We left Airlie Beach and headed south to Rockhampton. The roads through Australia are long and boring with unchanging scenery. No wonder they needed signs every 5 KM telling you to stay awake, “Stay awake, take a break,” “Power nap now” or “Stay alive, revive.” Some rest areas even offered free coffee for drivers, of course it was only instant. There are also lots and lots of dead wallaby carcasses along the roads. We haven’t seen a living one in the wild but we sure did see lots of dead ones. Along with them we saw lots of big black birds hovering over the highway or enjoying a roadside meal. I heard that in Australia it is illegal to move the road kill or use it for other purposes. I don’t know whether it’s true or why that law would exist but it would explain why there was so much road kill.
The typical roadside scenery
Rockhampton is the self proclaimed ‘beef capital of Australia.’ Every business seemed to have a statue of a cow and a ‘witty’ pun as their name which I can’t think of at the moment. So how disappointed was I to later learn that Rockhampton was home to six big things, all cows? These things weren’t any bigger than regular cows and far less spectacular than any on a CowParade. We decided to go hit the town and have dinner and possibly have a drink, since we hadn’t really done that yet on our trip.
Every town in Australia has the same layout like any town in the US. Chain stores, your typical McDonald’s and Kmart, around the roads leading into it and then a nice wide road running through the town centre with a town hall, a church, and what we were looking for a nice pub. I felt like I could have been in any mid-western town in the USA. Granted it was Sunday but the place was totally dead. It would have been like a ghost town if it wasn’t for one pub which was jam packed with people. The whole town must have been there. I kid you not when I say that some of the people were dressed up as cows. It could have been a cattle festival, but in a place like Rockhampton every day was a cattle festival.
We didn’t want to go to that pub since there was hardly a place to stand with people crowding even the sidewalk, so we tried to find another one, but the town was literary dead. After wondering a bit we just agreed to stop by a bottle shop and just go back to the campsite and drink. It was easy finding a bottle shop on the road full of chain stores and we got a bottle of wine and a Bundy with ginger beer. I had never had a Bundy before and since our next stop was Bundaberg I thought it was only appropriate.
Needless to say Rockhampton was a total flop, and the worst city we visited. At least then we had something to fall back on if we didn’t like something further on in our trip that, “At least we weren’t in Rockhampton.”
Notice the statue on top of the sign (Yeah it's a bad pic since it was taken from a mooving (j/k) vehicle, and we went around the roundabout 2 times to get it)