Farmborough Music Festival (Yeppoon) 24 to 26 June 2005

It is Heather’s birthday today and we visited the Rockhampton Botanical Gardens. They are beautiful gardens, with lots of amazing tropical plants. The gardens also had a small zoo and we saw crocodiles, emus, cassowaries, koalas, parrots and dingoes. We drove 30 kms to the coast to have late lunch at a very pretty beach village called Emu Park. We then followed the coast road north, right along the edge until we came to Yeppoon, which is bigger, and an obvious big go-ahead holiday destination. Great Keppel Island is very close and can be seen all along the drive. We camped at the Farmborough Music Festival –much like the Jamberoo Festival, only smaller, with lots of music and art events. We had a great time and listened to a variety of good music – funk, rock, jazz, blues and folk. Heather finally admitted defeat and was reduced to basket weaving using coconut palms. The basket was very successful and the neighbouring basket maker was a young social worker. Everyone had a laugh and enjoyed sitting in the sun to make them. The festival finished off with a closing ceremony that would have made the Olympics proud. Our biggest shock was how cold it was on Friday night. Everyone including the locals nearly froze. It went down to five deg. However, it warmed up to 24 deg days and warmer each night. The stars are unbelievable. We saw a special event tonight, with the three brightest planets (Venus, Saturn and Mercury) very close together. This occurred just after sunset for an hour during the closing ceremony. This formation was last seen in 1848!!! Tomorrow all three will appear as one.