After recovering from our Cooyar hangover (maybe that should become our stock phrase? "I was out at the pub last night and I've got a terrible Cooyar") we set off on the Great Trek northwards through Queensland.

Still not feeling like a long drive we pitched up for the night in a small town called Miriam Vale, where we stayed for just $10 at a roadhouse. These establishments are usually petrol stations with a café or restaurant, maybe a small shop and possibly a few cabins to let, along with space to park a van or put up a tent. They are usually much cheaper than proper campsites and are the main places to stay on the Outback roads.

This one was perfectly acceptable, had free hot showers and even included a free cup of tea or coffee in what was already a bargain price, even though it was without power. We had a pie each with our cuppa, so they got some business out of us anyway. By the way, Australian and New Zealand meat pies are far, far better than their British counterparts. A lot more meat, greater variety and much tastier.

After a night at the roadhouse, we set off again and this time made it to the small seaside town of Yeppoon. When we called in at a local i-Site, we discovered that it was the annual Rockhampton Show only a few miles away. As the weather had changed for the better, we decided to stay in Yeppoon for a few days to relax and visit the show.

We managed to put the big tent up in an hour this time, half what it took on the first attempt but still woefully tardy. At least it looked more like a tent this time and less like a bedraggled sheet hanging limply and damply from the washing line.

Yeppoon turned out to have some very pleasant beaches. We took a walk along one of them and were puzzled by thousands and thousands of tiny balls of sand lying where the tide had gone out. In places, some of them seemed to be arranged in patterns such as palm trees or butterflies. We discovered that nature has an artistic bent, however, when it became obvious that the sand balls were made by hundreds of tiny blue crabs. These creatures scuttled around dementedly when they heard our approaching footsteps, sometimes burying themselves in the sand if we got too close.

As a town, Yeppoon wasn't the liveliest place in the world but there were plenty of shops and the ambience was pretty positive. The library offered free internet access, which seemed like a bonus at first but was a real pain in the bum to use because it was s-o-o-o-o-o-o-o slow!

We went to the 'Rocky Show', as it is known, on the Wednesday, which was the main public day. We weren't quite sure what to expect, though we knew it was a big deal. All the banks and government offices in the area were closed for the day, as were many shops - even including national giants such as the Woolworths supermarket. In fact, the show turned out to be a combination of a fair and a more traditional agricultural show.

There were literally hundreds of fairground rides and sideshows such as dodgems, haunted houses, thrill rides, shooting galleries and various games of chance. There were even such old-fashioned attractions like a boxing booth ('all challengers welcome') and a 'half man, half woman'.

Continuing the fairground theme, there were also hundreds of food stalls though most seemed to be selling the same fare. Burgers, chips, fizzy drinks, candy floss (known as fairy floss) and hot dogs, including a variant unknown to us called Dagwood Dogs. These strange creations were basically hot dogs on a stick, covered in a thick doughy or battery coating and then smothered in tomato sauce. I had to try one of course and for a few mouthfuls it wasn't bad. Then I reached the hot dog proper, which was greasy and tasted of plastic. After a few more mouthfuls, even the outer parts began to pall. After I'd eaten about half, the rest of my 'Dag' went into the bin.

Even though that was the only item either of us consumed, we thought the food on offer was a bit disappointing. As I said before, the vast majority of stalls were selling the same things. There was one wood-fired pizza stand and a few places selling 'home-made sweets' - all suspiciously alike in both how they looked and were priced. But there were no fresh fruit stalls (even in a big agricultural area), no farm-made ice-cream, not even a baked potato stand to break up the burger-led monotony.

We found that the most interesting things - not surprisingly I suppose - were those that were least familiar to us. We saw part of a local dog show, which seemed very odd in that there was a complete mix of breeds competing against each other - how does one compare an Afghan with a Dachshund? We also came across a parade of prize-winning bulls and cows - lots of beef on display, in every sense of the word!

There was a central area which put on events ranging from a driving exhibition to a pony club competition. The former involved five Toyota Hi-Lux vehicles careering around the perimeter and coming very close to each other from various directions. One of them wandered around the inner part of the area at an angle of 45 degrees, tilted up on just its two right wheels.

The best sporting activities, however, involved muscular men and their choppers. Katy and I had watched competitive wood-chopping on Eurosport when we were in Bulgaria one winter and there was b*****-all else on the TV that we could understand. This was the real thing, though, up close and sweaty and with a couple of thousand dollars at stake in the main events.

Having tried our hands with an axe and some logs when in Agistri about 18 months ago, we were suitably impressed at the way the top competitors hacked their way through an 11-inch log in about 20 seconds. It would have taken us that long just to get through the bark.

It's not just a sport involving brute strength as the choppers (axers? woodsmen?) have to be extremely accurate about where they strike the wood. If they touch an area outside the designated cutting zone, they are disqualified, even if the offence is by just a couple of millimetres. If they miss this area by a couple of centimetres, the penalty is the loss of a couple of toes as they stand on the wood as they chop it.

Indeed there was some controversy in the final of the 'standing overhand' event (well, it was called something like that) when one competitor was disqualified for striking before the gun. It was quite clear he had done so though there was some confusion when the announcer managed to name the wrong competitor as the guilty party.

The only other thing to mention about the day involves the facial skin condition of the local teenagers.

While wandering around, I initially noticed that a lot of girls seemed to be absolutely caked in make-up. They seemed to have enough warpaint on for a night out at a club, rather than what would seem suitable for a daytime show. Ok, I thought, I'm old and hardly in touch with teenage Australian practices.

After a while, however, I realised that a high proportion of highly made-up girls had what looked like quite bad acne underneath all the artificial covering. I put this down to one of two things. Either they wore lots of slap to hide the zits, or the zits were the result of all the slap.

I mentioned this to Katy and after a bit she pointed out that a high proportion of teenage boys seemed to be similarly afflicted - though without the make-up.

So why are the youth of Rockhampton so generally afflicted with poor skin? We certainly hadn't noticed this condition in places such as Sydney, for example.

Given the prevalence of all the burgers, poor diet could obviously be one answer. Maybe even the ubiquitous 'Dags' might be the unique cause? On the other hand, it wasn't as if the average teenager was a stone overweight. Yes, there are more fat people in Australia than New Zealand, but overall there weren't that many teenage porkers in evidence. Certainly not as many as there would have been in Florida, for example. Or Nuneaton, come to that. Indeed, many of the spotty ones were quite slim and even sporty-looking.

We need to research the subject a bit more, but we wondered whether the strong sun could be a factor. I know that Queensland has one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world due to the tropical sunshine combined with the Aussie love of the outdoors and a slightly misplaced faith in sunscreen. Might these factors also mean a higher than average rate of acne?

Richard