Bundaberg to Rockhampton

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Friday 18th we drove 340 kms up to Bundaberg (home of the Australian rum) and visited a few places - a Botanical Gardens which was fairly meagre but held the sugar museum and a small track railway with an old sugar cane train doing two circuits of the gardens. There was also the house of Bert Hinkley (an early pioneer aviator), which had been transported brick by brick from Southampton. It looked incongruous - brick and pebble dashing set amongst palm tress and rosellas. I wondered what the residents of number 37 and 41 thought when it was being dismantled.
Travelling on towards Gin Gin (I love Australian place names) we stopped at 27 unexplained craters discovered under farmland in 1971. They have foxed geologists ever since- volcanoes, geysers, meteors have all been ruled out and they remain a mystery. Some retain water, some don't, Some have minerals, some haven't. They are sandstone (and therefore cannot have been heated) shot through with iron oxide in strange markings. I stood for a while trying to photograph a hole linking one crater to another and suddenly realised I was standing on a busy ants' nest. For the next few minutes I discovered several ants under my shoe straps struggling across the velcro, or wriggling between my toes. Luckily they weren't biting ants. On the opposite side of the craters I discovered the reason for their activity. They were in the process of moving house and were carrying their eggs and provisions across the group of craters and out the other side where they had made a new nest. I managed to avoid this one.
Saturday we drove 150 kms up to Rockhampton - the beef capital of Australia (everywhere seems to have some claim to fame) where we planned to stay for two days but have ended up staying four. The weather is clearing further north and the cyclone that was hovering over the Whitsunday Islands has moved inland and blown itself out.
We've joined another club - Rockhampton Rugby League Club (to add to Hervey Bay Boat Club and Nimbin Bowls Club) and a courtesey bus picked us up and the guy from the next door campervan who had invited us along. Raffles and pokies (slot machines) seem to be a big attraction here, but the highlight for us was the roast of the day (delicious roast beef) at A$11-50 (under a fiver).
The town is very quiet - shops shut by 3pm on Saturday but we've found plenty to do. The wide streets have elegant or brightly coloured buildings and there are a few models of bulls on buildings or pedestals. We've been to a market (a book, home made pickle and lemon butter) and went to the tram museum where volunteer enthusiasts showed us round in great detail. There were white models of groups of travellers or rail workers with accompanying soundtrack. Afterwards we walked along the train track, which runs down a street through the middle of town through five level crossings. This really doesn't cause a problem here, even from one km long freight trains as there is so little traffic. We wanted to see the roundhouse where trains used to go for repair and be shunted into sheds from the truning rail in the centre. We peered in through the railings and saw a few lenths of track left. Most of the sheds were empty - a blacksmith had one, a furniture repairer had another. The rest were unused. In the Uk a large site on the edge of town and near the station would be prime housing or office development. There is so much space here. Today we've been to another Botanical Garden (Kev made grumbling noises) but this is supposed to be the best regional Gardens and it was good, lots of shady labelled trees to walk under, as today has been proper Australian weather. What was even better were the animals in the zoo by the gardens - koalas, wallabies, emus, cassowaries, primates, and loads of little turtles in the lake that came streaming towards us, aswe sprinkled Zoo food for them. They had faces like ET and some were bold enough to come out of the water.
We were intending to go to a mountain and have a guided walk to a bat cave this evening, but there were not enough to make up a group so it was cancelled. Instead we drove up Mount Archer and looked at the sun setting over the town.
Tomorrow we may go fossicking - who knows what I may find.

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