Mackay Crabs!

Mackay is home to 2.6 quadrigazillion crabs. You can’t see them but they’re there. Once the tide moves out they come out of the sand and eat all the algae that was left by the tide. They leave little balls of sand from which they sucked the life. They move in groups of a couple of hundred to a few thousand and from afar it looks like the entire beach is crawling.

Rockhampton Rodeo

The horses are on amphetamine because the first rider we see gets ejected into the stratosphere and the second one lands in the middle of the ring 1.3 seconds after exiting the shoot. A mid range flight followed by an ungraceful landing has the cowboy limping to the gate. What’s interesting is that he landed face first, but he is limping.
We can get so close that we get sand all over our faces and if we reach out, we could touch some of the animals that flash past. Pretty cool.
It’s time for the bull riders now, and the fun is over. This is serious. These bulls are world class and are registered as 80-92 point bulls which make them very, very dangerous. The bull names are intimidating: fire eater, widow maker, twister, scene of the crash, bone crusher and my favorite: red bull. One of the bulls, is huge, as high as a horse and is furious. As soon as he exists the shoot the bull jumps about 2 meters high and 5 meters far and shakes the rider like a rag doll. 8 seconds later the rider jumps off, victorious and very lucky.
Anyway, time for a steak. The Great Western servers the very best eye fillets in this part of the universe.

Rockhampton

In 18 days I will have traveled to Sydney three times, to Rockhampton once and to Mackay once. Basically one flight every 2 days. I won’t talk about Sydney as that was all business. But Rockhampton was awesome.
A little town on the Capricorn coast Rockhampton has the biggest cattle industry in Oz. It is also where you can find salt water crocodiles or salties as they’re called here. Well let me tell you this: they are big bastards. The biggest ones get over 1000 kgs and have a generally bad temper. I didn’t know this but salties are found from Rockhampton up. They can be everywhere, out on the reefs, inland in rivers, in billabongs. They are really dangerous. The guide tells us that if there is Barramundi, there are salties. I piss my pants and ask whether I took a risk fishing for Barra yesterday and the answer was “you were lucky you were fishing in lake Awoonga where the salties can’t get to”.
The guide throws some chicken at one of the bigger ones and with the sound of a car’s trunk closing the mouth snaps shut. WHACK! Pretty impressive. With my new found respect for murky waters and what may lie underneath we make our way to Mackay… Yes north of Rockhampton…