Rockhampton - The Beef Capital!

We had a later start today as we knew we didn’t have a really long drive to Rockhampton. We left Hervey Bay just after 10am and following Tom’s directions got onto the Bruce Highway(No.1) which is the main road to Rockhampton. On the way we stopped off at Childer’s (loo stop) and got some information on Flying High, a big flight aviary, in Apple Tree Creek about 6km north of town along the highway. We decided to have a look since we were not on a tight schedule today. There were lots of beautiful parrots and other birds such as finches, quails and canaries. Some were in large cages but others were flying ‘free’ in the huge aviary. It was good to be able to get so close to them and the camera got a workout again. I could have spent quite a long time there trying to get photos as could any keen photographer, especially one interested in birds, but we didn’t stay too long since we still had a fair way to go and we needed to eat lunch too. There was a conveniently located park/rest stop across the road from the aviary so we went over there and got out our thermoses etc and had our lunch. The weather was quite mild and Fin made the comment that we have left ‘coat country’ behind now. Hooray!!
The drive was a fairly easy one except there was a huge, I mean really huge “Wide load” going along in front of us in a section of fairly narrow, windy road and we, along with a stream of other vehicles, were stuck behind it for quite some time. Two of the other vehicles stuck in the traffic were carrying half a house each but the load that was holding us all up was much wider. Eventually, the police stopped the traffic coming in the other direction so our stream of traffic could finally pass the extra wide load. Once we got past this we had an uneventful trip but were careful not to stop for too long in case they caught with us and got in front again!
Tonight’s holiday park is right on the Bruce Highway so it was easy to find. We joined the Top Tourist Parks’ Club since this is one of them and we can only get a place in Mackay at one also so the membership fee of $25 for 2 years will be covered by our 10% discount almost straight away and we will no doubt use TT again on this trip if we are not using Big 4 which has well and truly paid for itself and more since we got two night’s for the price of one in Yamba as well as our 10% discount!
We just got back from having dinner at the Rockhampton Leagues Club. We both had steak but Fin had the ‘Surf & Turf’, which as you can guess has seafood with it. It was good tucker and very filling. Driving around town, you can’t help noticing that it is a very beefy place. That is, there are bulls up on signs all over the place and many of the businesses seem to have relevance to the beef cattle industry. The Leagues Club has a bull with rugby jumper on (of course) above its main door. The cattle up here are often Brahman but there are Brafords too which are crossed with Herefords. I am not sure what we had for dinner; suppose it was local but anyway it was very tender. We saw a lot of cattle farms and cattle trains on our way here and also what we assume was a cane train; it was a long train with four engines pulling lots and lots of cars on narrow gauge tracks.
Tomorrow we intend to leave early to be in Mackay in time for a tour to see a Sugar Mill in action.