Oddity Number 1 Sunday 3.16.08

We’re just not beach people. Sure, we like to look at the water, take some walks along the sand and listen to the waves at night, but we just can't lounge on the beach and frolic in the surf all day. Maybe when we were working, but not now. We have a week on the beach at the end of our trip but that has some activites planned and will be an exclamation point to our whole tour. What we have coming up now are three days of oddities. Three single night stays in small inland towns that each have some unique feature that will endear us forever to the Aussie bush, or not.

We pull out of Airlie Beach after swapping out a few books at the book exchange in town. What a great concept. We have about 250 miles to cover today and it is serious tropical "ag" country. There are lots of mango groves and banana plantations but mostly it is sugar cane. The countryside is striped with railroad tracks for the "sugar cane trains" that haul the cut cane directly from the fields to the mill. It is blazing hot when we stop for a bite of lunch at a Red Rooster south of Townsville. These are chain chicken places that specialize in roasted rather than fried chicken and John has the roast dinner with all the trimmings while Mary has the quarter with fries. There are a couple other people there who leave and we are left alone with the painfully loud rap music. We can't figure out who their target market is, but since we are now alone, apparently neither can they.

We zig-zag through Townsville, a big shipping port for the farm and mining products of North Queensland. The Oz economy is about 60% services (doing business with each other) and most of the rest is mining and agriculture (including wine) with very little manufactuing. It is late afternoon when we arrive at Oddity number one, Ingham. This little town has been described as the Italian capital of Australia as it was the settling place for many of the country's Italian immigrants. We have been told that it still has a unique personality with many of the traits of its founders. We have booked the Hotel Noorla and John has been prepping Mary by describing it as right out of "The Shining." Hotel Nooooooorla! The Noorla was built in 1928, has twelve rooms, some with the bath in the hall, and includes a restaurant and bar. In other words, it is the Manhattan Beach Lodge if it had continued to operate as it was built. It is easy to understand why we would pick this as one of our unique stops. Boy, were we wrong.

Ingham may have a couple Italians left somewhere but on a Sunday afternoon all we see is a couple bars with the smokers out front. Everything else is closed and we walk around and look at the John Deere and New Holland dealers. The Noorla's restaurant is closed this evening as well and we are not disappointed. The place is covered with cobwebs and large dead insects are cracking under your feet when you walk around. The only other guest are Bonnie and Clyde just off their latest crime spree. We encounter Bonnie in the hall and after nodding to each other she stops and says, "excuse me, do you know what day it is?" Several great lines come to mind, but we stick with "Sunday the 16th."

Joe our host recommends the Chinese "smorgasbord" in town and that is what it says on its sign, but we decide safe is Subway. We get a 12 inch to split and John asks for a pack of plastic utensils in case we need some tools to manuever sandwich ingredients, but they say "no, they only can give out utensils with salads. John explains that he is 62 years old and has never been refused plastic utensils under any circumstances, but they are unmoved. Joe, Bonnie and Clyde are sitting at a table in front of the Noorla porch drinking wine and smoking u-roll-ems as we settle in for the night. The windows don't shut tight and there isn't much of a lock on the door so the Shining thing is now a reality. Mary says she is afraid "Jack Nicklaus" is going to pop through the door. Yeah, and take us out with a one-iron. We have to take our fun where we can find it. We decide who is going to take the first watch and go to bed.

Today's local headline: US Bank Bailout Panics Markets The Australian