Ferrys, trains, and cows.

Day 14: Tuesday, June 30th, 2015
Steps taken: 1,045 (At this point my 3DS was running out of battery, and I couldn't charge it for a few days.)

When we woke up, we made our preparations to leave after breakfast.  During breakfast I found out that one of my favorite breakfasts to make for myself, the egg in a basket, is called a 'toad in a hole' in Australia.  We packed up camp, and headed back towards the ferry area.  On the way, we found a beached sea snake.  (Forgot to put it earlier, but we saw a huge monitor lizard trudging through camp the day before.) Cory got it back into the water, however the tides pushed it back onto the beach.  Another group came up behind us, and hopefully took care of it.

We had a pit stop at Euronga Station, and then got to the ferry.  It seemed like a really good morning to fish as we saw a few people already fishing on each coastline.  I volunteered to get out, and catch us all lunch, but we were time constrained...well constrained enough.  We returned to the backpackers hostel that we left our big bags at.  Cory gave us all a copy of his CD called Rise., (He also gave me a few book recommendations including Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts.  I think I might be the only person who has never freaking read this book.) and then we were free to do what we wanted for an hour and a half until we were set to leave for the train station.

https://www.corycarlyon.com.au/
https://www.facebook.com/corycarlyonmusic/

Check out Cory's music.  One thing that struck me about Cory was how much he got into the music on the radio, and the music he was playing.  I think my favorite song off of his CD was "Love Music" because you could tell that music was one of his passions, but also "Please Listen" and "New Day" for their messages. Support real musicians like Cory!

I went on the computers at the backpackers hostel to check in at home, and then went into town for a meat and vegetable pastie, and some snacks.  I returned to the hostel, got my main bag, and we were on our way to the Gympie North train station for a five hour ride to Rockhampton.  At the station, we said goodbye to Cory and hello to a massively long cattle train that was waiting there for whatever reason.  The station reeked pretty bad because of this, but I've been to NYC subway stations that smell worse without hundreds of cows being there.

The train ride itself despite being long wasn't bad.  Even Australia has a better train system than America.  The train was clean, roomy, had enough modern comforts, and was relatively quiet.  All the things that American trains are not.  You got your shit together on marriage equality (mostly, now fix your rail system, America! Anyway, while on the train I read, napped a bit, and watched some of the movies and shows that they were showing on the train.  Based on the recommendation of Catherine and Sally I ordered a hot chocolate to do the TimTam Slam.  You bite both ends off, then put one end in the surface of the hot chocolate, the other end in your mouth, and drink the liquid through like a straw.  I did this with a peanut butter one, a raspberry dark chocolate one, and a coconut cream one.  It was very delicious, and very messy.  There was a sludge of TimTam debris at the bottom of my cup.  I'll try it with the red velvet ones I bought another time.

When we got to Rockhampton, we met up with Max who drove us to the Cattle Station about forty five minutes away.  On the bus, we watched videos about Australian nature daredevils and crocodile egg hunters.

We arrived at the Cattle Station around 8pm.  There we met Gina and Justine.  There was a campfire, beef stew, and beer bread waiting for us.  After dinner, Caitlin and I demonstrated how to set up a SWAG bag.  We set up our bags under the stars and under the metal roof leading into the storage area.  I read for a bit hoping to finish Neverwhere before our next stop, but was too tired with about 30 pages to go.  I went to bed on that cloudy almost full moon night in a place that smelt much less like cattle despite its name than the train station hours earlier.