Cassowary Found!

There is one spot we went to this morning where we can almost guarantee you will spot a Cassowary - Rockhampton Zoo. This small, free admission zoo is in the Rockhampton Botanical Gardens - a great spot to wander.

Corella:

Royal Spoonbill:

Botanical Gardens:

We had a bit of excitement at Macdonalds in Gladstone. We stopped to get a takeaway coffee - whilst driving out of the car park, it felt as if the bottom of the motorhome scraped. I thought this was strange as the exit wasn't particularly raised. When I looked back in the review mirror, I saw that our spare tyre was lying in the driveway. Something had given way. So now we put the tyre out at night, locked to the motorhome step with a bicycle chain, and carry it in the motorhome during the day as we have no idea how to reattach it to the motorhome undercarriage. Definitely a job for a mechanic when I get home.

After a quick lunch stop at the Shell Service Station at Miriam Vale so Barbara could finally get her much talked about mud crab sandwich, we turned east towards 1770. We had planned to spend 2 nights there but unfortunately there were no sites large enough for my motorhome. We are staying at nearby Agnes Water for 1 night - we couldn't stay longer due to the hordes of southerners/grey nomads escaping winter. We didn't book ahead as we mistakenly thought we would have no trouble with school holidays finishing.

The van park at Agnes Water has direct access to a lovely beach:

We walked along the beach this afternoon and then thought we come back by road. We thought it would be a short trip back, but the curve of the beach versus roads was deceiving. A 500m beach walk resulted in a 2k walk back by road to the van park.

On the way back we came across a somewhat stagnant creek lined with lovely paperbarks:

We decided we will spend our last night of this trip at Burrum Heads. We've booked ahead this time!