Yeppoon to Torbanlea - August 2014

From Yeppoon we drove into Rockhampton and spent a few hours at the zoo at the Botanic Gardens. This is a great little zoo and it has the added benefit of being free! 

This gorgeous guy came straight over to say hello

As we were driving around Rocky we spotted a caravan and camping expo so we spent a few hours wandering around there. There have been a few times on this trip that I have thought maybe we would have been better off in a caravan, but after looking through loads of caravans today I am so thankful that we have our bus, we really do have so much more room inside. Yes it does occasionally make it harder to get into some places but I think it is definitely worth it!

We stayed at a free camp just outside Rockhampton called Woolwash Lagoon for the night, which we had all to ourselves. The best part about this was that we could have a night off from constantly telling Chloe to be quiet. She could be (and was) as loud as she liked!

Once again we got a pretty early start and headed just a bit further south to another free camp near Calliope. Brad and I spent the morning catching up on the washing and a bit of housework while the kids played and then drove into Gladstone for the afternoon. We spent another night here and woke up in shock on our final day to be surrounded by thick fog.

Lucy doing some school work in the sun

Next stop was Gin Gin rest area for the night, where we did absolutely nothing! Lucy did a bit of school work and Chloe made friends with a little boy about her age. The next morning we drove into Bundaberg, we left Bruce at a rest area and spent most of the day driving around the area. One stop that we really liked was Bargara. It had a fantastic playground that the kids did not want to leave. I definitely want to come back to this area in summer to watch some turtles laying their eggs on the shore.

We picked Bruce up and drove about 20km south west of Bundy to a free camp that I think was called Wallum Reserve for the night. We had a surprise visitor here, our neighbours from a camp in Calliope spotted the red stripe on Bruce from the highway and called into say hello. There was a short walk here at the back of the camp that the kids enjoyed so much they made an extra effort to get up early the next morning and do it again before we left.

Practising for the circus that she wants to join one day

A bit of a flashback to childhood being surrounded by these horrible banksia men!

Love these two xxx

Because the kids got up early to go for a walk we were able to leave pretty early and get to the next free camp, which was at Torbanlea. We left Bruce here and drove into Hervey Bay for the day. What a beautiful place! I'm not sure if its always like this but the water was so calm it was more like a lake than ocean. 

We let the kids decide what they wanted to do at Hervey Bay which was to play at a park (easily pleased) so we spent a few hours playing at a couple of different parks before heading back to Bruce for the night.