Noosa to Rockhampton

It took a while to compose the Fraser Island post, that was actually all over a week ago!

So, I was dropped back in Noosa and recovered my car, which was slowly being buried by bits of the tree I left it under. That evening I drove over to a place called Tin Can Bay. The main attraction of Tin Can Bay is that every morning at about 7am two dolphins swim in and you can go in the water and feed them for free! I got there at night and slept near the place they were supposed to come. Woke up at about 7am and by the time I got down there the dolphins had already arrived. There were only 2 people there so I got in the water and got to stroke one of the dolphins! At 8am we could feed it some fish - you could drop the fish right into its mouth!

Later that day I went to rainbow beach, named because of its coloured sands. They were much the same as the coloured sands on Fraser Island but I viewed them from a massive sandblow that also overlooked the entire bay, beautiful! Next stop was Bundaberg but there wasn't much there (except free internet) so I didn't stay long!

That afternoon I drove to 'the town of 1770', which sticks out from the mainland and curves round to form a big bay. This means that you can sort-of watch the sun set into the water - one of the only places this is possible on the east coast. While I was watching the sun go down a couple of South African girls called me over to see a group of dolphins that had come over to the shore (it must have been dolphin day!). I got talking to them and we got some dinner and chatted long into the night :)

The next day I went for a final surf for a while. Further north is the home of the Box-Jellyfish, a highly deadly jellyfish which ensures that no-one even goes in the water, let alone surfs!

The next stop was Gladstone but I was delayed getting there cos my car broke! Suddenly the temp gage shot up so I stopped to take a look. One of the hoses had a hole in it and coolant was coming out of it. Filled it up with water and just about managed to get to a service station. Unfortunately it was the least accessible hose in the whole car and I didn't really have any tools, so I had to pay the mechanic to fit the new hose. Luckily repairs are quite cheap in Oz so after parting with $50 (about 20 quid) I was on my way again! Gladstone is just a really big port, so didn't really have anything interesting to do. Took a few pics and grabbed a late lunch and buggered off!

Got to Rockhampton late-ish and had a wander around. Again, there wasn't much in the way of tourist attractions so I went to the cinema to watch Pan's Labarynth, which is really good! The next day I went to the city's botanic gardens. They had a small zoo there which was quite good - there were chimps, snakes, koalas, baboons, loads of weird birds and many more!