Emerald

Emerald surprised us as it is quite a big city.   Having come from the dry and dusty gemfields, we were kinda expecting the same with a name like Emerald.  Both Uni & Tafe have campuses here.   A large dam provides water to the region allowing a variety of crops to be grown, 25% of qlds. cotton is grown here plus wheat, maize, sorghum, oats, barley, sunflower, citrus, beef, grapes, avocados, mangoes, peanuts, soybeans.  It was actually beautiful to drive thru this region, it is so rich, green and lush at the momnent.   This region had a huge flood on Aust. Day this year, devastating many towns, but the by product of that rain is that everything is growing like crazy.  Sunflowers were once their biggest crop, and they had the Sunflower festival.  Now that is no longer, instead in the park they have  the worlds biggest Van Gogh painting.  25 Metres high.   Interesting? but not that exciting.

These two friends kept us entertained whilst we had a picnic lunch in the Botanic Gardens.    Someone had left a handful of Maccas chips nxt. to our picnic table and these two were desperately waiting for us to move on so they could enjoy a picnic of their own. You can free camp under the road bridge nxt. to the Botanic Gardens but we opted to move on as it was pretty noisy during the day and figured it might be the same at night.

This is the 1900 Railway Station.  Very pretty but I couldnt help taking the picture as a council worker drove his ride on lawn mower up the ramp to the station.  Not sure why?   Perhaps to catch a train or mow the line?

The most important thing in this town for us was Woolworths Supermarket.   We were so hanging out for a decent shop at a big supermarket and boy did we shop.  Could barely shut the fridge door.   So did the touristy stuff in Emerald, which isnt much, and then moved on down the road.