We had an uneventful drive to Lake Redbrook stopping at Maryborough for coffee. Our new park is beautiful, situated just north of the town of Childers on a working cattle and sugar cane farm. There is a large man-made lake, developed in 1964 and covering 40 acres when full. It is suitable for kayaking and fishing is allow but on a catch and release basis. The park is full for the next two nights as there is a “Line Dancing” group meeting here for the weekend and the park has a large community hall where the line dancing will be conducted. (Rob will be hiding while this is on.) We set up, had some lunch and drove into Childers to visit the Tourist Info Centre. We found the centre, located in a beautiful old two storey building called The Palace. The Palace was built in 1902 and the tourist section was downstairs. Upstairs is a local art gallery and a beautiful but sad memorial to the 15 young backpackers who were killed in a horrific fire in this building in 2000. There was a wonderful portrait of the backpackers all together, painted by Josonia Palaitis and 15 glass boxes, each containing up to 30 photos of the backpackers as children and with their families. I was astounded that the fire actually took place in this building which is located on the main street. After the terrible tragedy, most of the building was so severely damaged that the whole back section had to be rebuilt. Only the façade remained intact. The rebuilding has been brilliantly done as you would not pick that the building behind the original façade was rebuilt in 2003. From here we went for a quick walk down the beautiful main street of Childers which is full of restored old buildings and architecture. I hope to do a Historical Street walk in the next couple of days. We returned to Lake Redbrook and after dodging a few showers, went for a walk around one side of the lake. Here we visited an old, original “Settlers Hut” which was surrounded by old farm machinery and full of old hardware and utensils from a by-gone era.
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