Rocky Road

One advantage to hitting the road again at 6.30am the following morning was that I reached my destination for the day - the beach at 1770 - much earlier than anticipated. This was even despite a brief detour along a scenic tourist drive that took me through a little town (you may be sensing a pattern here - they are all little towns) called Yeppon. I liked the sound of the place, it seemed as though it might be fairly lively - and maybe it is after 8am, I wouldn't know. The quietness did mean that I had the parking area by the beach (to call it a 'car park' would imbue it with too much grandeur) to myself, so I was able to wriggle into my bikini while retaining the vast majority of my dignity and head out for my morning shower - in the southern Coral Sea. A couple of early morning joggers and dog walkers passed me as I waded into the lukewarm waves - which was reassuring, as, after the night I'd just had, I had began to wonder whether I was the only person left on earth.

I adore the ocean, always have. I love the vastness, the permanence of it, the way that it makes me feel calm and insignificant at the same time. I love thinking about the fact that the body of water in which I was now lazily bobbing is - technically - the very same in which I had paddled with my three year old cousin, thousands of miles away, in White Rock, British Columbia on Canada Day. I am fascinated with that sense of the globe - that idea of travelling around all that there is. When I left Vancouver for the first time, just over four years ago, to road trip with my then boyfriend across the North American continent, I took a pebble from the beach at English Bay and, nearly three months later, I chucked it in the water from Boston Pier. I then grabbed a shell from a beach in Northern Massachusetts and, months later, threw it in the Thames. It was as these thoughts occurred to me that I realized I am altogether too weird, and that I was spending too much time alone. Without further ado, I dried off and headed for Rockhampton, the Meat Capital of Australia, for an appropriately cholesterol laden breakfast.

Rockhampton, I don't have masses to say about. I could tell you that it is the Capital of the Capricorn Region or that it sits on the Fitzroy river, but the truth would be that I just looked that up from here in London as I stared at my notes and tried in vain to form a clear impression of it. I know I had a nice breakfast - I am usually not a big cooked breakfast fan, I don't eat a lot of red meat at all in general, but the Australians do bacon and scrambled eggs commendably well, and the little coffee shop in Rockhampton where I ate was no exception. I believe that I cashed a few more traveller's cheques and that the bank was perfectly pleasant. Ooh - there was one highlight: I did see a poster advertising the INXS tour, which was due to hit Rockhampton a night or two later. I'd overtaken them back in McKay, so now, technically, INXS was following me.

As I mentioned before, the scenery surrounding the Bruce Highway is eminently pleasant. However, once you have happily passed trees and rolling hills and occasional distant kangaroos for coming up on 1000 kilometres, it begins to get just a tiny bit predictable. So when I passed a sign for a historical village I was excited, possibly disproportionately so. I was - in fact still am - reading a book on the history of Australia, as when I arrived I was shocked to consider how little I really knew about the place. I knew that the English sent out a load of convicts, and I knew that the Farriss brothers and their mates started a band, and presumed that some stuff must have happened in between but I was pretty much clueless as to what. So I was quite pleased by the idea that I might get to put some visual aids to the story I was reading, and happily turned off the highway. Well it was crap. Gloriously, spectacularly, highly entertainingly atrocious. I was thrilled. The village consisted of a gathering of buildings - those wooden, cottage-y kind that you sometimes disconcertingly see sitting on trucks in America - which appeared to have been plonked every which way in a field. I paid my two dollars and peeked into the first porch ringed house. It was full of fridges. Yes, you read right - a great big pile of - admittedly old and no doubt a bit whiffy inside - refrigerators. There was no label or explanation as to what they were doing there or where they had come from - although, in all fairness, how much could you say about a load of fridges? - they just sat there. In the semi darkness, being old. In the next building, it was radios. Big old radios, the wooden kind with lots of knobs and dials - kind of interesting to look at… well, interesting to look at one, but there was about thirty, each much the same, apparently from around the same time period. Just sitting there, gathering dust. Smothering a giggle, I skipped on to the next, wondering if I might find a collection of bicycles or remote controls; but this one, I was startled to note as I approached… had a plaque! The plaque at the front door proudly announced it as a former schoolhouse. Wonderful, I thought, and read on. It was a schoolhouse, in use, up until… 1974. 1974! What on earth is historical about that? Surely history can't be a period in which I have dated people who were alive then! Apparently, in a country as new as Australia, it is. Admittedly, as if memory of Story to Story serves, I believe that the Farriss Brothers were playing by then, so this was my studied period of Australian history. However, the wonders of what schoolchildren got up to in Queensland in the early seventies remain a mystery to me as the proudly labelled school house was empty save for a few scurrying insects and a lot of dust. I do not think that I have spent a more entertaining time at a museum; I certainly have not spent a better two Australian dollars.

And so on to 1770. Surprisingly few people I mentioned this destination to (both before and after I visited) - even locals - had heard of it. In all fairness, I've only heard of it because my sister's boyfriend, a keen surfer, lived there for a few months during his travels in Australia. According to him, it's the in place for surfers in the know to hang out, since Byron became too expensive and touristy. I like the idea of surfers - although if I am honest, I like the idea of them whether they are in the know or not - so 1770 it was. Despite the distinct lack of surfers… or even people (honestly, if I ever read that the population of Queensland - including backpackers - is approximately 63, I will not be the least bit surprised) 1770 was (forgive me for sounding like an Enid Blyton character for a moment) absolutely glorious. If a beach more perfect than this exists on earth then… well, then… I'd… like to see it. Untouched, soft, sunshine coloured sand scattered artistically with cream and pale pink shells stretches as far as they eye can see, bordered by wild foliage on one side and crashing, aqua and almost royal blue waves tinged with pure white froth on the other. The skyline to the east, where the deep, almost navy, blue of the ocean meets the bright sky blue of the, err, sky, is dotted with distant reef islands. And, just as Andy promised, there is very little else there. A tiny town - village, really - consisting of one solitary surf shop, a petrol station and a couple of local shops and eateries, two motels and a backpacker's hostel… if there is any more than that, I didn't find it. Deciding that after my night on the backseat of a Toyota Corolla I deserved some modest luxury, I plumped for the posher of the two motels, thoroughly enjoyed my first proper shower since Townsville, and settled on the terrace with a pizza and a glass of wine. Idly staring into the inky blackness of a Queensland early evening, I was 100% content.