Mackay Outer Harbour Marina

We popped in to Mackay on the mainland to provision for our upcoming sojourn in the Whitsunday Group. The harbour is completely artificial and there isn't anywhere to anchor, so we reluctantly rented a berth at the marina.

It has to be said that the marina is excellent. It is not unreasonably priced, and is clean and secure. It is handy for a selection of waterside restaurants and a pub, and there is a bus service that takes you into town for shopping.

After a welcome shower to rinse the thick layer of salt out of our dreadlocks, we checked out the restaurants. After some weeks of cruising, most of out fresh supplies had run out and we urgently felt the need for fresh food. There were a number of restaurants in different styles from cafe to pub steak to haute cuisine, but since all the prices were the same - $30 a main - we plumped for the best, the very highly recommended Latitude 21 restaurant underneath the Clarion Hotel. The food was excellent, the service was superb, the ambience was just what we needed to ease us back into civilisation.

We had lost track of the days, and anyway had forgotten that there are things like Sundays when the shops aren't open, so the next morning we found ourselves with a day to kill. We spent most of it catching up on paperwork and then headed off to the Sails pub, where we had a very good time, met a number of interesting people, drank far too much and ate far too little.

Shopping in Mackay was a bit of a shock. It was the school holidays, and the mall was packed. Who'd have thought that there were so many people in the world? Still, nursing our hangovers over fruit juice and coffee, it gave us a chance to see what the burghers of Mackay are like, and the word that sprang to mind was: prosperous. It's a good looking and manicured town full of good looking and manicured people. From the bus we also notice that there were a lot of infrastructure projects in full flow, so business seems to be booming. Certainly there were a great many bulk carriers outside the port waiting to get in.


PARK YOUR TANKER, SIR?

The supermarket was a real eye-opener. After the rather sad and wilted selection of fruit and vegetables at the Woolworths in Gladstone, the Mackay branch of the same store presented us with a stunning array of beautiful fresh produce. It was hard to stop ourselves from filling our trolley with more than we have room for.

We're now provisioned up, watered up, and stuffed to the gunwales with fresh meat, fruit and vegetables. We've had a brief fix of night life, and even managed to hose some of the salt off the decks. Tomorrow morning we'll refuel, and then it's back out to sea.