Emerald to Yeppoon
It was time to hit the road again, so we pulled out of Ally's driveway a bit after 9:30am for the 312km trip to Yeppoon. It was a nice straight road so the miles melted away as we listened to our current book. Finding a rest area was a little harder so we pulled into the small town of Bluff for our crumpets and cappucino and watched the coal trains pass us on the other side of the road.
On the road again, the drive was still pretty boring. We stopped for lunch at Westwood and then arrived in the biggest town for quite some time, Rockhampton! Driving through, it is obvious that Rockhampton is the regional city for a large area with many retailers and service providers. Soon we were out the other side of town, heading for the coast. A couple of kilometres out from Yeppoon we crested a small hill, and could see the beautiful blue water of the beach. We arived at our little caravan park and got set up. Sitting under the awning, the weather was the coolest we have had for a while - only about 20C. Admittedly, this is still a lot warmer than the snowy 4C of home!
Driving up the hill to Maggy's house (Maggy is the other half of Ally and Maggy wo we met on our cruise last year), I could see why there was no way we were going to get a caravan up there! However, the views are amazing!
Ally came and joined us for dinner, together with her two builders (Ally and Terry are renovating their beach house here in Yeppoon) and we had a delicious meal with lots of laughs. As people who have all lived around Emerald for a long time, there were plenty of yarns about the locals. Like the story of Jack and Elsie who were driving home to their farm one night after dinner. Jack stopped the car about 100km from home to have a pee on the roadside. Getting back in, he kept driving until he got to their front gate and asked Elsie to get out and open the gate. Elsie didn't move, so Jack looked over to her seat and she wasn't there! He backtracked the 100km and found Elsie in the middle of the road - she too had got out to pee and Jack had driven off without realising! Needless to say, Elsie wasn't real impressed!!!
There were several stories like this which had us all laughing. It was a great night.
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