We were all packed up by 9:45am and loaded our bags onto the back of the resort truck. Rhys decided he wanted to ride in the back as well with Ajji holding on to him. We were on the beach in few minutes but the boat was nowhere in sight. We soon learned that they had had mechanical issues and therefore had to switch boats. We left the island 15 minutes late around 10:45am but the boat was a lot nicer as it had a top deck where we could all sit and enjoy the sunshine, views of the Keppels and surrounding islands. We’d had a fantastic time on the Keppels and would definitely return if we had the opportunity.

We loaded the vehicle on the other end in Rosslyn Bay and began our long drive south to Dundowran Beach (30 mins NE of Maryborough), where we were going to stay for 2 nights. The drive down was pretty uneventful and we didn’t spot any interesting wildlife either. We ended up reaching our place quite late around 7pm. After quickly unloading the vehicle and leaving Ajji and Tatha to take care of Rhys, we did a quick trip to the closest Woolies (that’s local speak for Woolworths – one of the 2 big supermarket chains). The little cottage we had rented was a cozy little 2 bedroom, 1 bath that was very new with modern fittings and a nice kitchen located right on the beach.  After a quick dinner of roast chicken and salad, we all headed to bed as we were quite exhausted after a long day of travelling.

The following morning we drove into Maryborough to do a walking tour of its historic district. Maryborough is one of the oldest cities in Queensland and being on the banks of a large river, it saw its peak in the late 1800’s to mid-1900s. The main industries back in the day were the railway and shipworks. We had an excellent walking tour map (with descriptions of each building) from the TI, which was located in the city hall and was also the first building of interest. We walked past more than 30 buildings of historic significance that had facades dating back to mid-1900s that were quite well maintained. Some of the buildings were still in use today but most were no longer occupied. Maryborough is particularly famous for being the birthplace and home of P L Travers, the author of Mary Poppins. Unfortunately, the bank where her father worked (she was born in the apartments above it) was the one building in the whole city that was under restoration! It seems to be our luck with such things – just like the parliament buildings in Charlottetown when we had visited. We were however able to pose with the Mary Poppins statue just next to the building. That is also where I first noticed that the pedestrian stop/go lights were that of Mary Poppins with her umbrella closed and down and up and open respectively – a fun little touch! Towards the end of the walking tour, we ended up in Queen’s park which had some amazing banyan trees, outdoor instruments that Rhys enjoyed playing and a miniature train track that was only in operations on Thursdays.

We walked nearly 1.5km from Queen’s park to the other end of town to get to a well rated fish and chips shop. As it seems to be our luck, the shop was closed unexpectedly for just that one day! As we had planned on eating out, we didn’t have any lunch packed. There was a Hungry Jacks nearby (Australian Burger King) and although we don’t usually do fast food, we thought it would be the most reliable and fastest meal nearby. Once we were done lunch, we had a short walk over to the Brennan & Geraghty’s general store museum. This museum was actually a working store from 1871 until 1972 when George Geraghty (born in 1884) closed the store by literally walking out and shutting its doors, thereby leaving everything exactly how it had been. He wasn’t married and didn’t have any children at the time so the store eventually was inherited by a relative. The relative found it too difficult to manage the store and then sold it to the state who took a few years to restore the dilapidated store and open it up as a museum. Walking into the store is literally like stepping back in time – all the old tins, cans, boxes of goods, the papers and advertisements were perfectly intact and on the shelves as they would have been back in the days when it was open for business. George was known as the “midnight grocer” because he took orders during the day and did the actual deliveries at night on his bicycle when it was cooler. The front of the store was used to display items for sale (including imported goods such as tea from China, dinner sets from England, butter from Denmark) and for customers to place their orders. The back half of the store was where goods were stored in bulk. There was a rail that ran from the front to the back of the store so that goods could easily be transported back and forth. There are still some cans of unopened Chinese tea on the shelves dating back to 1885 and even some unopened medicines! Also at the front of the store was the Cash register/typewriters and accounts section. As many of George’s customers were farmers just establishing themselves in the area, he often had to extend credit to them in the hopes that they would pay back eventually. Very detailed accounts were kept in enormous ledgers that were still stacked haphazardly on the desks as if at any moment, someone would be returning to continue working on them. It was a really neat museum and the volunteers running the place were very knowledgeable and helpful guiding us through.

Once we had finished at the museum, we walked back to the car and headed back to our cottage in Dundowran. As we were only a minute walk (or less) from the beach, we decided to take Rhys down so he could enjoy splashing around in the water for a bit until sunset. We were quite surprised when we arrived at the beach to find that it was low tide and that the water had receded about 500-700m out from shore! There were still a few small pools of water which were perfect for Rhys to wade in and splash about in but we decided not to walk all the way out to meet the waves. As the sun began to set, Rhys started to get quite cold and so we took him in for a shower and got ready for a dinner of salads, sausages on the BBQ and locally brewed, sparkling Guava juice from Bundaberg – yum!