Sunny Queensland

We’ve been in Queensland for a week now and are starting to head back home, after spending a few days with our good friends at Rockhampton.

An audio book kept us company during the many hour of driving.  We really enjoyed it and the lady reading was excellent.

So, what have we seen?

We love the northern architecture.

Timber buildings were very popular in the past.  This is a shop at Nanango.

Rockhampton was a prominent river port in the 1800s, being settled on the banks of the Fitzroy River.  The former Custom House building is rather impressive.

As can be expected, some rather grand hotels were also established.  The Critereon has an interesting history.

We enjoyed a cool beverage in the lovely old bar, complete with a large collection of Toby jugs.

We only briefly saw the beach at Yeppoon, and it was raining.  So much for sunny Queensland on that day.  However, on the whole the weather has been good, reaching about 30 C during the day and getting down the mid 20s overnight.  The high humidity is what gets us, as we are used to a much drier climate.  The air con and ceiling fans are in constant use.

A rather pleasant evening was had in the back yard, complete with fire pit.  Rather pleasant.

We had a little visitor.  Isn’t it lovely.  Fortunately, we didn’t see any cane toads.

We had a day out playing the tourist, visiting Kershaw Gardens, which had some lovely rainforest areas.  It was established as a bicentennial project back in 1988.

How cute are the leaves on one tree.  They looked just like butterflies.

There were lots of this flowering plant, appropriately called “Cat’s Whiskers”.

We also saw some beautiful hibiscus flowers.

The Rockhampton Zoo is another nice place to visit.    

The meerkats are their latest addition.

We were fortunate to be there just at the time the chimpanzees were being fed.  Apparently, fruit is bad for them and they were fed corn and tomatoes.  One tomato landed on the roof and the chimp got a stick to knock it down.  Not silly.

We visited a local op shop and I found what must have been a kit to knit a jumper.  There are ten 100g skeins of pure wool and cost the princely sum of $20.00. There are no bands, but a brochure for Willabaa Wool.  The company was in Ballarat and appears to now be defunct.  The colour looks brown in the photo but is actually a plum colour and I look forward to knitting a jumper with it.

We started heading south today, not knowing where we would end up.  We usually travel inland, but decided to follow the coast this time.  We drove out to the twin towns of Agnes Waters and 1770, having heard mixed reviews about the towns and van parks.  We were unable to find anywhere to park the caravan close to the coast and the caravan park we saw didn’t look crash hot and was pretty crowded, so we kept on our way.

At lunch time we called in at the little village of Rosedale.  There was a lovely park by the old hall.

Over the road there was the cutest little church.  We are glad it was lunch time, as we would otherwise not have turned into the little town.

The next town was Bundaberg, famous for rum and ginger beer.  Our destination was Bargara, just a bit further east of Bundaberg.  We have stayed here once when we travelled north in the car many years ago.  The caravan park is nice, so we have decided to have a couple of nights here.

There is a nice beach just over the road and plenty to explore in the area tomorrow.  It should be fun.

As you can see, we are back to sunny Queensland.

Oh, by the way, I have mostly kept up with my 15 minutes of crafting a day, having missed just one day this week.  All I have worked on is my knitting, only just reaching the 15 minutes.  Better than nothing, considering we were visiting friends.

My tally is:

15 minutes day/week = 6/7

15 minutes day/March = 25/26

15 minutes day/2023 = 82/85

Success rate = 96.65%

I am linking up with Kate at Life in Pieces.