Nature giveth and Man taketh away

I have had an epiphany about Queensland's position on environmental conservation: Nature giveth and Man taketh away.  Do I sound harsh? The prime example -  Cane Toads. The cane beetle was diminishing sugar growers profits, so what was done? An exotic predator was released and the rest is history. Everywhere we go there is evidence of unchecked development, still going on.  The place names are a clue: Enterprise Street, Industry Avenue. Only a couple of days ago we passed a patch of coastal heathland in the process of being bulldozed. Our favourite story is the one where Fraser Island was declared an aboriginal reserve, then 2 years later, after its timber's commercial use was realized, it was undeclared. And the one about Mt Etna in the Capricorn area, where UCL wanted the limestone and so its National Park status was revoked, and some beautiful caves were lost.  Only a huge outcry stopped the only maternity cave for one species of bat being flattened.   So far we have seen no part of Queensland that looks pristine, like most of Tasmania looks. Even areas the tourist blurbs describe as "looking just like it did when James Cook named it" are full of exotic weeds like lantana. And, there's no such thing as recycling bins around here. There. I've got that off my chest, now to tell you what we've been up to today.

We are still in Mackay. I've done the washing and everything is recharged, so we're leaving tomorrow morning, Chrissie Amphlett's voice keeps singing in my brain: Get me out of here...It's not Mackay, it's caravan parks in general, I don't like them any more.

These lovely orchids are from Mackay's orchid house.

This is a "blue tiger" butterfly, there were hundreds of them at the caves we visited, but only one at the orchid house, and she was mighty hard to catch a shot of!

We also visited Artspace Mackay and saw an exhibition of Hermannsberg water colours, Namatjira and so on. My parents had an original Ewald Namatjira water colour that Dad actually bought from the artist.  It is better than any of those on exhibition. He always loved it. Nicholas has it now.

Just to finish, found this lovely shot when we uploaded photos from David's phone. It is granddaughter Sharloe, taken on our last visit. Isn't she gorgeous?