PUB CRAWL IN YEPPOON

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With nothing better to do we decided on a pub crawl round Yeppoon. On our walk into town we could hardly believe our eyes when we saw thousands of bats hanging in the trees. We have seen bats flying in the sky at a lot of places, but to see them like this was amazing - as was the stench coming from them!

When we wandered around town we couldn’t see many bars - this can cause a problem when you are planning a pub crawl. Gem decided to ask a passing local. He told us that there was normally a good Sunday crowd at the Railway bar. While Andy and Kieran looked for a bank Gemma and I went ahead to check it out. When we arrived we were sure we must be in the wrong place. The lively crowd consisted of one toothless old man sitting on his own on the veranda - we turned around and left. We ended up in an Irish bar with a sunny beer garden. The best bit about the place was the chip shop next door which sold deep fried mars bars. This being a trip filled with trying new things Kieran didn’t need much convincing to dash next door. He liked it so much that he tried to get us to bet him how many he could eat. Gem and Andy both liked it but to me there was a faint fishiness about it and fish and chocolate are not things I want to be tasting in the same mouthful.

On the walk to the next bar Andy and Kieran noticed a chip shop with an offer for $5 fish and chips. We walked through the door, but because they were so cheap they couldn’t decide if they wanted to risk it or not. Gem soon solved the problem when she stopped a man coming out of the shop “excuse me, do you have the $5 fish and chips” she asked . The man said he did and looked at her wondering what was coming next. Kieran and I were also both watching wondering what she would say next. I thought she may ask if he had tried them before and would he recommend them. But in the end Gem being Gem went with “would you mind letting me have a look at them” the man said he hadn’t even looked at them himself yet, but he did open the box and let her check them out - I am not sure if at this point he wasn’t doing it out of confusion - what is the right response to this sort of enquiry? Its not every day that you get stopped in the street by someone wanting to look at your dinner. It turned out that Gem saved the day. The fish and chips looked more like fishcake and oven chips so we walked around the corner and paid $8 for the real thing.

The only other bar we could find worth a look was the Sailing club. The barmaid tried to sell us the cocktails that they were trialling, two of which contained blue curaso. Maybe someone made a mistake with the order and now they have bottles of the stuff to get through. Me and Gem decided to give them a whirl since the nervous little barmaid had got herself in such a pickle trying to remember what was in each cocktail.

As we sat outside drinking on the huge decking area which looked out to sea a strange cloud appeared in the sky. When we looked closer we realised that it was not a rain cloud but it was the bats we had seen earlier waking up and taking to the skies. It was an incredible site as the giant black cloud moved across the sky. There must have been millions of them.

Later a group of people sat at the table next to ours. They were quite possible the only young people in Yeppoon. They ordered a few drinks and something to eat and were laughing and joking as you do when a group of people get together. The next time we went to the bar the barman asked if we were ok. We asked why and he replied “I just wondered as the table next to you seemed a bit rowdy” Well if ordering a bowl of wedges and laughing with your friends was Yeppoons idea of rowdy then we were in bother.

Soon after we were informed that it was drinking up time - well it was half past nine already and if they were open much longer people might actually start having fun and that would never do!


With the many delights of Yeppoon exhausted we decided to pack up the next day and drive to Rockhampton to check out the roads for ourselves.

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