A little bit of green in Emerald

Emerald is 832 km north of Brisbane just south of the Tropic of Capricorn. It was inhabited by the Gayiri Aboriginal peoples before discovery by Leichhardt in 1843 or 1845 ( depending on the info you read). Just south of here is the Fairbairn Dam on the Nogoa River creating Lake Maraboon. It is 150 square Kilometres in size and provides water to cotton farms, the second largest mandarin orchard in the world, grapes, sorghum. Unfortunately they don’t consider the people living in the town worthy of some of the water, there are only two places we have seen with any green grass. Not an inviting place to live if you’re a gardener like me. 

Coal mines dot the countryside and north of here is the Gallilee Basin where miners want to create NEW coal mines. There is much political debate over this in Australia. The coal miners want their well paid jobs to remain but those who consider the climate are not in favour. 

Sunflowers were a large part of the economy at one time and that is the reason Cameron Cross decided to erect one of his 7 Big Easel sculptures here. The first was in Canada and third in Kansas. It is a 25m tall Easel with one of Van Gogh’s 7 sunflower paintings. Very odd. I liked it. Bob not so. 

The picture is of the old bridge down near the botanic gardens. There is a new road bridge, old road bridge, floating pedestrian bridge, rail bridge and concrete disappearing into the water, obviously an unused bridge. The gardens are 42 hectares and we saw about one of them. 

Tomorrow we head east 270 km towards Rockhampton. Beef country. I think we can tick the box for Emerald and know we don’t want to come here in summer.