start line.

The course is two laps around the park, including the scenic Botanic Gardens. My efforts in my 217th parkrun and 93rd course were captured in this grimacing photo as I cross the finish line in a time of 24:30. Having freshened up and then enjoyed breakfast, I went to the station to get the bus down the range to Brisbane. But I’ll be back. T-Bar has plenty to offer – not least two other parkrun courses to conquer.

Melbourne Days

It had been 10 years since I was last in Melbourne and I had an excuse with a COVID-era flight credit that was about to expire. The grid of streets that is now central Melbourne was laid out by surveyor Robert Hoddle in 1837 and are perfect for the wonderful tram network that Melbourne hung onto with prescience while Sydney and Brisbane ditched theirs in the 1950s.

The state parliament in Spring St has always been an important spot for protesters. Palestinian flags were plentiful as anger continues over the Israeli army incursion into Gaza. Many of Melbourne’s great buildings were funded by the 1850s gold rush including neoclassical Parliament House. Built in stages from 1855, the grand front entry stairs was not completed until 1889. A proposal to add a dome was abandoned during the 1890s depression. It was the home of Australia’s federal parliament from its beginning in 1901 until old parliament house was constructed in Canberra in 1927. During this time the Victorian parliament moved to the Exhibition building before returning home in 1928.

Almost directly across Spring St is Princess Theatre, of similar vintage. The original building served gold rush audiences but was demolished in 1885 to make way for the current structure, built in Second Empire (Napoleon III) style. The new theatre opened in December 1886 with a performance of the Mikado, the Age noting that the stage could be seen perfectly from anywhere in the venue. The theatre was a “revelation of artistic possibilities, of luxury and loveliness, in which everything is complete, even to the smallest detail, and forms a tout ensemble having hardly any equal in the world.”

During empire days, Melbourne had little time for Aboriginal people, who were banished to remote settlements like Coranderrk near Healesville and Cummeragunga on the Murray. Douglas and Gladys Nicholls were born in Cummeragunga in 1906. Doug was the pastor of Australia’s first Aboriginal Church of Christ in Fitzroy and in 1957 worked for the Aboriginal Advancement League. Gladys married his brother Howard and after Howard’s death in 1942 she married Doug. She became secretary of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Council and Victorian state president in the 1970s. They were prominent campaigners for Indigenous rights and justice, and the 2007 monument in Parliament Gardens was the first memorial sculpture in Melbourne dedicated to Aboriginal leaders.

Behind Parliament Gardens is the magnificent St Patrick’s Cathedral, the tallest and largest church in Australia. Melbourne’s first Catholic bishop James Goold started construction here in 1851 but it was not far advanced when Goold hired architect William Wardell in 1858. Wardell designed a Gothic structure which remained incomplete when the cathedral was finally consecrated in 1897. In the foreground is a statue of Irish Liberator Daniel O’Connell. Catholic Melburnians wanted to place this 1891 bronze tribute in a prominent position in the city but had to put it on cathedral grounds due to opposition from the city’s Protestant majority.

Another prominent Irish Daniel celebrated in a statue on Cathedral grounds is Daniel Mannix, archbishop of Melbourne for almost half a century. Mannix, who became archbishop in 1917, was determined to finish the cathedral and oversaw the addition of the spires which were taller than Wardell’s design. The cathedral was officially completed in 1939. Born in Co Cork in 1864, Mannix was educated at Maynooth and moved to Melbourne in 1912 as coadjutor bishop. He opposed the First World War and became a thorn in prime minister Billy Hughes’ side. Mannix led the campaign against conscription in two referendums in 1916 and 1917 and the exasperated Hughes considered deporting him. By war’s end Mannix was the established leader of Irish Australian Catholics. British authorities banned him from visiting Ireland in 1920 during the War of Independence. He played an active role in national politics until his 90s. He died in 1963 aged 99 and was buried in the crypt at St Patrick’s.

A short walk north is the Carlton Gardens with the centrepiece Royal Exhibition Building. Cornish-born architect Joseph Reed designed the building drawing on many international styles with the dome inspired by Florence’s cathedral. It opened in 1880 to host the six-month-long Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880–81, a “palace of industry” showing worldwide innovations such as electric lights, lawnmowers and typewriters. It hosted the Centennial International Exhibition in 1888, and was the site of the formal opening of the first federal parliament in 1901 before it moved to Spring St. It was briefly used as a hospital during the 1919 flu pandemic and fell into disrepair, narrowly avoiding demolition in 1948. It hosted basketball and other events in the 1956 Olympics and was used for dances and an exam venue. In 2004 it was the first building in Australia to be awarded UNESCO World Heritage status, as one of the last remaining major 19th-century exhibition buildings in the world. It remains in use as an exhibition venue and was a mass vaccination centre during COVID.

Across the road from Melbourne’s Trades Hall is a monument commemorating the Eight Hours Movement which began in gold rush Victoria. On February 26, 1856, James Galloway of the Eight Hours League convinced a meeting of employers and employees to begin implementing the eight hour day. A public holiday was declared and was celebrated annually with processions until 1951. Processions carried banners with intertwined numbers ‘888’ representing English Socialist Robert Owen’s ideal that the workers were fighting for: “8 Hours Work, 8 Hours Recreation, 8 Hours Rest”. The monument with the 888s under a sphere representing the world was unveiled in 1903 in Spring St. It was moved to its current location on Russell and Victoria in 1924.

A jail has been on the Russell St site of Old Melbourne Gaol museum since 1841 and the current building gradually grew during the gold rush era. By completion in 1864 it commanded a whole city block and was one of Melbourne’s most prominent buildings. The most famous of its many executions was that of Ned Kelly in 1880. In 2008 Kelly was one of 32 victims of the gallows uncovered in a mass grave at Pentridge prison in Coburg. Even by Kelly’s time, the Gaol was regarded as a relic of the past and gradually closed down between 1880 and 1924. It was used as part of an education college and again as a military prison during the Second World War. In 1972, it was reopened as a museum, under National Trust management.

The Irishman who sentenced Kelly to death is honoured outside the State Library of Victoria on Swanston St. Co Cork-born Protestant Redmond Barry (no relation) sailed to Sydney after his father’s death in 1837 and was admitted to the NSW bar. He moved to Melbourne in 1839. In 1852, Barry was appointed Supreme Court judge and was instrumental in the foundation of the Royal Melbourne Hospital (1848), the University of Melbourne (1853), and the State Library of Victoria (1854), Australia’s oldest public library. Joseph Reed, who later designed the Exhibition Building, was the architect for the library, built in multiple stages. The Barry statue was added to the forecourt in 1887. Barry died of “congestion of the lungs and a carbuncle in the neck” in November 1880, outliving Kelly by just 12 days.

Melbourne Town Hall, further down Swanston St, was built the same year as Barry’s monument. It is another Joseph Reed building, completed in 1870 on the site of an older town hall and it was rebuilt and enlarged after a major fire in 1925. The building is topped by Prince Alfred’s Tower, named after the Duke of Edinburgh who laid the foundation stone in 1867. Alfred was Victoria’s eldest son but never became king, dying nine years before her.

Melbourne’s most recognisable landmark is Flinders St station. The second busiest station in the country after Sydney’s Central Station, Flinders St has been a railway hub since 1854 when it was the terminus for Australia’s first railway to Port Melbourne. However the signature building that dominates the landscape has only been in place since the 20th century. Two railway employees came up with the architectural design which won a competition in 1899. Work did not begin until 1905 with the dome added a year later. It was officially opened in 1910. The distinctive clocks showing train departure times pre-date the building. The English clocks adorned the old building in the 1860s and were placed into storage when the old station was demolished in 1904 before being reinstalled in the new station. Though popular with the public, there were plans to demolish the building as part of major renovations until it was protected by the National Trust in 1982. A new Town Hall rapid transit station will open across the road in 2025.

Diagonally opposite Flinders St station is the Anglican St Paul’s Cathedral. English Gothic Revival architect William Butterfield designed and completed the building in 1891, except for the darker Sydney sandstone spires added between 1926-32. Melbourne’s first Christian service was held on this site in 1835 and St Paul’s church was built here in 1852. The city’s cathedral was St James at William and Little Collins Sts. The diocese commissioned Butterfield to build a new cathedral with the foundation stone laid in 1880. When Butterfield resigned after a dispute in 1884 the diocese turned to the dependable Joseph Reed to finish the job. After the central spire was added in 1932 St Paul’s was the tallest building in Melbourne until the arrival of the skyscrapers.

The Moorish revival Forum Theatre on Flinders St was built in 1929, just before the Great Depression. American architect John Eberson designed the heritage-listed building as a cinema in his “atmospheric theatre” style to evoke the sense of being outdoors. It had a huge organ which was transported from the wharf to the theatre in 27 trucks, each bearing a large notice announcing that it contained the Wurlitzer organ for the theatre. They were unloaded together in Flinders St causing traffic chaos. The resulting Melbourne council fines were small change compared to the profits from the huge publicity of the installation. After the 1960s the Forum was used for religious services before being restored as a music venue in the 1990s.

The centrepiece of the Melbourne Arts Centre complex is its spire, one of Melbourne’s three great symbols along with Flinders St station and the MCG. Melbourne architect Roy Grounds designed the arts centre master plan, including a 115m tall copper spire in 1960. The building proved complex due to the geology of the site. After the gallery and theatres were built in the 1970s a lattice-shaped spire was erected in 1981. During the nineties severe deterioration meant the spire was demolished and reconstructed to Roy Grounds’ original design using new technology and lighting. The new spire is 162m tall and is illuminated with 6600m of optic fibre tubing, 150m of neon tubing and 14,000 incandescent lamps.

After checking into my hotel I went for an 8km run along the river and the Tan Track before taking in the Shrine of Remembrance on St Kilda Rd. In 1918 there was a desire to commemorate the 19,000 Victorians who died in the First World War. After an 1923 competition, war veteran architects Phillip Hudson and James Wardrop designed the Shrine based on the Tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus and the Parthenon in Athens with a ziggurat roof inspired by the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates. War hero John Monash led the fundraising for the monument but died in 1931, three years before its completion. A third of Melbourne’s population attended the opening on 1934’s Remembrance Day. The wide forecourt expanse of stone was added to commemorate the Second World War dead and a Remembrance Garden was added in 1985 to honour later conflicts.

After a day of walking and running, it was time to relax and I headed to the Mitre Tavern to meet friends for dinner. Less than five years after Melbourne was founded, a house was built on the corner of Collins St and Bank Place. The two-storey structure was a residence for 28 years before becoming the Mitre Tavern in 1868, likely named after the historic Ye Old Mitre in London. The pub was the haunt of hunting and coursing men and Victoria’s first polo club, established in 1874, held meetings at the Mitre under Redmond Barry’s presidency. Barry also started a tradition of the legal fraternity supping at the Tavern which continues to this day. Melbourne City Council documents the pub as its oldest building.

The following morning I was walking again, first past Melbourne’s former General Post Office on the corner of Elizabeth and Bourke. Though no longer used as a post office, the GPO remains the official centre of Melbourne with all distances measured from it. A post office first adorned this site in 1841 and a design for a new building was released in 1861. Construction of the two-level Renaissance Revival building began with Brunswick bluestone and Tasmanian sandstone and a third level with an ornate clock tower was added 20 years later. The building was converted to a fashion precinct in 2001, taken over by H&M in 2014.

I went for a long walk along the Yarra River towards Hawthorn. The river was the life source and an important meeting place for the Wurundjeri people who called it Birrarung, meaning “ever-flowing”. They camped on riverbanks and accessed yam daisies, eels, fish, mussels and waterfowl. European settlers quickly understood the Yarra’s importance with John Batman negotiating a “treaty” for use of adjacent lands with Melbourne established on the lower banks in 1835. Migrant tent cities lined the Yarra during the early years of the gold rush and upper reaches were extensively mined. The West Melbourne Swamp was widened in the late 19th century, to make way for docks as the port expanded. The city reaches are now the domain of pleasure crafts and rowers.

On a cool Saturday morning I went to Jells Park in the eastern suburbs for an obligatory parkun. Jells Park is in Dandenong Valley Parklands, a network of parks running along Dandenong Creek in Wurundjeri country, though it is named for cattle grazier Joseph Jell who worked here in the mid-late 1800s. The park brought back strong memories of when I lived in Melbourne in the early 1990s when we would take our then baby first daughter (now in her 30s) for a walk to the human-made Jells Lake.

Afterwards I caught up with friends and then got the train back to town. I walked through parklands to Jolimont, home of the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The MCG is the third building in Melbourne’s holy trinity of icons and one of the most famous sporting venues in the world. I’ve attended many an Aussie Rules and cricket game here but my most traumatic memory is being among the 100,000 for the 1997 Australia v Iran football world cup qualifier in which Australia was coasting to victory until some idiot invaded the field and broke the crossbar. Afterwards Iran came back to draw 2-2 and qualify for the 1998 finals. The monument below celebrates Australian cricketer Dennis Lillee. The Western Australian was probably Australia’s greatest ever fast bowler and was feted every time he walked onto the ‘G, especially in the Centenary Test of 1977, when he took 11 wickets to help Australia defeat England by 45 runs.

Nearby Fitzroy Gardens hosts one of Melbourne’s odder features: the Captain Cook Cottage. Cook never visited Victoria yet Melbourne ended up with a North Yorkshire cottage named for him. The story began in June 1933 when a newspaper article said the Great Ayton cottage where Cook “always went in the intervals between his voyages to the South Seas” was for sale. Melbourne man Hermon Gill visited the cottage in 1929 and proposed that the cottage should be bought and re-erected in Melbourne as the perfect birthday gift for the city’s centenary in 1935. The cottage was packed into 253 cases and 40 barrels, the bricks and stones numbered, and the door head encased in protective concrete. They even took cuttings of ivy from the walls of the home, which were replanted in Melbourne. The connection to Cook is tenuous. He never lived here and it is merely “possible” that he stayed there when he visited Great Ayton in 1772.

The weather was gorgeous on Sunday morning for a long walk to St Kilda along the beachfront. The wide horseshoe-shaped expanse of Port Phillip empties into Bass Strait via the narrow channel of The Rip. Port Phillip formed at the end of the last Ice Age 7000 years ago when the sea-level rose to drown the river plains, wetlands and lakes in the lower reaches of the Yarra. Cherished by native people for its rich seafood, seals and penguins, the bay was not discovered by Europeans until 1802 and was initially named Port King for Sydney’s governor until King renamed it for the First Fleet commander. The eastern side has sandy beaches and as Melbourne prospered, its wealthy classes discovered recreational uses of Port Phillip and established bayside suburbs such as St Kilda and Brighton. Beach volleyball and kite surfing are popular especially on sunny days.

I met friends for coffee and cake on Acland St, St Kilda. In 1834 British politician and philanthropist Sir Thomas Dyke Acland bought a schooner, the Lady of St Kilda, named for the Scottish island he visited many years earlier. In the 1840s the schooner visited Melbourne frequently under master James Ross Lawrence, and moored off what became known as the “St Kilda foreshore”. Lawrence bought the first block in the newly named suburb which contained three roads, Lawrence naming one of them for his old patron Acland, and the other two Fitzroy St and the Esplanade.

The Esplanade is now famously associated with the pub of that name. Four years ago artist Scott Marsh painted this mural of musician Paul Kelly on the side of the Esplanade pub where Kelly has performed many times over the past two decades. Kelly was born and raised in Adelaide but settled in Melbourne in 1976. Kelly recorded tracks for Live at the Continental and the Esplanade (1996) in the Espy hotel’s Gershwin Room.

On the walk back to town, I followed the course of another Melbourne parkrun at Albert Park Lake whose perimeter track is conveniently 5km long. The area was part of the original Yarra delta with lagoons and wetlands and was a corroboree site. After white settlers drained the river, the area became parkland and was officially proclaimed a public park in 1864, named in honour of Queen Victoria’s husband who died three years earlier. The lake was created in 1880 and topped up with diverted Yarra water 10 years later. Albert Park is a sports precinct for motor racing, sailing, golf, and of course, running. It is also an important grassy wetland habitat for 200 bird species, including the signature black swans

I diverted back to the Shrine of Remembrance, this time heading up to its rooftop viewing spot. It was as close as I got to Government House, the King’s Domain home of the Governor of Victoria. Built in Italianate style by St Patrick’s cathedral designer William Wardell in the 1870s, Government House resembles Osborne House, Queens Victoria’s summer home on the Isle of Wight, constructed in stucco-rendered brick on a bluestone foundation. The tower provides a central focus for the three sections: the State Apartments, the Private Apartments and the Ballroom. When Melbourne became Australia’s unofficial capital in 1901 it also housed the Governor-General until the move to Yarralumla in 1930. It remains the largest residential building in Australia.

Exhausted after a long day of walking, I headed to my hotel to prepare for my flight home early the following moment. There was time to appreciate one more part of Melbourne’s architectural heritage. The mid 1850s Victoria Barracks on St Kilda Rd was built to house British troops, including the 12th and 40th Regiment of Foot who put down the Eureka Stockade rebellion in Ballarat. The Barracks housed the Department of Defence following Federation in 1901. It also housed Australia’s war cabinet rooms in the Second World War, under UAP prime minister Robert Menzies and then under Labor’s John Curtin. A plaque notes that of Australia’s seven million population at the time, almost one million were in the armed forces.

The naming of Melbourne’s buildings and institutions show a deep affection for the British Empire, the odd Irish input aside. But modern Melbourne belies this tradition. The weekend I was there, the 21st century Federation Square (named for an Australian achievement) was full of people celebrating a festival of African music and culture and the precinct was alive with African sights, smells and sounds. It speaks to a confident global city, soon about to overtake Sydney as Australia’s largest, and one finally prepared to recognise its ancient Koori history as much as its better-documented British one.

Clonmel, a Suir thing

On my final Saturday in Ireland I was determined to do a new parkrun course. One of the nearest was Clonmel in south Tipperary, 50km from Waterford. That meant an early start, jogging to Waterford railway station to catch the 7.20am Limerick Junction train up the Suir valley. Some 45 minutes later I was by the banks of the river in Clonmel on a cool overcast morning, in the shadow of Co. Waterford mountains.

Like Drogheda, Clonmel is a walled medieval town which suffered at Cromwell’s hands. The West Gate is a 19th-century reconstruction of an older structure. A brass plaque at the gate commemorates Laurence Sterne, whose great work Tristram Shandy draws on the first 10 years of the author’s life growing up in the town barracks. Inside the West Gate is O’Connell St (formerly King St) which has been Clonmel’s main street for centuries. Beyond the West Gate is Irishtown where the Normans banished the old Irish.

The Main Guard is the focal point of Clonmel facing the West Gate down O’Connell St and is a fine two-storey symmetrical building with design elements based on works by Sir Christopher Wren. Seventeenth century Tipperary was ruled by James Butler, Duke of Ormond, who erected this building as a courthouse in 1673. Here anti-Penal Laws agitator Father Nicholas Sheehy was found guilty, before being hanged, drawn and quartered. The building was later used as a market house, barracks, public house and is now a museum. Considered one of Ireland’s great tholsels, the building acquired the name “the Main Guard” during its time as a barracks.

Friend of King Edward I and wealthy Clonmel landlord, Otho de Grandison, was reputed to have invited the Franciscans to construct a friary in the centre of town in 1269. Only the tower survives from that era and most of the present structure dates to 1884. Earlier this year the Franciscans vacated the church after 600 years due to “ageing and reducing membership” following a similar closure of Waterford’s friary in 2019. In June Clonmel’s friary re-opened “for limited use as a venue for occasional Mass and Prayer” while the residential part is refurbished to accommodate Ukrainian refugees. 

Narrow Mitchell St links the shopping precincts of O’Connell St and Parnell St. The umbrellas were certainly needed as 2023 was Ireland’s wettest July on record with 215% of expected rainfall due to “a period of low-pressure systems drifting across the country”. Those systems were still active when I arrived in early August. Irish summer, huh?

The original building on this Parnell St site was Hamerton Hall, a 17th century mansion built by timber merchant Richard Hamerton. It was rebuilt in 1881 as Clonmel Town Hall and extended in 1993. According to the NIAH, “the highly ornate facade and large scale of this Dutch Renaissance-style building make it a very notable part of the streetscape.” Outside is a monument to the 1798 rebellion with an inscription from John Kells Ingram’s The Memory of the Dead: “Then here’s their memory – may it be for us a guiding light, to cheer our strife for liberty, and teach us to unite.”

Further along Parnell St is Bianconi House. Daniel Hearn founded the house as a hotel in 1792 but it became famous as the 19th century headquarters of Italo-Irish carriage entrepreneur Charles Bianconi. Bianconi moved to Clonmel in 1809 as a carver and gilder but on his regular trips to Waterford, he realised the need for a cheap and efficient coach system. He began in 1815 with a service from Clonmel to Cahir. His horse-drawn coach service known as “bians” quickly expanded across the south of Ireland, and was cheap and regular, making Bianconi “the Ryanair of the 19th century”. At his peak in 1845, before the coming of rail transport, Bianconi had 1400 horses in 123 towns covering 6000km a day. 

Sir Richard Morrison designed Clonmel Courthouse in the late 1790s to replace the Main Guard. It was heavily influenced by the work of great Dublin architect James Gandon and its plan owes much to Gandon’s Waterford Courthouse. The most famous trial here was in 1848 when Young Irelanders William Smith O’Brien, Thomas Francis Meagher, Terence Bellew MacManus and Patrick O’Donohoe were tried after the failed rebellion in Ballingarry. All four were sentenced to death for treason though their sentences were later commuted to transportation for life in Van Diemen’s Land.

Old St Mary’s church on Mary St is a Church of Ireland building dating to 1500 though it was severely damaged by Cromwell’s forces. Apart from the base of the bell tower and the 16th century east and west windows, the current building is mainly 19th century additions. The last remains of Clonmel’s town walls adjoin St Mary’s graveyard.

This memorial at Kickham Barracks Plaza commemorates Royal Irish Regiment soldiers killed in the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). The regiment was based in what was then called Victoria Barracks and was disbanded after independence in 1922. The barracks were renamed for local revolutionary and author Charles Kickham who was involved in the 1848 rebellion before joining the Fenians in the late 1850s. In 1865 Kickham was convicted of treason and sentenced to fourteen years’ penal servitude. His great 1873 novel Knocknagow, set in Co. Tipperary, is about the life of the Irish peasantry and the workings of the Irish land system. Kickham Barracks closed in 2012 and a new civic plaza opened here earlier this year.

It was almost 9.30am which meant it was time for parkrun. The course goes along the river down the Blueway towards Carrick-on-Suir. The 53km-long Suir Blueway from Cahir to Carrick-on-Suir opened in 2019 and consists of a walking and cycling trail for 21km from Carrick to Clonmel and 32km of waterway from Clonmel to Cahir which can be canoed or kayaked. Parkrunners (and walkers) were just getting a taste of the Blueway heading 2.5km out east and the same distance back but it was an enjoyable excursion nonetheless.

There was well-earned cake at the end to celebrate one runner’s birthday and another’s 50th parkrun. Of course I had to indulge to celebrate my own 185th (or so) run and my 83rd different course.

After all that history and exercise I walked 15 minutes to Clonmel station and caught the train back to Waterford. The fare is cheap and plenty of day-trippers were heading east for shopping and Waterford’s Spraoi festival. But even in my short visit it was clear that there was a lot to like about Clonmel itself.

Around Drogheda

When I told friends that I was visiting Drogheda for a couple of days there were some odd looks. The county Louth town 50km north of Dublin is not usually the first choice to spend time in Ireland and there were uncharitable mutters that Cromwell had the right idea when he massacred the town in revenge for Protestant deaths in the 1640s Confederate Wars. Nonetheless that was where I was heading in very Irish non-summer summer weather. The plan was to take in sights accessible on foot in and near the town and I took the pleasant 30 minute train ride up the north Dublin coastline from Connolly Station getting closer to the coast (like at Malahide below) than is possible by road.

With a population of over 40,000 and part of Dublin’s commuter belt, Drogheda is now the 11th largest town in Ireland. Its name derives from the Irish Droichead Átha ‘bridge of the ford’. Looking downstream on the Boyne River is the modern De Lacy footbridge, a reminder of Drogheda’s medieval history. Anglo-Norman Hugh De Lacy was part of Henry II’s invasion force in 1172 which took Dublin after it landed near Waterford. De Lacy was rewarded for his efforts with the stewardship of Dublin Castle and the lordship of Meath. While there were previous Viking settlements on both side of the Boyne, De Lacy is considered the founder of Drogheda as he granted its first charter in 1194. The bridge named for him opened in 2005. Behind it is the magnificent 30m,18-span limestone and iron Boyne Viaduct linking Dublin and Belfast by rail. Dating from the 1850s it towers over the eastern approach to the town.

Pre-dating De Lacy’s Drogheda is Old Mellifont Abbey, a few kilometres west of town. In 1142 St Malachy of Armagh built Mellifont, Ireland’s first Cirstercian monastery, with help from St Bernard of Clairvaux’s monks. In Irish “An Mhainistir Mhór” (the Big Monastery), it was a massive structure housing 100 monks and 300 lay brothers. Mellifont was the site of a famous synod in 1152 which set out the Irish church in Roman fashion and created the four archbishopal sees of Armagh, Dublin, Tuam and Cashel. The abbey became a private residence after Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in 1539. The Treaty of Mellifont, which ended the Nine Years War, was signed here in 1603, and William of Orange used the abbey as headquarters during the nearby Battle of the Boyne in 1690. The monks moved to New Mellifont Abbey 7kms away and the old monastery descended into ruin. Among the few surviving structures are the two-storey octagonal lavabo (centre of image) where monks washed their hands before eating and the chapter house (left) which served as a common room.

North of Mellifont is evidence of earlier Irish history at Monasterboice, Irish for “monastery of Buite”. Saint Buite (Buíte mac Bronach or Boetius) founded this settlement in the late 5th century which makes it older than Clonmacnoise and Glendalough. Little remains of the monastery except for a graveyard which contains the ruins of two ancient churches, a round tower and three splendid high crosses. They include the 10th century Muiredach’s High Cross at 5.5m, the tallest high cross in Ireland. The 28m-tall round tower has an underground foundation of 60cms which is small for round towers. The entrance is above ground level to maintain structural integrity. It was built in the late 10th century and damaged by fire in 1098.

Older still are the neolithic 5000-year-old passage tombs at Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth but tours to all three places were booked out weeks in advance and inclement weather meant I did not fancy a long walk in the rain just to see the Bru Na Boinne visitors centre. However I did walk 5km along the Boyne Greenway riverside path. The river’s name comes from the proto-Celtic “bouwinda” meaning a white cow and was associated with the goddess Boann. Rare plants grow in the riparian area including Marsh orchid, cowbane and frogbit. I also kept my eyes peeled for otters but did not see any.

Past the cable-stayed Mary McAleese Boyne Valley motorway bridge is the entrance to the Battle of the Boyne Visitor’s Centre. The Battle of the Boyce was fought over a wide area west of Drogheda in July 1690. Here the forces forces of King James II and King William III met in a proxy battle for the throne of England which remains feted in Northern Irish Protestant tradition. A battle cannon lines the entrance to the site.

I intended to check out the visitors centre but being a Saturday, the site also hosted the Oldbridge Parkrun which tramped 5km cross country through the battlefield. The rain did not put me off and after running the tricky course in 25.39 I posed for a wet selfie in front of Oldbridge House, home of the visitors centre.

After drying off, I went up to the big house. Oldbridge House was built half a century after the famous battle. In 1729 John Coddington purchased Oldbridge Estate from the 5th Earl of Drogheda and he or his nephew Dixie Coddington built the house on a bend on the river in the 1740s, reputedly designed by Dublin architect George Darley. The Coddingtons lived here employing many locals in the house and gardens. In the 1970s a series of raids on the house forced the family to leave. They sold the house and estate to the state in 2000 which restored it as a museum.

The House is surrounded by beautiful gardens including the eight-sided Octagon Garden which contained orchards, the kitchen garden and Coddington’s market garden. In the early 20th century the Coddingtons built heated glasshouses and established a thriving market-garden business serving Drogheda and Dublin.

After enjoying the gardens I paid €5 to tour the Battle of the Boyne visitor centre in the ground floor of the house. The battle was enormous. William had 36,000 men and James had 25,000 – the largest number of troops ever deployed on an Irish battlefield.  The consequences were also enormous. At stake were the British throne, French dominance of Europe and religious power in Ireland. William had English, Scottish, Dutch, Danish and Huguenot troops while James mainly relied on Irish Catholics, reinforced by 6500 troops sent by French King Louis XIV. William had deposed his father-in-law James in the Glorious Revolution and arrived at Kinsale in 1689. Arriving south of the Boyne on June 28, 1690 (according to the Julian calendar then still in use in Britain and Ireland) he decided to “hazard a battle” against the Williamites camped north of the river. Depicted are two Jacobite musketmen.

William planned a pincer movement and sent 10,000 men west towards Slane which drew the bulk of the Jacobites upstream in response, including James’s best French troops. However marshy land prevented either side from engaging. That left 6000 Jacobites at Oldbridge to confront 26,000 Williamites. William crossed at Drybridge with 3500 mounted troops and on July 1 (Julian calendar) the fighting took place south of the river, as the vastly outnumbered Jacobites desperately defended their position against the advancing Williamites. Jan Wyck painted this “Battle of the Boyne” in 1693.

Although William’s flanking movement was a failure, the weight of numbers against raw Irish recruits told at Oldbridge. The superior firepower of William’s elite Dutch Blue Guards drove back Jacobite foot soldiers until pinned down by Jacobite cavalry. When Williamite cavalry crossed the river the game was up and James’s forces retreated across the River Nanny towards Duleek, leaving 2000 dead on the field.

Though the Jacobites escaped mostly intact, James was demoralised and fled towards Waterford, and exile in France. His army was defeated at Aughrim, ensuring Protestant domination of Ireland, with penal laws passed against Catholics in the following years. The Battle of the Boyne became an occasion for Northern Irish Loyalist celebration every July 12 (the day after the battle according to the Gregorian calendar). In 2007 Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern welcomed newly appointed Northern Irish first minister Ian Paisley where he presented him with a Jacobite cavalry musket from the battle.

Afterwards I walked back to Drogheda and went up to Millmount Tower. Millmount is a martello tower on the south bank of the river and hosts Drogheda’s museum. The mound is reputedly 3000 years old and supposedly hosts the body of Celtic poet Amegin. De Lacy built a defensive Motte and Bailey here, overlooking the mouth of the Boyne. During Oliver Cromwell’s attack on Drogheda on September 11, 1649 over 2000 men were killed at Millmount. Later it served as an army barracks and the Martello Tower was built during the Napoleonic War in 1808. The tower was badly damaged in the Irish Civil War in 1922 and was restored in 2000.

St Laurence’s Gate is on the east side of town, north of the river. Despite the name, it is a barbican not a gateway and defended the now destroyed entrance gate. It is regarded as one of the finest of its kind in Europe and consists of two lofty circular towers, connected by a wall with an archway. The name is derived from St Laurence friary outside the gate.

Like Oldbridge House, the Tholsel was designed by George Darley in the 1760s. It was a bank branch for a century before becoming Drogheda’s tourist office which remains open while restoration work continues. Tholsels were municipal and administrative buildings used to collect tolls and taxes and to administer trade in Irish towns. There are other notable tholsels in Kilkenny and Clonmel.

The 14th century Magdalene Tower occupies the highest part of Drogheda north of the river. The belfry tower is all that remains of an extensive Dominican friary built in 1224. Above a Gothic arch are two storeys connected by a spiral staircase. Henry VIII dissoved the monastery and the tower battlements were badly damaged during Cromwell’s siege of 1649.

St Peter’s Catholic church dominates the Drogheda landscape from the viewpoint of Millmount. The French Gothic revival church was built in the 1880s on West St, now the town’s main shopping street. The church has a tall west gable, rose window and contains the national shrine of St. Oliver Plunkett, the 17th century Catholic archbishop of Armagh. Plunkett went into hiding after the fictitious English Popish Plot in 1678, but was arrested, accused of plotting a French invasion. He was found guilty of high treason in June 1681 “for promoting the Roman faith,” condemned to death and was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn. He was canonised in 1975, the first Irish saint in 700 years and his head was returned to Drogheda where it remains on display at St Peter’s.

Weather apart. I enjoyed my time in De Lacy’s town, Cromwell or no Cromwell. Drogheda has a gritty energy with roots to Ireland’s deep past yet with eyes firmly on the future. With a growing and diverse population, It remains Ireland’s largest town in the crucial corridor between the island’s largest cities of Dublin and Belfast.

Brilliant Belfast

My knowledge of Belfast was scant, limited to a day trip in the 1980s and a few times passing through travelling to other places. So when my brother-in-law was heading there for a couple of days to take in a gig, I heartily accepted his invite to come along. We arrived on the day of the Stormont elections and I assumed the crowd gathering at the building opposite our hotel was election-related. I was wrong. This is the Presbyterian Assembly Buildings and church ministers from across Ireland were meeting that week. Designed like a Scottish baronial castle, the gothic structure boasts a 40m-high clock tower and a tower housing Belfast’s only peal of 12 bells, which chime hymns and carols every hour. The building was officially opened by The Duke of Argyll, brother-in-law of King Edward VII, in 1905 General Assembly Week.

Down the road is the Europa Hotel. It’s ironic there is a vehicle marked “fire” parked here as the Europa has seen its fair share of fire this past half century. Built on the site of the Great Northern Railway in 1966 in a brief time of optimism before the Troubles, the 12-storey building was then Belfast’s tallest. When the conflict broke out, it was an obvious target. It was first bombed in August 1971 five days before its official opening which went ahead anyway. Over the years it became “the most bombed hotel in Europe” and hosted more journalists than tourists. The Europa was bombed over 30 times but was never destroyed and only closed its doors briefly twice. The four-star hotel is still going strong despite COVID and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2021. It remains fondly loved by locals and a large overseas clientele including Bill Clinton.

A two minute walk away, and beloved of the Europa’s thirsty journalists, is Belfast’s most famous pub, the Crown Liquor Saloon. Felix O’Hanlon opened this magnificent ornate pub to service the Lisburn stagecoach in 1826. It was renamed the Railway Tavern when the Lisburn rail line opened in 1839. In the 1850s, O’Hanlon sold the bar to the Flanagan family. In 1885, architecture student Patrick Flanagan returned home after travels impressed by the coffee houses and beer-halls of Europe. He hired Italian craftsmen to do the tiling, glasswork and rich ornamental woodwork. When the sun beams through the decorative windows, the pub seems like a baroque church. There are ten elaborately carved wooden snugs, lettered A-J, guarded by heraldic lions or gryffons. The snugs feature black upholstered seats, nickel plates for striking matches, and an antique push-bell system to contact staff.

Also nearby is the opera house. Built in 1895 at the height of Belfast’s power as Britain’s premier shipbuilding city, it had several name changes before settling on the Grand Opera House in 1909. On January 13, 1944 the US Army presented Irving Berlin’s ‘This is The Army’ here, watched by General Dwight Eisenhower, who was awarded the Freedom of the City of Belfast. The Opera House, like the Crown bar, suffered collateral damage when the Europa was bombed but kept its doors open. It underwent a major restoration in 2020 for its 125th anniversary.

Another five minutes away is Donegall Square, home of Belfast’s ornate city hall. Belfast thrived in the 18th century as a merchant town, importing goods from Britain and exporting linen products in return. In 1784 plans were drawn up for the White Linen Hall along with new streets, Donegall Square and Donegall Place. In the 19th century, Belfast became Ireland’s pre-eminent industrial city with industries in linen, heavy engineering, tobacco and shipbuilding dominating trade. When Belfast achieved city status in 1888, the old White Linen Hall was not considered imposing enough. This magnificent Edwardian wedding cake building costing £360,000 replaced the old structure. The dome is 53 metres high and above the door is the figure of Hibernia encouraging the commerce and arts of the city.

A 10 minute walk from city hall is Belfast’s “flat iron” pub, Bittles Bar. Founded in 1868 the bar was originally called the Shakespeare reflecting its theatrical clientele. Bright oils of Irish literary luminaries including Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett drape the walls, all painted by a customer now in his 80s, while a cluster of murals evoke the contested history of Northern Ireland. Bittles was firebombed during the Troubles and also suffered damage due to its proximity to Belfast courts.

Another 500m away in the Cathedral Quarter is the Albert Memorial Clock. This handsome clock tower completed in 1869 is one of Belfast’s best known landmarks. In 1865, Ulster Hall designer W.J. Barre won a competition for the design of a memorial to Queen Victoria’s late husband Prince Albert. Organisers secretly gave the contract to the second-placed entry but after public outcry they awarded it to Barre. The £2500 construction cost was raised by public subscription. The 35m-tall tower is in French and Italian Gothic styles and a statue of Prince Albert adorns the western side. A two-tonne bell is housed in the tower. Because it was built on marshy reclaimed land, the top of the tower leans 1.2m off the perpendicular giving rise to the expression the tower “has the time and the inclination.”

Our destination that evening was an open space near the clock tower where a marquee was set up for the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival. Live on stage was Scottish band Mogwai. Not entirely my cup of tea and I would have liked more than just the one vocal track, but I always enjoy live music, particularly grateful post COVID. These guys were LOUD.

The following morning we wandered down towards the Lagan river. First up was a giant sculpture called Bigfish, a printed ceramic mosaic sculpture by John Kindness. Commonly known as the “Salmon of Knowledge” the sculpture is based on a character from “The Boyhood Deeds of Fionn” which tells of a fish that eats hazelnuts which fell into the Well of Wisdom. After eating the nuts, the salmon gained all the knowledge in the world. The legend says the first person to eat the fish would then inherit all its knowledge. Bigfish was constructed in 1999 to celebrate the return of fish to the river. Each tile is decorated with texts or images that relate to Belfast’s history.

The reason salmon are returning is the Lagan Weir. Completed in 1994 for £14m, the weir controls upstream water levels and reduces mud flats at low tide. The weir is a series of massive steel barriers raised as the tide retreats to keep the river at an artificially constant level. The Lagan rises from the Slieve Croob mountain in County Down and meanders 86km north before entering the sea at Belfast Lough. Abhainn an Lagáin is Irish for ‘river of the low-lying district’.

The three Belfast Buoys are landmarks with a new home on the Maritime Mile. The Commissioners of Irish Lights gave them to Belfast City Council in 1983. They were located in the Cathedral Gardens, known as “Buoy Park”. Regeneration around Ulster University meant they needed a new home. Maritime Belfast worked with Titanic Quarter Limited and Belfast City Council to bring the buoys to the Abercorn Basin. Buoys were recorded in Spain in 1295 (‘boyar’ means to float in Spanish) and first used around Ireland in the 1800s as shipping and trade boomed. The three 80-year-old Belfast buoys were used by mariners to find a safe channel to and from port. The can-shaped red buoy marked the left side of the channel, the conical black buoy the right side, and the spherical red-striped buoy marked the middle ground. They weigh three tonnes and are made of thick steel plates riveted together. They are hollow, filled with air to allow them to float, and were secured in place by mooring chains, attached to a cast iron sinker on the sea bed.

Behind the Maritime Mile on Queen’s Island are two giant Harland and Wolff gantry cranes, named for biblical figures Samson and Goliath. German engineering firm Krupp constructed the cranes, completing Goliath (pictured) in 1969 and Samson, in 1974. Goliath stands 96 metres tall, while Samson is taller at 106m. The last ship launched at the yard was a ferry in 2003 and since then the yard focused on design and structural engineering and ship repair. Harland and Wolff went bust in 2019, but the cranes were retained as part of the dry dock facility, designated as historic monuments in 1995.

As we approached the Titanic museum, we passed the dry dock of SS Nomadic, tender to the Titanic. SS Nomadic was launched in Belfast on April 25, 1911. She and running mate SS Traffic were built to transfer passengers and cargo from RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic. In 1912 SS Nomadic transported 274 passengers to the Titanic from Cherbourg including New York millionaire John Jacob Astor IV and new wife Madeleine. The French government used Nomadic as a minesweeper in the First World War and in 1940 she took part in the evacuation of Cherbourg. Nomadic was requisitioned by the Royal Navy and operated as an accommodation ship in Portsmouth. She returned to Cherbourg after the war for tendering duties before being retired in 1968. She was set for the scrap heap in 2005 before the Northern Irish government bought her at auction for the Titanic precinct. She is the only White Star Line vessel in existence today.

On to the magnificent Titanic museum. This huge space, opened in 2012 on the 100th anniversary of the sinking, is a monument to Belfast’s maritime heritage. It is on the site of the former Harland & Wolff shipyard and celebrates where RMS Titanic was built. The £77 million building is on Queen’s Island, an ambitious land reclaiming project undertaken by the forward-thinking Belfast Harbour Commissioners in the mid-19th century. It became Britain’s largest shipping yards though was derelict by the early 21st century. The building’s angular form imitates the shape of ships’ prows, with its main prow angled down the middle of the Titanic and Olympic slipways towards the river. It is 38m tall, the same height as Titanic‘s hull.

Titanic, the supposedly unsinkable flagship of the White Star, went down in mid Atlantic on its maiden voyage at 2.20am on April 15, 1912, with the deaths of 1517 passengers and crew (including Astor, though wife Madeleine survived). It was the worst disaster at sea ever at the time and remains among the top peacetime sinking behind the Filipino Dona Paz (1987) and the Senegalese Le Joola (2002) disasters, neither of which have inspired Hollywood movies. Over 110 years later Titanic has kept its grip on the public imagination and the museum was packed with post-COVID visitors. It is a fantastic museum with many interactive exhibits and captures the scale of ship and the great people of Belfast that built it. My one criticism is it did not address the sectarianism at the heart of the shipyard. In the 1920s, Catholic workers were expelled from the yards while the shipyard workers were the target of nationalist gunmen. The violence of unionist retaliation was an exacerbating factor in the troubles of 1969.

On the walk back to town, I stuck my head inside St Anne’s, Belfast’s Protestant cathedral. The imposing church was built from 1899-1903 and the 40-metre stainless steel “Spire of Hope” was installed in 2007. The base section of the spire is visible from the nave through a glass platform in the roof. Leader of the Unionist cause in the First World War, Sir Edward Carson, was buried here in 1935.

Walking made us thirsty and we called in at the Sunflower for a pint. Known as the Tavern during the Troubles, the distinctive green cage was added in the late 1980s as a security measure after a shooting at the pub. It is now the last of its kind in Belfast. There was uproar in 2013 when a government department wanted the pub to remove the cage as “an impediment on the road”. The owners had “become very fond of it” and successfully mounted a campaign to keep it. It remains an Instagram-worthy reminder of times past.

There were more reminders of times past on a walk up Falls Road on the last morning of our visit. The road is the heart of Catholic west Belfast and has many impressive murals such as this one in the Belfast Gaeltacht district. Éirí Amach na Cásca is Irish for the Easter Rising, the 1916 event which led to the 1919-1921 War of Independence. The mural was painted for the 90th anniversary of the rising in 2006 and reproduces a 1941 Victor Brown stamp showing an armed volunteer outside the Dublin GPO. The Rising led to the Government of Ireland Act 1920 which set up six-county Northern Ireland as a separate statelet from the rest of Ireland, which Belfast Catholics never accepted. The Troubles began when streets around the Falls Road were burnt out by armed ‘B’ Specials (Police Reserve) and loyalists in August 1969 murdering six Catholics and setting off a chain of events that led to 30 years of armed violence. The Falls Road is quieter these days, but maintains an air of defiance with graffiti such as “PSNI, British Army, MI5 not welcome here”. Though the Belfast hills are nearby, the Falls Road derives its name from the Irish túath na bhFál, an Irish kingdom meaning “territory of the enclosures”.

It being a Saturday morning, my destination was Falls Park, for my first parkrun outside of Australia. Falls Park was part of a 40-hectare reserve Belfast Corporation bought in 1866, some of which was used for nearby Belfast cemetery. Falls Park was established in 1873. It was a great spot for a bracing run in the shadow of the hills to cast off the shackles of the previous night’s imbibing.

There was just enough time for breakfast afterwards before we left town. We had to queue a while to get into this place, called Harlem. It was packed with a diverse crowd of tourists, hipsters, hen parties and families. The great food and ambience made it well worth the wait. Harlem is a symbol of 21st century Belfast: tasteful, vibrant, confident, forward looking and content in its own brilliance. Belfast is simply a great place to spend a while.

Around Ingham, Wallaman Falls and Balgal Beach

Two weeks ago, I did a quick trip to the coast for the Tyto Wetlands parkrun course in Ingham. After 10 hours in the car on Friday from Mount Isa, I arrived in Ingham late on a hot and humid afternoon and after checking into a motel I stretched my legs at the wetlands.

Tyto Wetlands is a 90-hectare natural wetland with lookouts and viewing points for many birds, native Australian wildlife and tropical plants. The area is named for the endangered Eastern Grass Owl (Tyto Longimembris). Hinchinbrook Shire is one of the few places in the world where this owl can be spotted regularly leaving their grassy habitat at dusk. The view below looks towards the Cardwell Range to the north.

With four kilometres of walking tracks, four bird viewing platforms and a multitude of ecosystems, I decide to go for a deeper walk in the wetlands. As well as the Eastern Grass Owl, it is home to over 240 species of birds and many agile wallabies. Thanks to signposts I found the track where I would do the parkrun the following morning. It’s a trail run with two loops around a lake.

After my walk it was time for dinner and a beer. Despite the name the place I chose was “the pub with no beer.” I thought the original pub with no beer was in Northern New South Wales at Taylor’s Arm but apparently that one is the imposter. The official Pub with No Beer made famous by Slim Dusty’s song of that name is this one, Lee’s Hotel in Ingham. The song is based on the poem A Pub Without Beer written by Ingham sugarcane farmer and poet Dan Sheahan in what was then called the Day Dawn Hotel in 1943.

After I’d eaten and wanted to walk off my dinner, I found this second watering hole, the impressive looking Royal Hotel. The original Royal was built by hotelier couple, James and Mary Shewcroft who moved south from Cardwell in 1883 to build the pub. But new owners in the 1920s didn’t like it and rebuilt it from scratch to the current configuration. Since the 1950s it has been run by the Quagliotto family. They are among the half of Ingham’s population of Italian descent. Many came to work in the sugar cane industry after the town began in 1864.

The following morning I was up early for the parkrun. Trail runs are tough at the best of times but the combination of mid 30s heat and high humidity made it a very sweaty exercise. Happy enough with a 26.48 time and despite my grimacing I enjoyed the views.

After freshening up and breakfast I headed to Wallaman Falls, 50km west. The road is flat through fields of sugar cane but as I approached the Seaview Range some climbing lay ahead. The range is the headwaters for the Burdekin and Herbert Rivers.

The last 20km are winding mountain roads. There are signs warning to be cautious of cassowaries, thought because of the bends I’m not going very fast. The southern cassowary (Casuarius casuarius) live in tropical forests in southern New Guinea, northeastern Australia, and the Aru Islands. There are 2000 of the flightless birds in Australia mainly around here and the Cassowary Coast to the north but this sign was as close as I got to one.

After an hour from Ingham I got to the carpark for the Falls. There they were, right in front of me – the highest permanent single-drop waterfall in Australia, the largest drop 268 metres. Wallaman Falls is in the traditional lands of the Warrgamaygan Aboriginal People at Girringun National Park. The falls descend over small cascades before the 268m horsetail drop for a total of 305 metres. They were formed 50 million years ago by continental margin uplift. The Herbert River previously flowed west but cut through the terrain towards Coral Sea. The gorge produced by erosive action gradually retreated inland but tributaries were left suspended forming their own gorges.

It’s a stunning sight but I wanted to know what it looked like from the bottom. There was a 2km walk down which was difficult in the heat especially the return leg uphill.

It was worth the trudge through tropical rainforest to get close to the falls. There is a swimming hole beneath the falls but I didn’t fancy climbing over slippery rocks to get to it.

The Wallaman Falls are part of Queensland’s world heritage-listed Wet Tropics. These lands are the oldest surviving rainforests on earth and host rare animal and plant species. In Warrgamaygan culture Yamanie came down from the sky in the form of a rainbow, transforming into the great rainbow serpent and creating the hills, rivers and creeks. Yamanie rested in the waterhole at the bottom of the falls. The Warrgamaygan try not to make him angry as he then shows his displeasure by making the waterhole overflow.

I drove back to Ingham for lunch and then an hour-long drive to Townsville. Half way down at Rollingstone I took a diversion to the beach. Balgal Beach is a pleasant unspoiled place looking out to the Palm Island group and Magnetic Island to the south. There was a protected swimming spot so it was a great place to cool down on a hot day.

Rollingstone is named for the smooth rounded stones in the creek bed. It was originally called Armidale but renamed in 1915 to avoid confusion with the NSW town. The railway came through the same year. It was founded as an overnight stop on the mail coach from Townsville to Ingham. Rollingstone Beach was founded in 1947 and later renamed Balgal Beach for an Aboriginal word for stone. The beach is a popular spot for fishers, daytrippers and weekend visitors from Townsville.

UPDATE LATE 2023: Sadly the Tyto Wetlands parkrun has closed due to an “increase in crocodile population”. I believe a new Ingham parkrun called Palm Creek has opened instead.

Mount Isa to Brisbane via Charleville

Last weekend was time for another big drive from Mount Isa to Brisbane. I’ve done it several times stopping in different places such as Winton, Blackall, or doing it in one hit. This time I stayed in Charleville, not a normal stop as I usually take the short cut from Augathella to Morven. But I wanted to visit the Cosmos Centre observatory on a Friday night plus the town’s parkrun the following morning. I left Mount Isa in the dark at 5am and caught the dawn south of Cloncurry, with bonus cattle crossing their field.

About 100km south of Cloncurry is McKinlay. There’s not much here as the town’s service station-cum-shop closed down a couple of years ago leaving Walkabout Creek Hotel as the town’s only business. It is the site of the pub scenes in the 1986 film Crocodile Dundee. The movie set is at the back of the pub for people to visit. I was there in 2016 when the town celebrated the 30th anniversary of the movie with a weekend of celebrations as the town swelled from 15 to 300 people.

A further 200km south there are reminders of other movies as I drive through the striking terrain of Winton Shire. Winton is the home of the Outback Film Festival, held a week ago and its wild west locations attracts many filmmakers. John Hillcoat filmed the Meat Pie western The Proposition here in 2005.

For a remote Western Queensland town, Barcaldine, 110km east of Longreach, has a surprisingly strong link to the Labor Party. Labor mythology says the party was founded under the town’s Tree of Knowledge after the 1891 Shearers’ Strike. Near the tree is the Workers Heritage Centre, in the grounds of the former Barcaldine State School. It opened in 1991 containing historical exhibits about labour history and the strike. After a major upgrade, the Queensland premier reopened the facility on the 130th anniversary of the Shearers’ Strike in May.

The oldest town in Central West Queensland is Tambo. Many tribes lived in this fertile area on the Barcoo including the Wadjabangai. Sir Thomas Mitchell was the first European to explore here in 1846 and selectors followed in the 1860s. The town of Carrangarra was founded in 1863, renamed Tambo in 1868, the name from an Indigenous word meaning hidden place. Tambo remains charming and the Shire Hall is one of many grand buildings in the town.

I arrived at Charleville as the sun was setting, 12 hours after leaving Mount Isa. Glistening in the late evening sunshine is the 30 metre-high water tower on which Brisbane artist Guido van Helten painted a mural in May 2019. The mural is in Van Helten’s 3D monochromatic mural style and features four children intertwined through sport. Van Helten painted another tower on the same theme in Cunnamulla, 200km south.

My home for the night was the wonderful 1920s-style Corones Hotel. Remarkable Greek immigrant Harry Corones built the hotel when Charleville was a stopping point for international air travellers from Brisbane. Completed in 1929 after five years of planning and construction, the new hotel contained a lounge and writing room, a dining-room for 150 people, a barber’s shop, and a magnificent ballroom seating 320 people. Upstairs were ornate bathrooms, 40 rooms and a private lounge. It was “the best equipped and most up-to-date hotel outside the metropolis”. Aviator Amy Johnson stayed here on her flight from Britain to Australia in 1930, filling her hotel bath with 24 magnums of champagne which guests drank in her honour. Other visitors included Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, the Wright brothers, Nancy Bird and English singer Gracie Fields. Fields caused a sensation when she stood at the open windows and sang the song “Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye” in Beatles Let it Be-style to a large crowd outside.

That evening I braved the south-west Queensland winter chill and went to the Cosmos Centre observatory on the edge of town. I hadn’t been here in 10 years and I was looking forward to stargazing. I was doubly lucky. Firstly they had unusual winter rain and a cloudy evening 24 hours earlier, and secondly it was a new moon, so perfect for stargazing. They had three telescopes for 30 people and we had opportunities to look at the Alpha Centauri double star, the Jewel Box star cluster, Omega Centauri cluster, a nebula in Carinae, and finished with Saturn and her rings, magnificently rising in the low eastern sky.

On my way to parkrun the following morning I passed a peculiar Charleville attraction, the Vortex Rainmaking Guns off the road to Cunnamulla. The guns were the brainchild of Queensland meteorologist Clement Wragge, the man who first named cyclones, in his 1902 plan to seed clouds with rain during the five-year Federation Drought. The idea was based on guns Italian grapegrowers successfully used to dispel hailstorms. Wragge’s guns were unsuccessful. The drought eventually broke at the end of 1902 and 10 Charleville guns were abandoned and left to rot until most became dilapidated and sold for scrap. Today two guns remain intact, lovingly restored in Charleville’s biggest park.

That park, Graham Andrews park, gives its name to Charleville’s parkrun. Andrews was mayor of Murweh Shire (which includes Charleville) from 1988-2008. The Graham Andrews parkrun was tricky thanks to recent rain making the course slippery. I found the complex figure eight course hard to follow in places. Those are my excuses anyway, for a time of 24.18 for the 5km, about 30 seconds slower than usual. It was my 90th parkrun and my 32nd different course.

After freshening up and enjoying breakfast, I continued east along the Warrego Highway to Morven. Named for a town in Aberdeenshire, Morven lost its only pub to fire in 2016. Devastated by its absence in the community, eight families banded together to build a new one. The result is Sadleir’s Waterhole, which was the town’s name until 1876. The pub is a low-set, modern-looking building with a big front deck built on the site of the old hotel. Down the road in Muckadilla, another pub is rising from the ashes of a 2019 fire, which I’m pleased about having fond memories of the Mucka pub from my Roma days.

Around 50km east of Morven, near the even smaller town of Mungallala is Ooline Park. The Ooline tree (Cadellia pentastylis) is a vulnerable species with rainforest origins two million years back to the Pleistocene Era when Australia was much wetter. The tree is of biogeographic and horticultural interest as a relic of an extensive rainforest vegetation that once covered much of Australia and it is a sole species. Oolines grow to 10m, and rarely to 25m with dark, hard and scaly bark. It was widespread in the bottle tree-dominated softwood scrubs, brigalow and belah areas of central and southern Queensland and north-western New South Wales but after extensive land clearing (now outlawed), it is now restricted from west of Rockhampton to the NSW border.

South of the Warrego, 50km west of Roma, is Mount Abundance. The area was the home of the Mandandanji people who enjoyed its rich landscape and fertile soil. NSW Surveyor-General Thomas Mitchell also saw the area’s potential when he came through in 1846 naming the mountain for its sign of plenty. “I ascended an elevated north-eastern extremity of Mount Abundance, and from it beheld the finest country I had ever seen in a primeval state—a champagne region, spotted with wood, stretching as far as human vision or even the telescope could reach,” he wrote. Mitchell’s “champagne” meant lightly wooded though others were drunk at the prospects he described. A son of Mitchell’s friend named Allan Macpherson was quick to take up Mt Abundance and though Macpherson failed in his accommodation with unhappy prior owners, less scrupulous owners cleared out the black inhabitants in the frontier war that followed, with the assistance of Native Police. Mt Abundance was also the last place Ludwig Leichhardt was heard from before his party disappeared in 1848.

Mitchell was the first European to see Brachychiton rupestris, the Queensland Bottle Tree, which like the ooline thrives in south-western Queensland. He selected the genus name to honour Henry De la Beche, head of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, while rupestris (meaning living among rocks) alludes to the rocky hilltop habitat Mitchell observed at Mt Abundance. The fat tree trunk reaches a 2m diameter after five to eight years, with a maximum height of 18-20m. The tree drops leaves before the flowering period of October to December. The characteristic bottle shape develops in five to eight years. The canopy will also thin out during a drought. This hardy species is endemic to Central Queensland through to northern New South Wales, growing in heavy clay soil, silt, sand and volcanic rocks. Roma’s largest bottle tree has a girth of 9.51 metres, a height of six metres and a crown of 20 metres, The century-old tree was transplanted in 1927 from a local property to site in town near the Bungil Creek. Roma historian Peter Keegan tells me there is an even wider tree near Mt Abundance, though we never got around to looking for it.

Entitled “A Bush Conversation” this Dion Cross installation featuring two chatty cockatoos was the People’s Choice winner in the Sculptures Out Back Exhibition 2021 by the side of the highway on the eastern approach to Roma near the Big Rig. Dion’s vision was to show the need for conversation in the often lonely bush environment. “A yarn in the back paddock can make a big difference,” Dion said. Sculptures Out Back is an outdoor exhibition that runs annually from July to September. Artists are invited to display their works by contacting the Roma on Bungil Gallery Committee.

The Boonarga Cactoblastic Hall, 12km east of Chinchilla, is probably the only building in Australia named for an insect. The South American cactoblastis was introduced to consume prickly pear, the common name for several cacti species of the American native genus Opuntia. Prickly pears arrived in Australia with the First Fleet in 1788 as Governor Arthur Phillip saw them as the basis for a possible cochineal industry. The prickly pear got out of control as it was drought resistant, had no natural predators, loved the climate and its tough seeds passed through the digestive system of birds ready for germination. With much of Queensland’s pasture land overrun by the pest, government scientist Dr Jean White turned to another invader to solve the problem. Her experiments at Chinchilla led to the introduction of the Cactoblastis cactorum moth in 1926 that eventually brought prickly pear under control. Cactoblastis is a moth which feeds on cacti in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and southern Brazil. It proved ideal for the Australian task, a rare example of an introduced predator achieving its outcome without unintended consequences.

Around 30km west of Dalby is Macalister, named for an early Queensland premier. Macalister is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town where traffic is only forced to slow down to 80kph. There are no shops but it has two distinguishing features. In the foreground is the chute that loaded coal from nearby Wilkie Creek mine to the rail line by the side of the highway. Peabody closed the mine in 2013 and when I was working in Dalby in 2015 there was a shortlived plan for a Japanese company to reopen it. But making money from coal is increasingly difficult and climate change will ensure the remaining coal will stay in the ground. In the background is the still active GrainCorp silo. The country between Dalby and Chinchilla is renowned for its high yield crops which end up in the Macalister silo for processing.

To Maryborough by train

A couple of weeks ago I made the 250km journey to Maryborough for a mate’s 60th birthday while in Brisbane. Having flown down from Mount Isa, I didn’t have my car so I used Queensland Rail services, boarding the 4.55pm from Roma St to Bundaberg. That train was a pleasant experience which got me into Maryborough West around 8.25pm where a friend picked me up and took me the 10km or so into town.

The following morning I walked into town and spotted the first of Maryborough’s many heritage-listed buildings, the city hall. Maryborough was originally situated north of the Mary River with wharves established in 1847 to transport wool from Burnett sheep stations. In 1852 the town was transferred north where ships could better navigate the river. Maryborough was declared a municipality in 1861 and a timber town hall was built in 1874 on Kent Street. Maryborough developed rapidly for the Gympie goldrush in 1867. As Maryborough so did the demand for a new town hall, finally built in 1908 on the opposite side of Kent St. It was heritage listed in 1992 “demonstrating the growth of Maryborough in the early 20th century”. The day I passed it was used as a Covid mass vaccination centre.

The day I was there was a Thursday and the Maryborough City Markets were on at Adelaide St as they were every Thursday. at Lennox St in the city centre. The markets have been going since 1987 and visitors combine browsing with a heritage walk which starts at the next door town hall. As I found out, tomorrow was Maryborough Show Day so there was a particular holiday atmosphere in town that day.

Maryborough Post Office is another heritage-listed building at 227 Bazaar Street. It was designed by Queensland Colonial Architect Charles Tiffin and built in 1865-1866. This was in the middle of a thriving period for the town, after the Maryborough Sugar Company was set up in 1865 and gold was discovered in Gympie in 1867. It is the oldest post office known to survive in Queensland, and is one of three remaining masonry post offices from between 1859 and 1878. In 1869 a single faced clock, facing Wharf Street, was installed in the third level of the tower. The telephone exchange opened here in 1882.

Queens Park was established in 1860 and many of its beautiful huge trees are over a century old as they look down on the majestic Mary River. The river, named Moocooboola ( “river that twists and turns”) by the Kabi people, is responsible for the name of the city and its reason for existence. Early Europeans called it the Wide Bay River but in September 1847 New South Wales governor Charles FitzRoy changed the name for his wife Lady Mary Lennox. It was an ill omen for Lady Mary. Three months later, she was in a carriage when the horses bolted and crashed down a hill. The carriage fell on top of her. killing her instantly. The port opened the same year, fared better. The Mary has suffered many major floods over the years with the river peaking at 8.2m here in the 2011 floods.

Maryborough School of Arts is another heritage-listed building on Kent Street opposite the city hall. It was designed by John Harry Grainger and built from 1887 to 1888 by Jacob & John Rooney. It replaced the first Maryborough School of Arts, a small brick building built in 1861 soon after the establishment of a local School of Arts committee. The school of arts movement, also known as the mechanics’ institute movement, spread through the English-speaking world in the mid-nineteenth century. Public lectures were popular as a way of spreading scientific knowledge. Scottish emigrants brought the concept to Australia and most towns had their own school of arts for “the diffusion of Scientific and other useful knowledge as extensively as possible throughout the Colony.”

Maryborough Courthouse is a heritage-listed courthouse on Richmond Street. It was designed by Francis Drummond Greville Stanley and built in 1877 by John Thomas Annear for the Queensland Government, the first large court building designed for a rural town in Queensland. It was the forerunner for several other buildings in regional areas. The building is rectangular in form with corner towers and connecting verandahs, and was constructed in rendered brick, with timber work forming the verandahs. The building stands as part of the historic Wharf Street precinct. The courthouse has been used by the supreme, district and magistrates courts of Queensland since completed in 1878, making it the longest serving and oldest courthouse in use in Queensland.

From Queens Park a rail line was visible next to the river. I could also hear the toot of a steam train and a few minutes later it came into view down the track. A dedicated team of volunteers crew the Mary Ann which operates each Thursday along the riverside. The original Mary Ann was used to haul timber in the 1870s, named for the daughters of Scottish timber pioneers and the timber offcuts fuelled the engine. It ran on a 3’3 gauge, even narrower than the Queensland 3’6 gauge. The current engine is a replica built in the 1990s.

J E Brown commenced business as a provisions and victuals merchant in 1857 in Richmond Street. In 1879 he had this two-storey brick warehouse built and was designed by local architect James Buchanan. In later years, the premises were used for dances, balls, boxing tournaments, a restaurant, and currently houses the Maryborough Military and Colonial Museum.

Maryborough Heritage Centre is a heritage-listed former bank building at 164 Richmond Street. It was designed by George Allen Mansfield and James Cowlishaw and built in 1877 with goldrush wealth for the Bank of New South Wales. It is also known as National Parks and Wildlife Service Headquarters, Post Master General’s Department, and Telecom Building.

The following day was Friday and it was Fraser Coast show day. It seemed everyone in town was at the Maryborough Showgrounds to the west of the city. It was a typical boisterous show with all the usual ingredients. But after a while I became uneasy at so much close contact in these Covid times and went back to town.

This sculpture commemorates the work of Pamela Lyndon Travers, born Helen Lyndon Goff in Maryborough in 1899. P. L.Travers is most famous for the series of Mary Poppins children’s novels. Travers was an actress and journalist whose most abiding creation was the magical English nanny, Mary Poppins, famously played by Julie Andrews in the smash hit 1964 Hollywood film. Walt Disney’s daughters loved the novels when they were children, and Disney spent 20 years trying to purchase the film rights. Travers was an adviser in the production, but disapproved of the watered-down Disney Poppins character. She so hated the animation she ruled out any further adaptations of the series. At the premiere after-party she told Disney “The first thing that has to go is the animation sequence.” Disney replied, “Pamela, the ship has sailed” and walked away. Travers died in England in 1996 aged 96.

On the Saturday I went down to Anzac Park for the weekly local parkrun at 7am. The 5km track takes runners and walkers around the lovely Ululah Lagoon taking the pain off the exertion. The park also houses Maryborough golf club.

I had just enough time for shower and breakfast before getting a lift back to Maryborough West station for the 11.05am train back to Brisbane. This one was the tilt train originating in Rockhampton.

Unlike the trip up, the trip back to Brisbane was in full daylight so I was able to enjoy the scenery. A highlight is Mount Tibrogargan, one of the 13 peaks of the Glass House Mountains. Lieutenant James Cook gave them that name in 1770 because the peaks reminded him of the glass furnaces in his native Yorkshire. The range was formed as molten lava cooled to form hard rock in the cores of volcanoes 26-27 million years ago. Tibrogargan is the third tallest of the peaks. The name comes from the local aboriginal words chibur for flying squirrel and kaiyathin for biting. Tibrogargan was the father of all the other Glass House Mountains except Beerwah, his wife. Tibrogargan saw a rising of the waters from the sea, and called to his son Coonowrin to take his mother Beerwah to a safe place. However Coonowrin failed to do so, and in anger Tibrogargan clubbed himand broke his neck. Tibrogargan is said to have turned his back to face Coonowrin. We turned our backs on Tibrogargan as we tilted effortlessly back to Brisbane.

A quick weekend in Townsville

Having spent Christmas on Norfolk Island with a lovely trip to Phillip Island, I got back to North West Queensland but hadn’t quite shaken the travel bug. There was nothing happening in Mount Isa that first weekend so I decided to do a quick 900km trip to Mount Isa-On-Sea, or Townsville as it is sometimes known.  I set off early on Friday morning and got to the coast by 4pm. I took a detour 9km to the summit of Mt Stuart to take in the view of Castle Hill, the city and Magnetic Island in the distance.

Named for Clarendon Stuart, Townsville’s first district surveyor in 1859, it has an elevation of 584 metres with great views in every direction. Below is the view through the haze of the Hervey Range north-west of Townsville.

The summit is composed of granite formed 265 million years ago. Mt Stuart is high enough to have its own ecosystem including endemic grass trees. Also called blackboys for their distinctive colour, Xanthorrhoea johnsonii can grow to five metres with spikes containing thousands of tiny white flowers. Bushfires blacken the trunks but do not kill the plants. The highly resinous leaves depend on fire for survival and it stimulates flowering.

After walking around the summit track I drove the short distance to town and checked into a hotel. The following morning was the event that was the excuse for the weekend. That was the parkrun at Riverway. I got up early Saturday morning and drove the 10km to the suburb of Thuringowa. The course runs alongside the Ross River and this was the view from the Federation Footbridge at Black Weir near the start line.

I enjoy parkruns every Saturday morning, mostly at Mount Isa. I’ve become a parkrun tourist and Riverway was my 14th different course. It was a lovely course with beautiful riverside views though the stifling humidity ensured there would be no Personal Best time. The organisers didn’t get a photo of me, but I’m in the pack here somewhere.

After a shower at the hotel, I set out for breakfast and then some exploration. I’ve travelled to Townsville numerous times before but it is an underrated town compared to its more glamorous neighbour Cairns. Below is the Victoria Bridge, a heritage-listed swing bridge over the Ross Creek. The central-pivoting swing bridge was built in 1888 and is one of only two in Australia. To the right is Townsville’s tallest building, the Hotel Grand Chancellor, nicknamed the “Sugar Shaker”.

Across the creek is Townsville’s newest attraction, the 25,000-seater North Queensland Stadium (with Mt Stuart in the background). The stadium opens in February and as the sign says Elton John will play there on leap year day. It will be the permanent home of the North Queensland Cowboys rugby league team.

Next up was a walk to Castle Hill via the Goat Track. To get there I had to walk up Hale St with the heritage-listed Sacred Heart Catholic cathedral in a commanding position. Built between 1896 and 1902, it is a substantial brick building of Gothic style.

The Goat Track to the top of Castle Hill is only 1.3km long but with a thousand steps to negotiate, it is a tough undertaking especially in the middle of a humid summer. As the name suggests, wild goats lived on the hill but ravaged native vegetation. In the 1880s the Townsville Herald voiced public outrage at the denudation of Castle Hill and Townsville Municipal Council established a Recreation Reserve of 228 hectares.

The path is hard work even for Townsville’s many fitness fanatics. But the views from its lookouts at the top make the effort worthwhile, such as this one straight out east over the beachside suburbs, Cleveland Bay and Magnetic Island.

Townsville exists because of its port. The Burdekin River’s seasonal flooding made the establishment of a seaport further north essential to the growing cattle industry in the 19th century. Cattle remains important but Townsville’s proximity to Asia is strategically important in the 21st century. The Port of Townsville operates eight berths and is the largest container and automotive port in Northern Australia. Much of Mount Isa’s mineral wealth ends up here.

The height of Mt Stuart and its dominant position west of town can be clearly appreciated from the top of Castle Hill. Like Mt Stuart, Castle Hill is a pink granite monolith 286 metres high (300m shorter than Mt Stuart).

North of Castle Hill is Cape Pallerenda. Now a conservation park, Cape Pallarenda was a quarantine station in the early 1900s and a strategic defence location in World War II. Visitors can walk and ride the Cape Pallarenda Trails to World War II structures on the headland. This photo also shows the WWII communications and observation post on Castle Hill itself.

After another necessary shower, I headed out again, this time to The Strand, the city’s long strip along the coast. I was keen to cool down with a swim in one of the netted areas which keep out the summertime marine stingers. But even here the lifeguards had closed the beach. The reason: sightings of crocodiles. Fair enough, netting would not be much impediment to a big hungry reptile.

I walked further along the Strand and found this new monument. This is the Ocean Siren, the inaugural sculpture in what is planned to be the Southern Hemisphere’s first Museum of Underwater Art. Installed just before Christmas, British marine sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor’s Ocean Siren is an environmental warning modelled on local Wulgurukaba Traditional Owner Takoda Johnson. It reacts to live water temperature data from the Davies Reef weather station and changes colour in response to live variations in water temperature.

Hot and sweaty for the third time that day, I finally found a place to swim. This was at the safe Strand Rockpool. The pool was shut down with an algal bloom infection in September but was open and packed when I came calling in January. And not a croc in sight.

Refreshed after a dip I continued north to Jezzine Barracks at Kissing Point. Kissing Point Fort was built in 1891 as a two-gun battery and part of the coastal defence scheme being established to protect Queensland from fear of attack from imagined European enemies such France and Russia. The Barracks complex was built in the second world war to counter a more real enemy: Japan. Along the path is a large-scale map of the Battle of the Coral Sea. Townsville was the largest Allied operational base in the South West Pacific and played an important support role in that battle.

Townsville was bombed three times in WWII. The first raid on the night of 25-26 July 1942 saw Japanese flying boats dropping six bombs, all landing in the sea. In the second raid on 28 July an airboat dropped eight bombs which landed near Many Peaks Range. The following night the same pilot returned and six allied aircraft unsuccessfully attempted to intercept him before he jettisoned seven bombs in Cleveland Bay and an eighth near the Animal Health Station at Oonoonba, causing the only casualty: a coconut tree.

Tired after my exertions and sweating profusely again, I retreated towards my hotel, for yet another shower and the comfort of air conditioning. The following day it was back on the road west to the Isa, a quick 1800km round trip in three days. But Townsville, I’ll be back. There’s at least two other parkrun venues to be explored.