14th
Rockhampton and Great Keppel Island
I arrived in Rocky at 9pm, a slightly longer trip than planned due to a crap bus, but I made it in time to walk down to the older part of town to grab some dinner. Uneventful, but a wonderful steak as could be expected from this town that is a thread of the Outback out to the coast. Yes, it’s a cow town. Yes there are a lot of drunk (and sober, but mainly drunk) cowboys here.
The next morning (after a terrible, mainly sleepless night freezing my tush off in the very spartan Rockhampton YHA) I ambled down to meet the mini-bus shuttle that would take me from Rocky to the Great Keppel ferry terminal about 30 minutes away. Three minutes after I sat down to wait, up walked Rosemary. She and I ended up spending the next few days together and I said goodbye to her late last night. But I get ahead of myself.
The fast cat to Keppel is a pleasant ride with an interesting ending, when the boat docked not at a ferry, but simply coasted up to a beach with a close deep water dropoff. In this way we could simply walk down the gangplank and onto the perfect white sand beach for a 2 minute stroll to the Island Resort YHA. The water, as we walked down the plank, was crystal clear, turquoise blue and teeming with fish around the coral heads.
After checking in and getting settled (consisted of saying g’day to the staffers and dropping bags in room - very laid back on this island) I walked down the “yellow brick road”, the local equivalant of the main road but in reality just a brick pathway set into the sand, to get a “flat white” coffee. Of course there were more Rainbow Lorikeet’s here, very tame (more about that later) but also some massive crows and Kookaburra birds (which are a type of Kingfisher.) This first night Rosemary and I got to know each other a bit, then walked down to the beach to watch the sun set.
Rosemary is from Shopshire (sp?) in the midlands of England and has been traveling in Australia for the past 15 months. This is not unusual of the British that I’ve met. Many tend to work, travel, work, travel and stay as long as they can. Americans are not allowed this luxury due to our lack of a work agreement with Australia for US citizens. Bummer. I’d love to stay and work here for some time.
Day two on Keppel was spent by hiking, snorkaling the reef, hiking some more, laying on a beach (only one other person on it), then hiking some more. This was so relaxing and fun that I decided to extend my trip to a third night so I canceled my second stay in Rockhampton, which forced me to take a midnight, overnight bus last night in order to meet my Whitsundays sailing tour on time.
Back to day three on Keppel. This was the perfect day. No wind, no clouds, about 23C degrees. Rosemary and I went for a VERY long hike, transiting the entire island where we spotted a herd of wild goats just as we arrived on Wreck beach to find that we had it all to ourselves. Not only is Wreck a very large and shallowly sloping beach covered in exotic shells and broken bits of coral, but it also has a very nice snorkaling reef to explore. As soon as I set my feet in the water I looked down to see a fairly large Skate (like a stingray) on the sand about 2 meters away.
On our way back to the other side of the island we saw innumerable small beautiful beaches, but we also passed through two clouds of large blue spotted butterflys (looked like blue monarchs) which was a fantastic experience kind of like walking into a silent storm of falling leaves.
I’m leaving a lot of details out simply beacause there was so much to see, but unfortunately my time on Keppel came to and end. Back to Rocky we went (Rosemary, myself and another American named Ryan) and had a final dinner together where we watched the second game of an important Rugby series in the local pub. That was a blast, but my bus was leaving at 11:55pm, so I said my goodbyes and trudged off into the night.
This morning at 6:15 (still dark out) I landed in Airle Beach before everthing was open. Actually I found one place open, so I did some laundry and am now about to run off to meet my boat in 30 minutes.
I’ve uploaded a few more photos, so take a look at Flickr or the LightTable to see them and I’ll write more after my sailing trip is over.
