Childers is pretty famous in my mind but for all the wrong reasons. Back in the year 2000 the palace Backpackers hostel was set fire by an arsonist. It was big news at the time as 15 people died. I have stayed at plenty of Backpackers over the years when I was young, if it happened in a different time line, I could have been easily one of them. This terrible event sort of changed lots of things in the backpacking industry. Fire alarms, fire exits, maximum numbers and record keeping were just a few that came into law. These changes seemed to push bed and room prices a lot higher too. All because somebody got kicked out for not paying there bill. I got a photo of the old hostel that is now an art galley and memorial.

Any way on a bright note Childers is sugar cane farming town and was much nicer than that sad bit of history. A very well looked after small country town where the main national highway still goes right through the middle. Having no bypass road probably helps bring a few dollars in and help with the up keep of a few of the historic buildings.

I found another weird but fun fact that the town used to be in the ISIS shire council, luckily that shire got amalgamated into the much bigger Bundaberg council but there are still town smaller town near by called Isis which was named after the Isis River in England not the terrorists organization. They have a football team called the ISIS devils.