6th July - Rockhampton - Marlborough

Nigel says..... After a rip roaring night out in Rocky at the noodle bar we set off at the normal time of 0730 hrs. The road was flat and pretty good for most of the day. Gordon has a cough and a sniffle which has made him weaker and more feeble than normal, but we still covered the 116 kilometers to Marlborough by 1430hrs.

Tonight we are staying at the Marlborough Motel and Caravan Park (last motel for 150km). There is a sign at the petrol station across the road saying last fuel for 100 kilometers. We have to cycle about a mile to Marlborough which consists of a pub, a shop and a few houses as the motel no longer does food. We need to get to the pub around 1800hrs to order food. At least we can get our washing done here, and there are films on the telly.

Thoughts and comments:

• We stopped at Merimal en route - a really weird place which was a truck stop and consisted of a junk shop (or rubbish dump)that also sold pies and fruit and veg. We both got the impression that the owners spent too much time in the company of their own family.....
• Overcast today with drizzle leaving Rockhampton.
• Winona behaving - gears much better - flying along.
• Davros' new eye working fine...
• Gordon's lemsip was going to cost $21 here in Marlborough, which even he baulked at. We have a lemsip free zone currently...
• Large swathes of savannah like country. Flat grassland with the odd tree stretching out to hills in the far distance.
• Snack of the day: Bacon and cheese pie - The Caves.
• Tune of the day:Van Morrison - Brown Eyed Girl.
• Slogan of the day: Parkhurst Sate School noticeboard - "Reports out next week. Remember "C" stands for Celebration"............ (or could do better?)

Tomorrow St Lawrence...where? Staying in the pub. Not sure that there is anything on the way there.

Gordon says ...

Didn't write a blog yesterday. At 11 pm, gave up on waiting for Nigel to finish his nightly 3 hour freaking masterpiece and went to sleep instead. (Note to self: on returning to academic life, remember to write a paper entitled 'Blogging and the Art of Self-formation' - after all, silly me, thinking the purpose of a blog was just to say where we are, and that we haven't been run over yet).

Actually, interesting little vignette a few minutes ago - I'm in the shower, while Nigel worked on his own daily 'War and Peace', when I suddenly hear shouting and swearing - and not just a bit, and not just 'Oh Rats' ... I mean the full military version ... words I haven't heard for a long time, and at about 120 decibels. Yes, 'teddy out of the cot' doesn't come close to describing it - I mean I thought we were going to get the full Keith Moon hotel room demolition. And what was wrong, I hear you ask? Was it a collapse of the Tory government in the UK? Was it Louise asking for the divorce, like I suggested? No ... nothing that trivial ... no, it was that the computer appeared to have crashed, and Nigel thought he had lost the blog he had been working on - i mean, did Tolstoy ever have to suffer such creative difficulties?

Far more importantly, feel even crappier today than I did yesterday. And still heading south, I think. Having not been sick for years, I've now been ill for most of this ride - as if it wasn't hard enough already. I guess the distances must be screwing my immune system. And even Capt Robot has been sick for about half the time. Never stops whinging about it either ...