On Tuesday last we drove from Barcaldine to Emerald along a softly undulating Capricorn Highway and sadly left behind the dry, scrubby, though colourful vegetation of the past week with its unique red soils. The taller blue-grey, blue-green, grey and dark green trees, thicker grasses with a sprinkling of golden wattle, interspersed with bright orange grevilleas, all made for a very pleasant drive. The Capricorn Highway goes up and over the Great Dividing Range with fabulous views in all directions. Pastoral land dominates the countryside although, as coal seams are prevalent throughout the land, the area seems to have been given over to mining. This was evidenced by the number of coal trains we passed, all about 1and half klms in length. We were told by a guy we met who works for the Department of Agriculture that each train carries coal to the value of $2 million dollars and that the mining companies can well afford to pay the Mining Tax the Government is trying to impose!
Our arrival in Emerald heralded a mining town and as such, seemed to be an oasis in the desert. We rolled into town to a feast (after the Outback anyway) of shops, businesses, housing estates, a botanical garden and a population of 15,000. We checked out the Botanical Gardens that was established in 1988 and were surprised by the variety and maturity of trees, palms and shrubs given the garden was so young. We found kids' self-peddling monorail tandam bikes in the garden and so of course we couldn't resist the urge to try it out and we don't know, but can guess, what the locals thought of a couple of oldies laughing their heads off madly peddling a monorail bike built for 2. Thankfully, we left the camera back in the van, so no evidence!
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