Starting the stretch: Rocky - Marlborough

Said good bye to our fantastic hosts with a possibility of seeing Johnno down the track to do some riding with us (fingers crossed). The beautiful road gave us a fantastic ride out of Rocky - hopefully a good sign of things to come!

About 10 km's out of Rocky we got a little worried as a car pulled over and out came some guy waving a big package about but it was only our wonderful host Johnno who had driven after us with a parcel that my Mum had sent up! What a guy! And now I get the luxury of wearing sunglasses - 8-)

Shoulder that goes on forever

The road is honestly quite boring which nothing other than flat cleared land and road to keep you company. We play very short games of "I Spy" which normally run out of option after 3 turns and we can understand why people suggested not riding this road.

Something we find is really funny/cool if the existence of pay phones all over the place. The reason you can never find one in any city is that they have all retired and moved to the country.

Typical landscape

Got some delicious pineapple and tomato relish at a road side vege shop (love the fruit and vege black market in Queensland) and called into Marlborough pub for the cheapest/best camp we have paid for yet! 

Also got a cool show of the bats moving out to feed on sunset.

Day off! Rockhampton

Treated ourselves to a delicious french toast breakfast due to the comforts of a real kitchen AND fridge (luxuuuuuury).

We spend the day doing our normal day off-y things - clean bikes, fill up grocery supplies, wash clothes - and stumbled upon a disastrous fact! There are NO more Aldi's until Victoria. Aldi's (although for some reason we never shop there in Sydney) has been our life blood for most of the trip which us regularly indulging in their exactly-the-same-but-different-brand super cheap products.

Also have definitely realised that country towns are NOT for pedestrians. Most of Rockhampton doesn't have sidewalks and the grass probably has never been mowed. Walking around these towns are not too fun!

Leave the clubs for Kings Cross: Biloela- Dululu

Worst. Night. Sleep. Ever! I would never suggest anyone to camp at the Boomerang park at Biloela. Not only was there a nightclub across the street which blared music til 3am (and no one suggested maybe trying to move as far away as possible) but the tent site which we were allocated was right next to a light which stayed on all night, we had the toilets next to us (where I couldn't even lock any of the toilet doors AND the showers were a little below luke warm) where it seemed nearly ever person in the caravan park decided to go for a midnight shower/vomit/coughing club. Someone had the consideration to come home after the club was closed (at 3am) and blare their music for the next few hours RIGHT NEXT TO OUR TENT. 

We left Biloela tired but relatively chipper especially considering how low our morale was after the horrible night sleep. Although we got a free pineapple as Woolworths charged us the wrong price and therefore gave it to us for FREE. We have decided to start budget time, we are now on the strictest budget and we are not going to be taken for chumps (ie. last caravan site).

FREE PINEAPPLE

The ride was quite uneventful but very pretty before we got to Dululu for our camp for the night. Dululu was tiny but had a good free camp and there was a raffle on at the pub for a cooked chook - due to budget limitations we did not enter to win said chook.

A lovely afternoon tea: Dawson Highway- Biloela

Woke up to the sound of the road getting busy so we knew it was time to move on. It was a really good climb over the hills with easy incline the entire way, I would definitely suggests this way for anyone who is riding around the Rockhampton area.

Something we have noticed cycling on this trip is the the large amount of crap on the side of the road. No matter where you are there WILL be some form litter there. We have also taken notice about the large percentage of this litter to be Ice Break Ice Coffee bottles. I don't know what it is about people who drive the roads in Queensland but they love ice coffee and they love throwing them out of the window.

You know the ones.

We honestly think that these bottles account for more than 50% of the trash on the side of the road by weight - that is including all the coke bottles, Maccas bag and crashed cars.

Jake and I decided that we should play a game coming into Biloela and start counting them from about 25km. We said if we got to 20 we would buy one and see what all the fuss is about. We counted 104! That is on ONE side of the road and those are the ones we could see! 

We tried the coffee (not too bad) and were the first people ever to chuck it in the bin which our lunch in Biloela. In Biloela we had been given invitation by Jeff and Val to come over to have afternoon tea (we met them in Calliope) and after riding after half of Biloela to try and find their house we saw Jeff outside his house waving us down. We thought it would be a quick half an hour tea but we ending up chatting and chatting about everything and stayed much longer than we planned - enjoying some delicious homemade coconut cake. 

We the looming clouds we decided to stay in a Caravan park even though it was severely out of our budget ($20!!).

Pretty hard life 

Getting lazy: Calliope - Dawson Highway Camp

I think from the moment we woke up we were not feeling like moving so it was no surprise that by the time I looked at the clock it was the ungodly hour of 9! We very slowly packed up all our things and took an incredibly quiet route out of Calliope historical village to avoid these things:

Triple the lane size!

Atleast today there was no more Bruce Highway riding and we were on the much quieter Dawson Highway. We knew before we even got going that there was no chance of us making our Biloela aim for the day so we thought we would check out Krombit Tops national park.

Took the turn off. Got to the road. The whole national park is closed.

Had to turn around and jump back onto the highway to try and find a stealth highway camp for the night.

Luckily we found a relatively nice camp halfway to Biloela at the foot of the hills - we really are getting the hang out this cycling thing again and it's feeling really god damn good!

Anzac Day: Miriamvale - Calliope

This morning was a 4:30 start so we could get to the Anzac day ceremony at Bororen. Riding along the Bruce Highway in the dark was terrifying!!

We got shouted our shotgun breakfast by a lovely lady we met in the queue who wanted to show us some country community spirit, it even came with a free shot of rum!

We avoided the urge to have a beer at 7 am like everyone else was doing and rode on down to Calliope historical village which had a beautiful free rest area for us to enjoy the rest of the afternoon.
We met two guys named Harry and Cameron who were planning on doing a trip to Brisbane from Gladstone on electric bikes. They were a bit of a comedy duo and made us laugh a bit as they push and pull them and their dog around the campground.

Dinner was a lazy sandwich dinner, real boring.

GETTING CLOSER TO CAIRNS

Sharon Gorge - Miriamvale

Up nice and early (like always - i swear half my blogs start with this) to try and do some decent km's before the sun got to hot. We went on a really nice detour through the canefields - but then again the area around Bundaberg is 90% canefields so it would have been hard to avoid them.

We stopped for some lunch at Rosedale which was a tiny town about 60 km's down the road. Had a nice chat to some rail worker who begifted us with some mandarins. Not sure people understand what these little sentiments mean to us, even if it just was some bloke who didn't want to eat his lunch fruit.

Today was a race again the clock, we have an hour til dusk and still 26km to ride which is a decent effort especially considering the terrain we were covering. We came into town with just minutes to spare and we honestly were pooped. I could hardly say goodbye to my parents on the phone (they leave for Europe today) whilst Jacob put a beer in my hand and I realised the day was over.

We met Barbara the newly appointed publican who let us set the tent up at the back and have a shower. So needed. Tomorrow is Anzac day and the anzac day ceremony is 13km's away so tomorrow blog beginning will we Up REALLY nice and early...

There are no photos from today. But here is one of Jacob's hat he made!