Yet another really long drive up from Hervey Bay this morning, some 5 further hours of Bruce Highway straightness all the way up through the Tropic of Capricorn to the surprisingly elegant (steamy hot) and bustling city of Rockhampton. 

I’m afraid Hervey Bay and its endless flat suburbia didn’t do it for us. Understand of course that this place is totally geared up for tourism e.g. whale watching, launching across to the largest sand island in the world, K’gari (formerly Fraser Island), as well as BCF, the Aussie acronym for Boatin’ Campin’ and Fishin’ – or ‘BCF’n Fun’ as the TV Ad screams. Sadly, our overnight stay at Urangan was utterly uninspiring. A nice modern well-equipped apartment, with vast pool, but you just couldn’t find a centre or soul to the place. We tried our best to conquer the suburban sprawl, we really did – including (as you pointed out Guy), searching out the pier and the local beaches, but we gave up. We did catch a glimpse of K’gari from a crowded boat jetty but it was so jammed in with garbage vans and cars that we gave up the ghost and fled town. 

Oh well, onwards and upwards… and off up the Bruce Highway we went. 

The mostly single lane road out of Hervey Bay heads inland to a rich fertile farming landscape packed with Macadamia plantations and sugar cane – the mainstay of the regional economy all along this coast. We drove though the gorgeous heritage national trust town of Childers that’s lined with large shady Leopard trees (flindersia maculosa) – for the initiated, including me, a species of tree endemic to inland areas of Eastern Australia. 

As previously mentioned, the Bruce Highway is a notoriously dangerous road. It’s mostly single lane in each direction – pot holed, rough surfaces and full of enormous road trains and trucks. There are frequent overtaking sections but they’re brief and only intensify the need to keep attention on the road as the trucks speed up. Best to take the slow lane I say, let them roar past. 

It gets a whole lot drier and more of an outback landscape as you move along the highway towards the small town of Gin Gin and further on, Calliope – but incrementally more tropical in feel. Even more so as you cross the Tropic of Capricorn and enter into Rockhampton. 

Rockhampton is the 4^th largest city in Queensland and one of its oldest, settled in 1853 by Charles and William Archer. It’s now one of the largest industrial and agricultural centres of northern Queensland. It was back in the Gold Rush of the 1880’s that this town clearly prospered with some surprisingly elegant and substantial stone public buildings that still stand today. We had lunch at the beautifully intact old Criterion Hotel that faces the Fitzroy River on a really elegant shady treelined street. The hotel has stood here since 1867 having had quite the chequered past. Guests have included Dame Nellie Melba, Sir Donald Bradman and General Douglas MacArthur, plus loads of ghost stories… unsurprising when you venture upstairs along the extremely creaky floorboards and dark musty corridors. We had a lovely lunch downstairs in the public bar, but wouldn’t stay here. Too spooky for words.

Rockhampton has a prosperous air about it albeit a hot, sticky and tropical air, but a really nice place to have found along our journey north.