315 kms / 8 ¼ hrs

Dauringa - Rockhampton - Moura

We were on the road by 8:00am this morning for the 100 km drive to Rockhampton. We crossed over the Tropic of Capricorn and continued to the North Rockhampton Cemetery to see Roger's grandfathers grave. Roy Abbott was killed in WWII when he was returning home from Darwin to Brisbane on leave. His plane crashed on the 16th November 1943 in Carnarvon Gorge due to an electrical storm and there were no survivors (15 australians and 4 americans). Josh coloured in a special dinosaur picture and drew a picture on the back of Japanese bombing that we left at the grave.

The kids were so well behaved in the cemetery and have been wanting mcdonald's for ages so we thought we would spoil them with mcdonald's for lunch. They are mostly just interested in the shakes rather than the food though. They enjoyed playing on the equipment then we continued to the Rockhampton Zoo.

The Zoo is free and was really good. There were about 50 enclosures including dingoes, chimpanzees, crocodiles, snakes, birds, a cassowary, emu, kangaroo, koala's, wombat. Josh's favourite animal was the cassowary and Bronte's was the chimpanzee's. They were very entertaining and kept making so much noise and coming right up to the glass and kissing you through the glass. Rog's favourite animal was the koala as instead of it being asleep in a tree it climbed down the tree and kept running up and down the enclosure. We have never seen a Koala out of a tree before.

We left Rockhampton around 2pm then drove to Dawson's River (unfortunately not Dawsons Creek but it made me reminisce) which is 7km west of Moura and is where we are camping tonight. The river is really pretty so while Rog cooked a lamb roast (overlooking the river) Bronte played near him and I was sitting on the bank of the river with Josh and he was very excited when he found a stick with some fishing line, a hook and some old bait still attached. He spent about an hour fishing and having so much fun even though he didn't even get a bite! It was hard to get him to stop fishing to have dinner. Next thing he came over to us crying as he had thrown his fishing line in the water (we thought great now he will come and sit down to dinner) but no instead his wonderful sister didn't want to see her brother cry so she walked into the ankle deep water and got his fishing line. So we had a very excited Josh being able to fish again!