I stopped off in Rockhampton en route to Yeppoon, which is where I am now. I mainly wanted to go to this Aboriginal cultural centre there, otherwise, I would have had no real desire to visit the city which is called the beef capital of Australia. The only cows I saw were the bronzed replicas that were scattered throughout the town square, but there were a lot of people wearing cowboy hats, and a steakhouse, so I decided to take their word for it. It reminded me somewhat of Amarillo, Texas, especially the steakhouse off rt 66 that Sarah and I ate lunch at. But Rockhampton has that same dusty, desrted feeling as Amarillo. By four o'clock on Saturday afternoon, I was the only person strolling the streets. Even the two bars were mostly empty, and they both had air conditioning. Did I mention that it was over 40 degrees in Rockhampton, which is about 100 degrees Farenheit. Breezes did waft up from the (brown, muddy) river, but by late afternoon, all was still. I felt a bit like I was in one of those ghost town tourist attractions that you can find throughout the western U.S., and it was a very eerie feeling to find myself all alone wandering down streets filled with closed shops. The other thing about Rockhampton which I found interesting was that, for the first time since I've been in Australia, I felt like I could have been in the U.S. Not just because it reminded me of Amarillo, but I guess just because it had none of the features that I've come to think of as typically Australian. Oh, and the Aboriginal cultural centre turned out to be closed on Saturdays, so I didn't even get to go there! I settled for a mediocre steak at the town's one open restaurant. Still, I'm glad that I stopped at this town way off the "beaten path", even if the biggest highlight was that I had the hostel dorm room all to myself. I had forgotton how nice it was to sleep without 5 other people in the room!