Today we drove 340km south to Rockhampton, or Rocky to the locals. Rockhampton, known as the gateway to the Capricorn coast as it us the town closest to the tropic and is the self proclaimed beef capital of Australia with over 2.5 million cattle with a 200km radius of the town. Safe to say it doesn't have much else going for it! To be fair we only stayed 1 night but didn't really need any longer to see the towns delights.
Town really was cowboy central,  it felt more like the Midwest of the good old USA as opposed to a town 40km from the east coast of Queensland. Some of the old buildings had a early colonial feel to them, like the old post office, now a fancy restaurant and a series of shops. But mix that in with the concrete block hotels it didn't have much to write home about.
We did find one bar we liked. The Great Western Hotel,  opened in the 1880s it was a proper cowboy bar, the 3 fellas in there when we arrived were wearing checked shirts, jeans, cowboy boots and hats, as we're the 2 girls behind the bar. The juke box had only country music on and there were pictures of various cowboys competing in rodeos. At the back off the bar was a rodeo ring with large areas of seating, we were told they had cowboys practicing their bull riding on a Wednesday night, so we left to get some dinner and returned at 7pm to watch.
When we arrived back at the Great Western I expected a couple of people to be watching but there were well over 100 people,  some having their dinner and didn't seem the slightest bit interested in the cowboys riding some seriously big bulls, but I suppose they will have seen it all before. Turns out this is the place to be to practice bull riding, men and boys travel from miles around to hone their skills, getting ready for the rodeos which are held there every few months, the next one in July has a prize pot of $25000.
The practice lasted around an hour, with a couple of good riders and some not so good, there was also a boy of 10, who had been riding for 4 years but has had to have a couple of years off due to serious injury! It was certainly an experience to watch but rather them than me.
I don't think we'd be in a hurry to return to Rockhampton, maybe to watch a rodeo but otherwise I think we'd stay on the Bruce Highway and just pass right through.