Sundowner Rockhampton

Botanic Gardens

by cafank

Rockhampton Botanic Gardens are regarded as one of the best provincial gardens in Australia.

They have recently been heritage-listed, and are 130 years old and some specimens are 100 years old. The gardens cover about 96 acres so they are not small.

There is so much to see and do within the garden and zoo complex (I have the zoo as a seperate tip). There are about

Get the Botanic Gardens Pocket Visitors Guide, fold it up and use it to go on a tour of the gardens, it is easy to spend several hours here.

Some of the specialty areas include:

Japanese Gardens: Designed by a Japanese landscape architect, and they are a 'must see' when visiting the Gardens.

Hugo Lassen Fernery: if you like ferns there are some great specimens in the fernery.

Palms and Cycads: A great collection of mature palms, and efforts have recently been made to further expand this already noteworthy collection. They say there are about 200 species and just for their 'weirdness' I loved this area.

There is a memorial Cenotaph in the gardens and is particulalry interesting as some seeds from the Lone Pine at Gallipoli were obtained from the Turkish Government in Australia's Bicentennial Year, and pines from some of these seeds now form part of an avenue to and around the Cenotaph.

Gardens Tearoom

The Gardens Tearoom is located under a Giant Banyan Fig and is a lovely area, nearby are picnic tables and free barbeque facilities set up under another of these figs - an ideal spot for a picnic. The Gardens Tearoom opens daily from 8am - 5pm.

FREE Entry. OPEN Every Day 6 am - 6 pm

The Beef Capital

by backpackerbaby

"What else apart from steak?"

Surprisingly, there are some nice old buildings along the river. It's a good idea to do a self-guided heritage walk in the day.

"Rocky?"

Rockhampton is also known as Rocky, it's where the Tropic of Capricorn lies. Because of this, the surrounding area is known as the Capricorn Coast. Rocky is famous of its steak. If you ask some locals to recommend a steak restaurant to you, you'll probably hear "Well, all restaurants are good here. Just anyone will do." You can imagine that all the steak should be of a certain quality, no matter where you try it.

The town itself is a bit strange for me, with Bruce Highway running across the town and a railway running along another main street. I was a bit lost and confused by the town arrangement. The 'city centre' itself doesn't look like a centre. There are HEAPS of motels in this town, mostly scattered along Bruce Highway. It's somehow like a town for travellers to stop over rather than a real tourist spot - that's my feeling.

"M vs F"

I also found that the proportion of male to female is pretty high in this town. It's really interesting.