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Bowen is a town on the east coast of the Queensland, Australia.
Bowen is located on the north-east coast of Australia, at exactly twenty degrees south of the equator. In fact, the twentieth parallel crosses the main street. Bowen is halfway between Townsville and Mackay, and 1,130 kilometres by road from Brisbane. (To give an idea of the scale of the state of Queensland, Canberra is closer to Brisbane than Bowen is, and Melbourne is closer to Brisbane than Cairns is).
The town of Bowen sits on a square peninsula, with ocean to the north, east, and south. On the western side, where the peninsula connects with the mainland, the Don River's alluvial plain provides fertile soil that supports a prosperous farming industry.
The surrounding Bowen Shire covers an area of 21,085 square kilometres and includes the principal towns of Bowen and Collinsville, plus the smaller townships of Mount Coolon, Scottville, Heronvale, Merinda, Gumlu, and Guthalungra. The Bowen Shire is bounded by Wangaratta Creek to the North, Greta Creek to the South and the Inland Highway in the West. The Shires of Burdekin, Dalrymple, Belyando, Nebo, Mirani, Mackay and Whitsunday all border the Shire of Bowen.
The town of Bowen is in the dry tropics. This means it has all the warm sunny weather of a tropical climate, but it's much dryer than one would expect for tropical beaches overlooking the Great Barrier Reef. This is why Bowen is home to the Dry Tropics Research Centre.
At Bowen's latitude, the Trade Winds provide a pleasant breeze. In summer the hottest part of the day is usually about 9am and then the wind kicks in and keeps you cool. It's not unusual in summer for Bowen to be a good ten degrees cooler than Brisbane, which is a thousand kilometres closer to the south pole.
The warmest month is January, with an average maximum temperature of 31 degrees Celsius (88 degrees Fahrenheit). The coolest month is July, with an average maximum temperature of 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit) and an average overnight minimum of 14 degrees Celsius (57 degrees Fahrenheit).
The Bowen Shire as a whole has a population of 12,518 (2001 Census). There are approximately 9,000 people in Bowen and 2,000 living in Collinsville and Scotsville.
Bowen enjoys a diversified and prosperous economy based on agriculture, fishing, tourism, and mining. For several winter months, Bowen supplies about 75% of Australia's tomatoes. The tastiest mango in Australia is the variety known as Kensington Pride, which is popularly called the Bowen Special mango. Bowen's unusually dry climate for a tropical location, plus its fertile alluvial soil, makes it the ideal place to grow a wide variety of small crops, including tomatoes, rockmelons (i.e., cantalopes), capsicums (i.e., green peppers). Outside the alluvial plain, much of the Bowen Shire is used for beef cattle.
Bowen is Australia's largest exporter of live tropical fish for the restaurants of Asia. If you walk into an upscale restaurant in Tokyo or Hong Kong and spot a tank full of large reef fish, there's a good chance it came from Bowen.
Just north of Bowen is the Abbot Point coal loading port. Coal mined inland of Bowen in Collinsville and other towns in the Bowen Basin is brought by rail to a deepwater pier to be loaded on bulk carriers. Coal is exported mainly to Europe and Japan.
Bowen also has an evaporative salt producing facility. That is, it uses only seawater and sunlight to make salt, without burning fossil fuels. This is only possible because of its dry tropical climate. Most of the table salt used in Australia comes from Bowen.