Gladstone

28th August

After finally leaving the serenity of 200 Semis thundering down the Bruce Highway overnight, we travelled a massive 16km to a suburb called "The Caves". According to the tourist web site, we could self explore caves and go for some rainforest walks. This unfolded into a $89 entrance fee for a 1 hour guided tour through the Capricorn Caves. These people quite obviously weren't aware of the requirements that would need to be met in order to entertain our 3 kids in an underground hole with limestone walls and some strategically placed spot lights for an hour. Rather than taking the risk of being kicked out of FNQ, we chose to go on a self guided walk through a small part of the National Park down the road. This road quickly turned into a gravel road, which then turned into what appeared to be an unmantained dirt driveway, before finally going through a set of gates and thankfully providing a space to turn the van around.

We tried to convince the kids this was an excursion for school and they did a pretty good job at reading all the information plaques, but as with most trips, getting through to the end as quickly as possible in order to get something to eat appeared to over-ride any desires of mine for them to actually learn something. 

16 km later, we got to Rockhampton and went for a visit to the Botanic Gardens and a free zoo..... Yes free. And it was pretty good for zero dollars too. They had apes, snakes, birds, koalas, roos, dingoes etc. about a 1.3km walk around, but very good value for (no) money. Lunch followed then we had an hour and a half to get to Gladstone. This was originally going to be a single night stop over, but we have decided it may be a 2 nighter so we can go exploring and possibly some island hopping. Let you know tomorrow!

Distance travelled today - 150km

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