Having left the caravan park, I wandered over the bridge to the city. I had decided that the bus stop I had used the day before was not official and that going the main city centre bus stop was the best idea to get the Young’s bus to Yeppoon. On the way I stopped at a coffee shop to have some raisin toast and an iced coffee for breakfast. The man seemed keen that I should hide down the back of his coffee shop, but I did not and sat out on the footpath. I think found the bus stop only by dint of the fact we had stopped there the day before. One of the problems with buses in Rockhampton is that there are no bus stop signs, or anything other helpful like a map or a timetable. No, just some people loitering outside the police station. One of them turned out to be the bus driver. The place marked with bus painted on the road was not the actual bus stop.
I caught the bus to Yeppoon. As the day before the bus drivers were very helpful and he told me which stop the the closest to where I wanted to go and the way to walk there. About half way along the 1km walk, some council workers asked where I was going. I told them and they said I was on the correct road. When I got to the camp site at about 12:15 (it officially opened at 12:00) I found that there were already lots of tents erected. I went in and put up my tent. Then I wandered into town. We followed the bike track to the coast. Here I had a strange, but good drink of mango sorbet and red jelly. Wandering into town I picked up some sunscreen as I thought (incorrectly as it turned out) that my sunscreen was packed with the bike. I could have saved myself some light sunburn if I had realised earlier where I had actually packed it.
Back at the camp, I registered. There was a crowd of people at the start, but they were processed very very quickly. For me it was even faster. They had queues by alphabet and the queue for my part was a third of the length of the other queues. I picked up my trike. But not without first embarrassing myself. I was looking for an unusual box. But Wooly’s Wheels people have very efficiently wrapped the whole thing in packing tape. I did not recognise the box, though I did eventually find it. But not before I had pestered the man organising the unpacking. So my apologies for my mistake.
When unpacking and reassembling the trike, I met Andrew from the Toowoomba Bug who I had met last year. I had a flat front right tyre. It had gone down two weeks earlier and when I had pumped it up, it stayed up. But this time it stayed down. It was then that I found I had forgotten to bring a second tube, which I had planned to do for such an eventuality. I replaced the tube, and with some help from John of Epic Cycles, got the tyre back on. I nearly got it on myself with no tyre leavers, but it turned out I had too much air in the tube. Next time I expect I will succeed.
I had dinner at the local sausage sizzle. Met up with a few more people. As there was rain threatening, they took the bike boxes back inside. As before they just swung into action and it was done very quickly. The whole organisation was very efficient effective and happy to be doing the work. I am very impressed.
In the evening there were some soccer matches. I think that they were finals. But I am just guessing. While I was away one girl hurt herself, and when I got back there was an ambulance on the field. I do not know what the injury was or if she was okay.
In the morning, I got up. There was a sausage sizzle for breakfast, so I had some of that. We had a late start (@10:30 AM), wandered into town and grabbed a Tropical Sunday for breakfast. The woman said that the fruit salad was fresh (as if this was special) and that they had never gone through so much fruit salad. I also stopped at the local bike shop. There were about half a dozen of us waiting when the man arrived. I grabbed his only 16″x 1¾ tyre. I would have purchased two. He had lots of 20″ and 12″ tyres. I then headed out to the start line.