Day 9-full day at Gladstone

Today we had a full day to fill in Gladstone, which incidentally is an unusual town totally industry driven which, in part, is good as if there is something near the port or the industrial areas it has been well created and well maintained but other than that we have discovered that the old town of "Gladdy" is a bit tired.

This morning we headed to East shore  which is a beautifully laid out water park with a massive area of water jets and surrounding parklands. It was great, it was so much fun watching all the kids playing and anticipating where the water would surge from next.

Sadly at the water park Aimee's pink thongs had a blow out so we needed to head to Big W to buy new ones!

We headed to the Botanic gardens for lunch and a bit of a look around. Which was quite nice, a little hot in some sections and areas like the Daintree part did have a fair amount of mozzies.

This afternoon we headed to Spinnaker Park for a look around, an ice cream and hopefully a glimpse of some local dolphins (we saw one this morning and were keen to see more). We had success with the look around! No dolphins out and about and no ice cream (it is a recurring theme here, we head

out to see or do something only to find it shut when we get there). This afternoon it was 3.30 and the cafe was shut, yesterday the tourist information centre was shut before 5 ( which I have just realised provided us with morning and afternoon issues trying to get into Information Centres!).

It is quite unusual how in all of your landscape photos there is some dirty great big slice of industry in the background no matter where you are. It seems that people are generally quite proud of the smelter  or other similar areas.

This lilypond was quite pretty and an unusual chance for a photo with no industrial areas

A classic lookout area with the smelter as the showcase

Clearly the industry is why Gladstone exists an this lookout was quite informative too

One of the odd things that we have noticed is the ways in which the area has been advertised/promoted on the internet yet we are struggling to find evidence of it here in town, the Gladstone big 6 or the amazing local beef and seafood for example!
Actually today we decided that all of Gladstone seems to be on holiday, so many places are closed/shut we assume for the holidays.

Despite our not so great dinner experience last night we decided to try the other restaurant tonight,  very glad that we did as we had a much better meal (& cheaper despite being al carte). And as the accomodation and restaurants are all within the sports club complex I bought some meat raffle tickets and scored a tray of crumbed meatballs. Just as well we have the mini fridge in the car and a kitchen in our room tomorrow night in Mackay.

I hope to add some more photos tomorrow, I can't tonight as the internet connection is letting me down (come on Gladstone get your act together!)

So on that note I'll post what I can now

Photos added, formatting impossible! It is what it is, sorry!