Leaving our site at Kinka Beach, we very shortly found the Big Whale down the road . It was some sort of building, closed down at present, but would be a fabulous holiday home apart from the fact you’d always have people posing for photo’s on your doorstep.

We continued down the coast to Emu Park. Here, on the cliff top overlooking the bay, there is the ‘Singing Ship’, a huge structure incorporating tubes of differing lengths, some with holes drilled in them. As the wind blows over and through the tubes, the ship ‘sings’ a haunting sound. This is actually quite good! The whole structure appears to have been conceived as a memorial to Captain Cook’s identification of the area (although just about everywhere on the Australian coast can identify a line or two in a ship’s log somewhere about their own locality. The ‘sculpture’ is fine, if a little rough and ready in its construction, and impressively white. However, the whole thing has been surrounded by a circle of irregular small stones stuck very roughly together with concrete, for some reason all painted a rather drab shade of green .

Ever onwards…Rockhampton had some particularly fine colonial buildings by the river. One was a newspaper building with ‘Est 1862’ on the front but looked more like restrained deco. Close examination of the plaque attached to it showed that the newspaper had been on that site since 1862 but this building was much newer! There were two fine heritage-listed hotels/inns but both had been allowed to place big new signs detracting from the otherwise splendid appearance (one also had a series of ill-judged extensions for off-sales and a motel which are best left un-investigated)

Rocky, as it is known locally, prides itself on being the ’Beef Capital of Australia’ and therefore promised us a number of Big Bulls, each apparently representing a different breed. We have captured a few for your delight. The one on the ‘Welcome to Rockhampton’ plinth was particularly difficult to photograph, being in the middle of a large roundabout, with nowhere to park . We did several circuits of the said roundabout whilst Jen attempted to take photo’s around Tony and the steering wheel. Hence, not the best shot ever, but we got him! However, Tony disputes the Big Bulls as proper big things as he isn’t really sure that some of them are much bigger than real bulls. However, as he is willing to admit, he is no expert in bulls.

En-route again, we stopped at Calliope Historic Village, where various old buildings and ‘stuff’ from the region have been relocated. In addition they have a hat collection, dolls of the world collection, gramophone collection etc that people have left to them. At the old school, the past pupils who donated towards the removal of the building each have a coat peg with their name above it in the old cloakroom. The café was a long way short of the National Trust equivalent in UK. Although the extremely large woman serving us was extremely friendly, her idea of service was sketchy. Can I get skimmed milk in my coffee - 'No' . We ordered potato wedges and after being reminded she produced chips. She explained that she was a volunteer and other volunteer are always messing up her systems. Later she came to talk to us about the hats that she makes from old beer tins, casually placing one grubby foot on the spare chair at our table…

Later on our journey we were confronted by a car careering down the road with its lights flashing indicating a wide load. We've seen these before and didn't pay much attention until it came into view and we quickly pulled over, the load was almost as wide as the whole of the road!

We arrived at Agnes Water, which is the sister village to 1770 and the information office informed us that both the local camp sites had no powered or unpowered sites to be rented that night. She suggested going to a camp site we had seen on the way but we knew this was about 15 km away. So Jen pressed further, ‘what about if we go further along the road towards Bundaburg?’ The reply was still gravely negative until she finally said, almost as an afterthought, ‘well I suppose you could try Workman’s Beach’ . We questioned her and found that this is a council run site quite close to the centre of Agnes Water and against the beach. It allows 48 hour camping, has toilets, drinking water but only a cold shower. We gave it a try and were pleasantly surprised. The road was rutted and sandy but easy to negotiate provided you took your time. The site itself was densely forested but there were clearly marked spaces to park, pitch tents etc although of course the sites were unpowered, which we were prepared for. Notices indicated where you could camp, the cost and how the warden would take the fee from you. There were a number of people and families already camping (and lots appeared to have been there for considerably longer than the official 48 hour maximum) but the site was far from full.

Having set up camp, we took the short(ish) walk through the woodland back to Agnes, with the intention of finding a bar for a quiet drink or two before eating. This was easier said than done, however, as we were unable to locate any such bar, nor were we able to find a bottle shop where we could buy something to drink to have in one of the simple cafes, all of which were BYO . In the end we decided to stroll back to the campervan, make a meal and drink one of the bottles of chilled Rose that we had in the fridge. While we were having this simple but sustaining repast, we perused the odd leaflets we had picked up during the day and realised that, despite all our walking around, we hadn’t quite reached the licensed restaurant, the tavern or the drive through bottle shop, all of which were within a few hundred metres of where we had been!

One of our neighbours appeared to have styled herself on Alan Bennett’s ‘Lady in the Van’. She was a fabulous woman, probably in her sixties, from Tasmania. She’s also travelling for a year, but doing it all in her van. This looks pretty much like ours from the outside, but blue. However inside she has just fitted basic shelves right at the back, ‘this is my kitchen’, and then she just seems to have piled all her belongings in to the rest of the van, creating a layer about three feet deep, on top of which she and her two dogs sleep! Whilst I was talking to her, she was busy rummaging through heaps of stuff under her bedding, saying ‘ I can’t remember where I put the bread!’. We’re really enjoying living in our van, but I certainly couldn’t do it with all the junk heaped up like that. One of the things that appeals to us is the simplicity and not having all the extra stuff that we don’t really need. We have pared things down to the minimum and everything is put away before moving off. You’d be amazed at how little we have managed with and how organised we can be about it!

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