When we arrived at the Tannum Sands Caravan Park last Wednesday our neighbour suggested we do the Port of Gladstone Harbour Tour. The tour is operated by Curtis Ferry Services on Wednesday and Sunday, departing at 11am and returning at 1pm, using the Curtis Endeavour II which is also used on their regular ferry services to the nearby Curtis and Facing Islands. It's advertised as "the best way to see Gladsone's enormous and busy harbour."

Leaving the marina area we passed the HMAS Gladstone II. Commissioned on 8 September 1984, the Gladstone was used in Australia’s fisheries protection, immigration, customs and drug law enforcement. On 13 March 2007, after serving for almost 23 years and covering 618,000 nautical miles, the ship was decommissioned in her home port of Cairns and gifted to the Gladstone Maritime Museum. Now located in a dry dock at Gladstone’s East Shores Precinct, scheduled tours of the ship are hosted by the Museum.

After passing through the many islands within the harbour we approached the Curtis Island LNG precinct where there are three sites: GLNG, QCLNG and APLNG. Each of these facilities are in full operation and have been exporting since 2016. The production units (known as trains) essentially refrigerate the gas delivered by pipeline to around -160°C in order to reduce its volume to facilitate transport by ship. The LNG is stored in very large tanks awaiting loading onto the ships. More about the process can be found here.

 

At each of the facilities are several loading arms, some of which feed the LNG into the ship and others return any vapour back to the processing plant. At one of the berths we saw a ship which had finished being loaded and four tugs were assisting to move it away from the berth ready for departure.

It's interesting to note that the pipeline delivering the gas for processing is over 400km long, bringing gas from as far as Roma, our previous stopover.

Turning to return we had a clear view of Mount Larcom. Of volcanic origin, its summit is 632 metres above sea level. Matthew Flinders noted it when he explored Port Curtis, naming it after Captain Larcom under whom he had served. Because of its profile, it is often call "The Lion Mountain", resembling a lion and lioness facing each other. It can be climbed, but apparently it's a very challenging climb. Around this point we were joined by a couple Dolphins swimming alongside the ferry.

There are several other wharves with facilities for loading a wide range of other products including coal, bauxite, alumina, aluminium and cement. Two ships were berthed at the coal loaders and one was about to leave. They handle 42 coal types across the 90 stockpile zones. The majority of coal handled is coking coal, which is exported to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Italy and France for high quality steel manufacturing. Approximately 30​% of the coal exported is thermal, which is exported to fuel the boilers of power stations in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Israel.

A feature of the cruise was the commentary, which was non-stop and quite frankly was information overload! But the lady was very knowledgeable and we learned a lot about Gladstone and the port operations.

After the cruise we drove up to the Auckland Point Lookout. Before taking in the views, we had some lunch, but unfortunately it was a little disappointing as it wasn't quite as we'd ordered. However the panoramic view of Gladstone Harbour's entrance from here didn't disappoint and we had a great view of a large ship passing by just below us. From there we drove to Round Hill which provides a 360° view with Boyne Island and Tannum Sands to the South, the harbour and industry to the East, city centre and islands to the North and the airport and suburbia to the West.

Heading back to Tannum Sands we detoured via two of the area's major processing plants. The Queensland Alumina Limited (QAL) refinery’s bauxite supplies are mined in Weipa in far north Queensland and shipped around Cape York and 2,000km down to QAL in Gladstone. Here, the alumina is produced through the continuous four-stage “Bayer Process” involving: Digestion (dissolving bauxite’s alumina content), Clarification (settling out undissolved impurities), Precipitation (forming alumina crystals) and Calcination (high-temperature drying of alumina). A large wall panel here reflected on the refinery's 50 year history.

Closer to Tannum Sands is the Boyne Smelter. To make aluminium, large blocks of carbon called ‘anodes’ are placed into a special bath material containing alumina. An electrical current is passed through, leaving behind molten aluminium. It is then cast into different shapes, ready to be sold on to customers. The smelter obtains its alumina from QAL, transporting it direct via a 10km long conveyor and has three major sections: Carbon Plant (which make the carbon ‘anodes’), Reduction Lines (where the electrolytic reduction reaction occurs) and Metal Products (where molten aluminium is cast into its final product). We saw large stock of both aluminium ingots and large round bars. Note that the Gladstone Power Station is Queensland's largest and the smelter consumes around 60% of its output! 

Dinner? Well it's Sunday night and so it was pizza. No dessert tonight; just a cup of tea and a piece of slice.