Rockhampton. was. hot.
Hot, sticky, sweaty, salty little small town with a little bit of Carson City to it, a failed mining town with a muddy river running through and proud to be the Beef Capital of Australia. Rockhampton was our launching point for the Capricorn Caves and was nearly on the Tropic of Capricorn. Hella cool. Although mom thinks the town was a letdown for us, I quite enjoyed sweating bullets and playing the hot game by the pool only to jump in and find the water equally hot and ... salty? The awesome thrift stores full of musky books and weird bric a brac, the long wait at the patio for delicious pesto pasta and lots of beer drinking. I had fun, although I was a bit miserable in the heat from time to time, but it's just a build up for India eh?
After a long day in the sun we slept well and got up early to go to the Capricorn Caves. Sweet dirty smelling caves, nothing I love more that a good smell of soil, and these had it. Perfect smell. Discovered by some guy who used to muck around(literally) through the caves knee deep in bat shit, snakes, caterpillars, spiders, etc, with only a candle to lead him through. The caves even come fully equipped with a chapel for choir singing(with it's near perfect acoustics) and weddings. And our cute Australian Lawrence doppelganger gave us a pitch black music listening session of Enya in order to understand the caves capacity for listening. Quite beautiful if I do say so myself. Then to the big treat. The summer solstice, only for about two weeks out of the year presents a unique opportunity where the sun is directly above a hole in the caves and can produce and incredibly bright light shaft penetrating to the very bottom. And with the correct props, the entire cave may be lit. Using everything from disco balls and silver pans to colored fabrics our guide gave us a really cool experience of the solstice. My pix can hardly do it justice.
And when you place a piece of paper below the light and above a silver bowl with a hole in it, you can burn through paper magnifying glass to ant style. And Jack is convinced that the whole looks like the shape of Australia, which is pretty rad too.
After the caves, Little Johnny, our hilarious tour guide guy dropped us off in his hometown of Yeppoon, with the most glorious beach ever and it was so tempting i went swimming with all my clothes on because i couldn't stand it any longer. Also really brilliant sea shells everywhere lining the beach which Jack and I collected millions of and made mom some jewelry for xmas with them!
Fun filled adventures and then we showered and prepared for a ridiculous greyhound bus ride from Rockhampton to Townsville where Jack and I were lucky enough to get to watch Kangaroo Jack and some crazy movie with the best line in it ever. Three guys get out of a car all wearing white and a guy sitting down says to them "Are you guys from the Looney Bin?" "Nooo nooo of course not" they all reply, then add "How'd you like to try this on" (It's a straight jacket)
Guess you had to be there. But it is a great movie and I'll search for it forever now.
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