I know, from personal experience there was still a Railway Refreshment Room operating in Ayr into the late seventies, and a similar facility was part of the old Bowen railway station when I arrived in town in 1984, though I never managed to get there for a drink.
Familiarity with the Railway Refreshment Rooms in Ayr came about in the wake of Cyclone Althea and delivers us to an on-going theme as far as died in the wool Northerners are concerned.
The stories associated with Althea rightfully belong in the Townsville section of this project, but the particular set of circumstances aren’t particularly cyclone related. While the cyclonic winds had done more than their share of damage it was the associated rainfall that prevented the northbound Sunlander from reaching Townsville, and southbound passengers were bused to Ayr to join the train there once the water levels cutting the highway had dropped.
Railway lines would still have needed checking, but once the waters were down some road transport could get through. Year after year, regardless of cyclones it was the same.
Fifty years on, though much has changed, every wet season brings calls for the Bruce Highway to be flood proofed. It’s difficult to see how that’s could be achieved. It would require a huge investment in surveys, hydrological studies and, finally, construction.
And if you’re looking for reasons why there’s no minimum cost option I’d point the reader towards three areas that will be all too familiar to wet season travellers heading from Mackay to Cairns.
You reach the first as you pass the turnoff to the defunct Laguna Quays resort and Midge Point north of Bloomsbury. The preceding section of the Bruce has wound its way through the foothills of the coastal range between Pindi Pindi and Yalbaroo, and then edged around the range just north of Bloomsbury, but once you hit that turnoff you’re on the verge of the Goorganga Flats.
The lowland will continue until you start to climb as you approach Foxdale (the little place with the old sawmill on the other side of Proserpine, just before the Airlie Beach turnoff at Myrtlevale).
That’s around twenty-five kilometres of flood plain where the highway as it does in all three instances, runs at right angles to the waterways that drain an area where rainfall is plentiful.