Welcome to the steak capital of Australia! Sharan and i spent a day and a night here, not terribly long, but long enough we think. We got there in the evening after being pick up by the YHA courtesy bus and a very nice lady called Robby who gave us some gems of advice on what to do.....we then settled in to our air conditioned cabin - domino's pizza for dinner, very continental ;OP an overnight bus 1155pm that night - the manager let us use the facilities for the rest of the day (did some laundry early on - boring!) but we decided to head out and explore. Rockhampton is one of the bigger towns we have stayed in but only a 15-20 mins walk.

It was a scorcher as we made our way across the river from the hostel to catch a bus to the botanic gardens and zoo - not much there, quite pretty and always nice to see a cuddly koala or two up close.

We caught the next bus back after about 40 mins to go get a steak - lucky we did or we might have missed possibly the best eating experience we have had to date - fat steaks cooking on volcanic stone at the table while you eat it - great fun and so delicious!!! The lady we met advised us that the restaurant was closing but we promised to be quick - the actual owner came out to see how we were enjoying our meal and made us feel right at home, having a good old chat. Get to the Ascot Hotel!

We whiled away some more time after with a bit of light shopping but then it was back to the YHA. We got the complimentary bus back to the bus station at 715pm so with 4 hrs to kill we sat outside the local Macca's (McDonald's to you and me in the UK), i had a subway meatball - Subway restaurants are everywhere - yay! Then we caught the overnight bus (6hrs) to Airlie Beach.