Wild West, Aussie Style
If we won’t go to the outback, the outback will come to us.
Rockhampton is the cattle capital of Australia. The town’s charming colonial centre is in stark contrast to the sprawling American-style suburbs and malls that surround it. For about twenty minutes, we drove past endless arrays of warehouses, megastores and motels before we crossed the Fitzroy river and into the historic city centre.
But one thing they have in common, whether modern or old, estate agents or tool shops, are the fibreglass bulls that adorn many buildings. And not just bulls, horses too:
Not to be outdone by the Americans, not only does country music sound from every bar (interspersed with cheesy Seventies and Eighties rock, just to let us know that we are still in Australia), but to my knowledge, Rockhampton also has the only pub with a bull riding arena on the premises. There wasn’t any bullriding on a Thursday night, but it does serve the best steaks in town.
This provided a propper contrast to our visit to the Aboriginal Dreamtime Cultural Centre earlier that day, where John got infected with the didgeridoo bug. But that’s another story.
After a night in the flea-bitten but stylish Criterion Hotel, we headed north to Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday Islands.
Denni
January 8th, 2010 at 08:36
[…] of what is a place after my own heart. It has some of the charm of the cowboy hotel we stayed at in Rockhampton, although none of its elegance. I booked two nights in a huge room with a ceiling fan, an ashtray […]