Whilst Gareth was driving back from Brisbane, Matt & I explored Rockhampton in our little hire car.

Rockhampton is a nice looking and neat little town and is famous for its beef apparently, but in terms of tourists there's not much to see or do . Unfortunately, as we were now a day later than anticipated arriving and it was now the weekend, the one thing we really wanted to visit here, the aboriginal cultural centre, was closed!

So we decided to go into town and pay Matt's speeding ticket but after a little hunt round for the office, we discovered they too were closed!

So we called in to the Visitor Information centre to find out exactly what was open! Our only real options were the zoo and botanic gardens, so we went there! We did pop into the shopping centre first for a look and get a drink as it was an incredibly hot day. Typically as we got to the zoo it was closing in half an hour (notice a theme?!) so we had a quick look & were pleased to finally see a real life cassowary, albeit not in the wild, and Matt enjoyed going in the kangaroo enclosure to see some that hadn't just been hit square on at 70mph but wasn't so keen being up close to an emu that he hadn't noticed on his way in and was stood right behind him, giving him a bit of a jump!

We decided it was silly for us to have another uncomfortable night's sleep in the tent or car when for just a few bucks more we could have a cabin. This decision was confirmed when we discovered the cabin contained a kitchen, dining table & television! It also had 6 beds (1 double & 4 bunk beds) and air con, so thinking Gareth was going to make it back, he would have a comfy night too! It was like a little piece of luxury and we did feel really guilty when Gareth called to say he wasn't going to make it and would be sleeping by the side of the road instead! Oops!!