Saturday 29th May.. tonight we sleep at Emerald. Last night my radios were hopelessly drowned with noise at Alpha, and this morning is cool and cloudy, so it was an easy decision to "move on" this morning. Without a plan, we simply drove East about 170 klms and stopped at a pretty classy caravan park in Emerald where they charged $30 per night. Driving has been getting easier with wider roads and TWO lanes! The green is great (above left) and the welcome to Emerald looks promising (above right).
Emerald is the busiest place we've seen for a while - but still no traffic lights (above left) - at last we have found an ice cream parlour. They do have extremely tall artists in Emerald, the one who painted this painting in the park (upper right) was at least 60 feet tall.
We had lunch at the Emerald Hotel (upper left) where I paid a whopping $10 for a can of Bundy & Cola (was I ripped off or is that the normal price?). After lunch we took a drive to the local lake Fairbairn Lake and dam (above right). Radio on Sunday night was again a dismal failure with noise well over S9.
Monday 31st May .. tonight we sleep at Emerald again .. (there is more than one ice cream shop in Emerald). Daytime temperature has been up to about 23 degrees but we have only a vague idea what the night time temperature gets down to because our diesel heater cuts in and out during the night to keep the caravan at about 19 degrees.
So far we have travelled 3088klms
cost of diesel fuel $935
cost to travel 1000klms = $310
litres per 100klms = 22
kilometers per litre = 4.6
Wednesday 2nd June .. tonight we sleep at Rockhampton for the second night. We are obviously back into metropolitan areas, just take a look at the road here between Emerald and Rockhampton (upper left). The Queensland speed limit is 100k unless marked otherwise and we found a couple of patches were it was actually signed as 110k. It looks as though they were expecting us - we had an impressive welcome (upper right). I quickly parked illegally on the side of the island to take a picture of it in case they pulled it all down when we left.
When I saw this railway coal truck (above left), I was tempted to paint a sign on it ... "GIVE WAY TO TOYOTA LANDCRUISERS". There were another 15 to 20 similar looking carriages lined up along the rail tracks. Police are searching for a late model Landcruiser that witnesses say left the scene quickly. We also left the scene to find out exactly what was meant by a "sexie coffie" (above right).
Friday 6th June 2010 .. Rockhampton. There is entertainment for everybody in Rockhampton -including the grey nomads (above left). Specially trained attendants are always on hand in case the "very old nomads" can't peddle around the entire 50 meter track. The attendants (above right) prefer to watch the proceedings from the safety of a cage - (groups of children have been seen prowling around the park).
Sunday 6th June 2010 .. Rockhampton. Mount Archer (603.5 meters ASL) overlooks Rockhampton and also provides some views out towards Yeppon. The above picture of Rockhampton is my first attempt (obviously) to manually stitch two pictures together (Frank, you may need to give me some clues on how it's done).
Wednesday 9th June 2010 .. a visit to Byfield National Park.. We spent most of the day trying to be friendly to the native animals and succeeded with the giant spiders (above left) and the sea dragons (above right). Our luck changed when we met the white Brahma Cow (lower right) - we did not see "Eye To Eye" and she was not going to let us pass until we said "Please"! The snake (lower left) didn't give us any trouble because we only stayed around long enough to take a pic - then ran.
Something rare for me was a visit to a Pottery Gallery but I was surprised by the clever way that the glass and pottery was made (above left). The next stop was Yeppoon where they seem to run out of water and all the boats sit high and dry for a big part of each day (above right). The final stop was to take a picture in (lower left) ... ? .. ? .. is that really "JEAL RD."
Lets go to part four next.