No, I’m not going back to work… tomorrow we are off on a cruise to Great Keppel Island! We’ll get to spend the day snorkeling, boom netting, looking through a glass bottomed boat and laze around on nice sandy beaches! So just in case, the alarm is now set for shock…horror… an 8am start!

As you may have gathered, today we made the great distance (not) into Rockhampton, then Emu Point and Yeppoon. It’s a beautiful coastline here at Rocky, and the weather has been perfect – sunny, warm enough during the day, and not much wind. We did a bit of shopping at Yeppoon, and have set up camp for the night on the beach just south of Rosslyn Harbour.

View to Rosslyn Harbour

Spot for the night. Though we moved a little later to an off-road carpark just down the beach a little.

The view

We found a few of these on the beach. They tasted great….

The general decision we’ve made is that rather then head further north, we’ll see the marine life around here, and then go west. I’m told the coral isn’t as colorful as what we’d see further out/north, but the fish life is still meant to be good. The boys are new at snorkeling and boom netting, so I’m sure it will be a great adventure for all! The tours here are cheaper, and it saves us having to double back on our tracks as well. We’ve always planned to focus on the faraway places of NT, WA & SA on this trip, as we can do the QLD and NSW coasts during normal annual holidays.

During the 110km traveled into Rocky, we passed 4 huge coal trains – each must have been over a km long. That got the boys asking questions, so were looking at doing a coal mine tour around Blackwater. Then there is also the northern end of the Canarvon National Park, as well as gem fields & fossicking around Emerald (boys very interested), to be followed by the Stockmans Hall of Fame and the Qantas Founders Museum at Longreach, perhaps another mine or whatever Mount Isa has to offer, then off to the Northern Territory!

Our only set timeframe in this whole trip is to be at Uluru on the 23rd July, as we are meeting our good friend Nikki (and her girls) there for the Australian Outback Marathon. That is only a minor 3,000km from our current location…. We may get to the Macdonnell Ranges or other places in central Aus prior, depending on how our travels go, but by all indications so far we’ll be lucky to make it there on time!!