Rockhampton awaits

Rockhampton is located on the Tropic of Capricorn, so this will be our last stop in the tropics. This is almost at the exact place on the east coast as Coral Bay in on the west coast, but the difference in landscape shows how diverse this country of ours is.

Any hope we had of drying our stuff evaporated (pardon the pun) approximately 40 Kilometres north of Rockhampton as we passed through some of the heaviest rain we’ve encountered on this trip. By the time we reached our caravan park site, the rain was falling lightly until the time we needed to start setting up when it proceeded to bucket down. It rained non stop at this rate for another 8 hours well into the evening with me running around in my spray jacket getting things tied down. I was told by someone in the office that Rockhampton had received nearly 100mm of rain in the past 2 days!

However, the rain did finally stop and after we get settled had a nice dinner at the bistro on site which was a nice way to finish the day considering our aquatic activities. This caravan park had a bath in the ablution block and we all indulged in a good soak, something we haven’t had since we left Perth just over 3 months ago.

We are staying in Rockhampton for 3 days, and it did not rain any more which gave us the chance to get everything washed and dried, and before long were back in business. We did a lot of relaxing on this stop and met some nice people from Tasmania and Canberra and spent a pleasant evening with them swapping tales and enjoying each others company.

Denise and I were lucky enough to be able to vote in the upcoming Federal election at the Electoral Commission office, so it’s good to have that one out of the way. It’ll be great to travel soon without having to see all the electioneering nailed to every second tree we go past!

We also spent an afternoon looking over the seaside town of Yeppoon which is approx 60 K’s from Rockhampton. We had lunch in a tavern which offered counter lunches for $10 each which was excellent value considering some of the places we have eaten at to date.