Once you’ve passed the Airlie Beach turnoff, the locality on your right is known as Gregory River, with the actual river lying between the highway and the mountain range, flowing out into the southern end of Port Denison. It’s not long before you’re out of the cane country, and about half way along the almost sixty kilometre run from Proserpine and Bowen you’ll encounter the extensive capsicum farming operation around Longford/Eden Lassie Creek, which, allegedly, is where the rainfall stops. There is, I gather, an aquaculture project in the vicinity but it’s not something you can see from the highway.
There’s not much else of interest along this particular stretch of highway, apart from the site of the Miowera Army Camp about twenty kilometres from Bowen and the old Miowera sale yards, just before the turnoff to Brisk Bay, another one of the beachside hamlets scattered along the coast, facing Poole Island across the waters of Edgecumbe Bay.
Opposite the Brisk Bay turnoff, Mookara Road will take you to the Glen Erin Farmstay, though we’ve never turned off and travelled the four kilometres to investigate further.
By the time you hit the residential development at Whitsunday Shores, a project that has failed (at least to date) to live up to its promotional material, you’re in sight of the town of Bowen, though you’ve still got the Big Mango and the Tourist Information Centre at Mount Gordon (there’s a rest area on the opposite side of the highway) to look forward before you’re faced with the potentially thorny issue of whether to divert into Bowen or continue on the highway north.