A Rum Old Town
31st January, Rockhampton and Bundaberg, Australia
We stayed in Rockhampton for a couple of days. Not because there was that much to see, but more because it felt that all we'd been doing was rushing through towns on some mission to get further south. Admittedly, we both wanted to get a bit further away from the extremely humid tropical weather of North Queensland, but it's easy to miss out on some things if you rush.
I mean, had we not stayed in Rockhampton two days, we would have missed ... oh, I dunno, all those warehouse stores that we'd seen in every other town so far, heh! Seriously, when you hit a new town, it sometimes feels like groundhog day - there's the shopping mall with K-Mart, Coles, Woolworth and The Big W, over there KFC, McDonalds and Hungry Jacks (for non-Aussie readers, HJ is Burger King's name round these parts), the obligatory Bunnings and Super Cheap Auto and so on. Someone got a blueprint and then used it in towns all over Australia, by the looks of things.
And every time we saw these stores, we'd stop and look at the same stock we'd seen in the last town. Truly.
Anyway, I spent yesterday struggling with window-tinting sheets in the car park of Super Cheap Auto. Let me explain how much fun this was ...
The instructions say that you should have a glass cleaner (with no ammonia in) to prep the windows, a clean flat surface to lay the material on, a spray bottle and an absence of wind, dust or anything else that might get on the sheet and generally spoil the adhesive and the rest of your day. I had a bottle of cleaner from a discount store that could have contained anything, no flat surface to cut the material to shape on and occasional gusts of wind and rain (only spitting).
To apply the tinting, you should clean the windows, cut the material to size (allow some overlaps), then place it on a flat surface and peel the backing off in one movement, keeping the sheet taught so as not to cause wrinkles, spray the adhesive side with your spray bottle (a tiny amount of detergent included) and then apply the non-creased sheet to the window in one deft movement.
So, there I was in the car park, sweating buckets but unable to wipe the sweat from my forehead because my hands were about a foot and a half apart holding on to the corners of the backing sheet, having pulled it half way down the 3-foot long sheet for one of the van's side windows; I held the top of the sheet with my mouth and realised that I needed longer arms (or two more arms) to pull the backing right to the bottom. So I bent down until the backing was almost on the floor and tried to use my feet to pull it down the remainder of the distance (remember what I said about avoiding getting dust in there?). This I managed to do, only to see one top corner of the tinting sheet fold back in on itself, and to prise it apart I really needed a couple more hands.
Trust me, only try window tinting if you have the facilities or the patience of a saint. I had neither, and so only managed a few windows before quitting for the day. Ironically, while fitting this stuff - which would hopefully keep us a little more protected from the strong Aussie sunshine - I managed to get very red in the process. The windows didn't look too bad though, all things considered!
Mount Morgan
Leaving Rockhampton, we took a slight detour out west to an old gold-mining town called Mount Morgan. The van performed admirably, starting first time and not complaining about the pretty high climbs that took us to the old town. However, we still hadn't had the starter motor seen to, so we didn't stop in the town at all for fear that we might get stuck in this place (although we are covered, the RACQ only tow 10 km before they start charging, so until that Kombi wins our confidence back, and all that). I did drive-by shootings (in the photographic sense), hopping out of the van to get a snap here, another snap there before making our way back to the relative safety of the Bruce Highway.
Mount Morgan certainly looked like a nice old place and warranted further investigation, but the van's recent crankiness dictated a quick visit.
Old Colonial style buildings in Mount Morgan.
We later saw a sign that intrigued us - "Mystery Craters, 300m right". Once more, we stopped the van but I didn't yet feel brave enough to switch off the ignition. I took a quick look in the adjoining gift shop at a postcard to see whether it was worth risking a non-starting van incident an hour later. The craters looked odd, for sure, and there were supposed to be 30 or so in an area the size of a football pitch, and there is little consensus as to what formed them (Water? Wind errosion? Meteor? Entrepreneurial Queenslander with a digger?). Anyway, I'd seen a postcard, so that'd have to do for now - back on the road!
Our final destination was Bundaberg, home of Bundaberg Rum, a popular blend in Australia (and even more popular in the pre-mixed Bundaberg Rum and Coke cans, it looked to me). As with so many towns we'd passed through, this place didn't get to entice us with its cultural offerings. We just needed a place to stay.
I finished off the day by once more braving the evils of window tinting. This time I was saved the extreme heat as I decided to throw another obstacle or two in to the mix - doing it at night with only a motion-sensitive security light at my disposal. Every two minutes or so, I'd have to break whatever tricky stage I'd got to to reactivate the security light. The other obstacle was that I was tinting the rear window which flips up to an almost horizontal position when opened, meaning I was trying to apply it to a piece of glass upside down. Another resident in the motel commented as he walked past: "That stuff's a nightmare - I reckon you'd be better off taking that door off and laying it flat on the ground." I couldn't argue with that logic. Besides, I had a mouth full of window tint backing at the time.