FOURTEENTH DAY – 22ND JULY
It was a cold and frosty morning as we got up early, there was mist on the river. Had breakfast of crumpets and set off about 7.50 am towards Rockhampton. There was plenty of bushland and fairly flat. It seemed that we were driving through a valley as there were mountains on both sides of us a fair distance away. The unusual unexpected thing to see was an electric train out in the bush. It just seemed out of place. There were many herds of white Brahman cows that stand out against the brown/green grasses they were eating. As we got closer to Rocky we had to take a detour as the cops had blocked off the hwy – we think there may had been an accident. When we arrived in Rocky there was a big statue of a – Brahman bull. Rocky is apparently beef central!! That would explain all the cows and bull statues everywhere. Apparently the testicles of the bull statues get stolen all the time. We had to laugh when we saw a statue that was all intact including a strip of police tape wrapped around its testicles!! Very Funny. We checked out the info centre as usual and then went and found the Botanical Gardens. This was an amazing collection of plants and they even have a mini zoo there which was a bit of a maze to get through but they are making improvements. They had all kinds of animals and birds – as many as the Australia Zoo only different and the same and it was free! As we continued on Graeme saw a big billboard advertising ‘Sexie Coffee’. He had to check it out so we found the shop and Graeme went in and got himself a sexie coffee and a muffin. We continued on to Capricorn Caves which is north of Rocky. When we got there we found out their tours start on the hour so we had lunch in ‘The Snail’ then went and joined our tour at 1pm. There were lots of school kids floating about and we were worried they might be on the tour but as it turned out there were only five of us and the tour guide called Jan. The caves were about ground caves mostly and they were very interesting. Over many years water has eroded the soft sandstone away and left open caverns – some small, some big enough that they call one the cathedral where they hold weddings, concerts and parties and others are small and squeezy. We enjoyed looking at them. We then travelled towards Jeppoon and we could see Great Keppel Island and a few other islands off the coast. We continued towards Emu Park where we checked out the singing ship which is a monument that when the wind blows through it it makes a tuneful sound. We then decided that we would buy some fish and potato cakes for tea and find a place to stay the night as it was getting late – 4.30 pm. You might laugh about this being late but we intend to travel then find a place to stay at least by 4 if we can and then have time to relax and take the scenery in. We drove past quite a few caravan parks but they looked very very full. We remembered seeing a carpark near the beach which looked ok to stay at so investigated it further. We are now here tucked away in a corner – all by ourselves looking over Causeway Lake which runs out into the sea. There were a few people fishing and walking and I took some more sunset photos!! And it is nice and quiet.