Tennant Creek to the Great Barrier Reef....
FACTIODS: • With the discovery of gold in 1932, Tennant Creek celebrates humble beginnings as Australia’s last ‘gold rush’ town. • Mount Isa is famous for having the ‘biggest Irish club ‘in the World! • In 1923, John Campbell Miles sampled rocky outcrops and realised that it was heavily mineralised. He had stumbled on to one of the world’s richest copper, silver, lead and zinc ore bodies. He decided to call his discovery – ‘Mount Isa’. • 86 years later, the Mount Isa mine is still one of Australia’s largest producers of copper ore and is Australia’s deepest underground mine. • Mount Isa has a great climate with an average of 9.5 hours of sunshine per day and only 50 wet days per year. • There are two distinct seasons –the ‘Wet Season’ which is from November to March and the ‘Dry Season’ centred on June, July and August. • McKinley is a classic outback town with a Bush Nursing Clinic and Queensland smallest library. • Winton holds the Guinness book of Records title for the longest road train- with 34 trailers- each with 20 wheels per trailer. • Longreach is known as the birth place of QUANTAS airlines (Queensland and Northern Territory Air Service), with its first flight taking place from Charleville to Clocurry, and touching down in Longreach and Winton en route in 1922. • Emerald is surrounded by cotton farms and grain fields and the area also produces cattle, oil seeds, soybeans and citrus. • The Gem fields around Emerald are the largest Sapphire producing fields in the southern Hemisphere. Keen fossikers can also find topaz, amethyst, jasper, chalcedony, tourmaline and diamond. • Just west of Rockhampton, the town of Gracemere is home to the largest livestock sale yards in the Southern Hemisphere. • Rockhampton is known as the ‘Beef Capital of the world’. • Built on the back of gold and cattle, Rockhampton’s true blue heart is lovingly maintained in the heritage architecture, grand old pubs and the best steaks anywhere!! • In 1858, gold was discovered at Canoona, approximately 50kms north of Rockhampton. 15,000 people arrived in the area in search of gold. • 101 wagon coal trains regularly travel along the Capricorn Highway. The Bowen Basin extracts over 100 million tonnes of coal annually, making it Australia’s most important export commodity. • It is possible to determine the outcome of the sex of a baby crocodile by adjusting the temperature of the incubator. • When a crocodile first hatches – it has 63 teeth – this includes an odd tooth right on the end of his nose! This tooth has the sole purpose of helping the babe to break out of his egg shell and then the tooth is lost within his first 24 hours of life. • There are two species of Crocodile – the Fresh Water and the Salt Water. It is the Salt Water variety that have eaten three people (that we know about), within the time we have been in Australia! • The Great Barrier Reef stretches for approximately 2,000 kms and is visible from the moon. It is approximately 12,000 years old and is the largest natural feature on earth and the largest structure made by living organisms. • The Great Barrier Reef comprises of approximately 2,900 individual coral reefs, covering an area of 348,000 square kilometres and is an established National Marine Park protecting about 400 species of hard and soft corals. • The Great Barrier Reef is home to approximately 1,500 types of fish, 4,000 kinds of mollusc, 350 echinoderms and countless species of sponge, crustaceans and sea grasses. • The Great Barrier Reef is one of the richest, most complex and diverse ecosystems in the world. • The Great Barrier Reef is greater in area than the entire UK. • At its widest the reef is 80kms wide, at its furthest out, it is 300 kms from the mainland coast, and at its tallest it is more than 500 metres thick. • In 1770 Captain James Cook sailed Endeavour through Keppel Bay and was the first European to see the islands. He named the bay and the Islands after Rear Admiral Keppel. • Male Seahorses give birth! They have a pouch on their belly which holds the eggs until they hatch. Seahorses are the world’s slowest fish!
Monday, 11 May 2009 12:05:45 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)      Comments [0]  Australia