After having a bit of a lazy Sunday morning, we ended up
jumping in the car and going for a drive past Mount Morgan (I recall in 2002,
doing a tour of this old gold mining town and the dinosaur caves with Josh),
then into Rockhampton to check out how much it’s changed in the last ten
years. The Fitzory river was a little
brown but that is likely due to the rain that has happened up there of
late. There wasn’t much happening in
town except for the Arcade markets – but they weren’t that exciting
either. We went for a drive up to Mount
Archer and the view over “Rocky” was pretty good except for the mistiness. I was amazed at some of the homes built on
the side of the mountain, not that they were “mcmansions” but the way they were
built off the edge of the cliff was pretty scary! Our last stop for the day was Emu Park which
is on the coast a little north of Rockhampton.
Not a lot had changed except for the small shopping centre that had
recently been opened and they were still trying to lease a lot of the sites
out. We had a quick look at the “Singing
Keelbut didn’t even get out of the car as it was pretty cold and windy. It was probably around 6pm when we returned
to the Bolt family home and Marilyn had just made a lovely big batch of her
delicious pasties. They invited their
neighbours over to meet us as they too had done a lot of travelling and we had
another lovely night of discussions.
Monday morning we decided that it was time for the kids to
do some school work. I also caught up on
a bit of washing before we packed up the school work and took it with us to
Yeppoon to finish off on the beach.
Along the way, we stopped in at the Rockhampton Ford dealership where
Josh had previously worked, in particular catching up with his friend and old
flatmate Russell. The kids and sat in
the car singing the Lord’s Prayer to me (it was very funny) while Josh had a
bit of a look around the dealership.
Later at Yeppoon, we grabbed a bit of afternoon tea and went to the
beach so the kids could complete their allocated art task (to make a sculpture
solely out of natural materials). Sami
(with Josh’s help) decided she was going to build a stacked rock sculpture
while Zoe (with my help) decided she wanted to make a heart sculpture out of
coloured rocks on the sand. Sami was so
enthused by this exercise that she then went on to make a snake from rocks,
which looked like it was slithering along the waterline. We took photos as per their assignment and
then returned “home”. Josh and I were
making dinner tonight as a thank-you to the Bolt family for having us and from
Kathryn’s (their daughter) reports, I’m not sure that Marilyn was used to being
kicked out of her kitchen. Nevertheless
we finished off dinner and all sat down for our last dinner together.
It was great to catch up with the Bolt’s but we had to keep
on moving so we packed up and said our goodbyes. We had a long drive ahead of us today, from
Rockhampton to Mackay via the Capricorn Caves.
It’s pretty sad that we have lived in the Hawkesbury for around 12 years
and never been to the Jenolan Caves with the kids, instead though we take them
to similar caves just north of Rockhampton.
These caves are a little different as they are mostly above ground which
formed millions of years ago and they have very few stalagmites and stalactites
growing inside. The most beautiful
section of this cave was the cathedral area where they hold up to about 30
weddings per year. There are pews set up
inside for approx. 80 guests and the quality of sound from within was near
perfect. Our guide left us to our own
devices to exit the cave via the zigzag walk (very tight zigzag sections of the
cave which Josh was lucky to fit through) followed by the swinging bridges
which we crossed to the exit. After
having a bite for lunch we continued on our trek to Mackay which meant nearly a
5 hour drive once you include all the roadworks. Trying to find a suitable caravan park to
stay in was painful. We began by driving
to North Mackay to the Big4 and drove straight past as it looked terrible. Next on our list was back in South Mackay and
it too was pretty bad. We went back
again to North Mackay and found another and by this time it was after 6pm so
just checked in – and although it still wasn’t very nice, it was cheap.
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