Why Does It Always Rain On Me?
Saturday, December 04, 2010
We mosied on down to Town of 1770 which is built on the second landing spot of Captain Cook, surprisingly enough in the year 1770. In 1970 it was renamed from Round Hill to Town of 1770 to mark the bicentennial year of Cooks landing. Not much here to be honest and in fact the Town is actually a village, not sure why its not called the village of 1770.
This is when the heavens opened as we hit the beef capital of Australia - Rockhampton. Apparently there is over 300 days of sunshine a year here but we were greeted by flooding! In fact Rockhampton lies within the tropical cyclone zone, so as we crossed the tropic of Capricorn the cyclone hit! We had no option but to shelter in a hotel which resembled Raffles in Singapore, had a bottle of wine and watched Elf on TV. The next day the skies cleared to reveal the damage as the river right beside where we were had burst its banks and the car park we almost parked in, was flooded. Further West roads were closed and a few people are missing after being swept away, definitely a serious storm.
Anyway as I said Rockhampton is the beef capital of Australia and with over 2 million cows within a 250 km radius of the town it has a cowboy kind of feel to it. One of the famous bars in town is owned by a country and western singer and hosts rodeos and weekly country and western gigs. Shame we forgot to pack our Stetson hats! Also Christmas adverts have been adapted her to suit the local market and my personal favourite was "Buy your mum a diesel tank for Christmas." So Mum there may be a shiny new diesel tank winging its way home just now.
Further North we go on our way to Airlie Beach for hopefully a few days of sunshine (it's looking good so far), playing dodge the frogs/kookaburra/koala/wallaby/tortoise/pot holes on the roads. Last nights drive provoked a few screams from Katie as Shelly taught many a frog why its not safe to sit on the Bruce Highway.
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