23 June 2011 - Gracemere Caravan Park, Queensland

Another day in the tropical paradise of Rockhampton. I spent the early part of the day with laundry before we headed off into town, across the river to Kershaw Gardens. While this was not on our must-do list, it seemed to be a good place to walk and lunch before heading to our next destination which was. We spent about forty minutes wandering the paths of the park, along the banks of Moore’s Creek which eventually finds its way to the Fitzroy. Lunch was taken under the scrutiny of ibis, crows, butcher birds and peewees. Chris succumbed to the plaintive cries of the young butcher birds and fed them the crusts of his sandwich. It was the first time that we had shared our picnic so closely with these birds; their behaviour was just like that of cheeky house sparrows.

At one, we were at the Dreamtime Cultural Centre ready for the afternoon tour. This centre is on Darambal land, nestled amidst 30 hectares of natural bush. The guides, Wayne and Stephen, imparted the history of the region’s Aboriginal and Torres Islander communities. Wayne led us through interpretative panels hung on the “rock” walls of an artificial sandstone structure, telling the stories of the ancient rock stencil art in the Carnavon Gorge. After a spell with Stephen whose “lecture” we found extremely interesting and enlightening, Wayne revealed some of the secrets of Didgeridoo playing and we all had a go throwing boomerangs. Chris threw a wild shot that flew out and around, and we all ducked as it came looking for him. The tour was well worth the money spent and more, and we would readily recommend it to anyone travelling this way. We had of course had it recommended to us by Lance and Uta in Sydney, Spider Everitt on his “Great Australia Door Step” DVD and in two of our travel “encyclopaedias”. How could we go wrong!

We drove up to the top of Mt Archer to see the spectacular views of the city from the summit. We were duly rewarded however the haze did not suggest good photos. From there we came on down, called again at the post office to find two more of the letters forwarded by Pauline, and returned to camp.

Dinner was waiting in the crock pot (hooray for power!), the bird lady next door had managed to attract kookaburras, rainbow lorikeets and crested pigeons to her empty feeding trays and we managed to catch both Larissa and Olly on Skype; all in all, an excellent day.