Day 3: FROM BRISSIE TO ROCKY

We checked out and left Brisbane at 7am. With this being a workday, we were conscious of rush hour traffic so we made it a point to leave the CBD as soon as possible. We managed to do just that.

We were ultimately going over 700km north to the beef capital of Australia – Rockhampton – on this day. So we knew it was going to be a long day of driving. We figured we might stop by a couple of waterfalls along the way, but if the hikes were too long, then we might be pushing our luck in terms of arriving at Rockhampton before dinner (and more importantly before it gets dark and the kangaroos are out).

At 8:45am, we made it to the Mapleton Falls car park, which was quite a bit of a detour inland from SH1. With this waterfall, it was merely another one in a string of the rather disappointing waterfall sightings continued from yesterday.

Indeed, this waterfall had a disappointing viewpoint from its top with apparently no official way to get to the bottom of it by trail. It was too bad because this waterfall was quite tall, but the view from the lookout platform was impacted by a tree that happened to grow next to the waterfall which blocked the line of sight. It was definitely a difficult waterfall to view.

20 minutes later, we were back in the car and proceeded to head towards Kondalilla Falls thinking our luck might be better over there.

At 9:20am, we were at the quiet car park for Kondalilla Falls. The GPS software was off in guiding us to this falls so I was glad I followed the signs instead of listening to the software in this instance.

Julie and I spent a few minutes walking on the trail before a sign caught our attention. Apparently, there was construction work being done on the trail and it prevented us from getting to the best view of the falls. I guess it was just bad timing and it wasn’t meant to be for us. Chalk this up to another one in the string of disappointing waterfall sightings…

At 9:40am, we were back in the car and proceeded to backtrack to the SH1 then continue north towards Rockhampton. It was pretty much a featureless drive and there were plenty of moments where traffic was stopped for road construction. But those delays were never too severe (maybe 15 minutes tops).

We picked up a lunch of crab sandwich and beef/oyster meat pie at Gin Gin a little after 1pm. That provided some much needed energy.

At 4:25pm, after nearly 7 hours on the road, we finally made it to our accommodation in Rockhampton.

Since Rocky was north of the Tropic of Capricorn boundary, it definitely felt warmer and a bit more tropical in these parts. There were even a few pockets of thundershowers.

Fatigued from the long day of driving, we looked forward to trying the famous beef in a nearby restaurant. The portions were huge and the dollar was weak. So sharing our main was a no-brainer. It still stuffed us nonetheless!