Drive: 145km; Total towed: 400km
Greg had already completed his exercise regime, including a walk, and was settling down with a coffee by the time Wendy went for her walk. Breakfast has eaten and then we packed up and left at 8:15am. Susan had told us about the Turtle Way bike/foot path from Gladstone to Tannum Sands and other places, and we wanted to ride it. So, we drove the 30km odd into Gladstone, parked at the Tourist Info Centre and rode off in search of the bike path, which Greg soon found.
We had a great ride along the foreshore and then up the hill to the William Golding Memorial Lookout which had a really good view of Gladstone Harbour. It was then time for coffee and something to eat, so off we went down the hill and then up another one to get into town. Found a Muffin Break and had our mid-morning caffeine fix and something nice and naughty (for Wendy - carrot cake) to eat.
Botanic Gardens was next and it was about 6km out of town on a fairly decent bike path for most of the way. There was a rather twisty/turny steep descent into the Gardens which the girls were not looking forward to riding back up. As it turned out it was not that bad. We found the Japanese Tea Gardens first and it was probably the best as the rest of the gardens were under re-construction. We took many a closed-off path and whilst turning around on one of them, Wendy over-balanced and took a rather nasty fall. The bruising was almost instantaneous. Anyway, she picked herself up and continued. We made our way back to the vans with a nice tailwind.
We had lunch under a picnic shelter on the waterfront near the Visitor Centre before continuing our journey northwards. We pulled into the Discovery Park Rockhampton at 3:05pm, and after setting up we had an LLD. We were going to walk down to Anaconda, but decided time was against us, so drove instead.
