Well I was entering another free roaming section of my Walkabout, and this time I got a regular 4x4 (as opposed to a camper) booked at the Avis up the road from me. It all went smoothly, they had heard of me and didn't turn me away which was a plus, and I got the same surge of excitement I always get sitting in a vehicle that requires you to climb up into it...until I realised the damn thing was an automatic!

It was my first time with an automatic and I still think it's like driving a tonka toy. You put the thing into 'Drive' and it starts moving as soon as you take your foot off the brake pedal. I means you don't have to make handbrake starts, but inevitably its idea of acceleration and gear change is different to mine and it's just...not quite right. Very education though, especially the first couple of times I pressed the brake pedal with my left foot, expecting there to be a clutch there...

In practical terms though it was pretty easy to learn how to use, and it does make eating and driving a whole lot easier. And once you get on the highway you don't change gear much anyway, even with a manual shift so I can't really whinge. I wonder how it performs on big hills though? Especially considering its meant to be a 4x4.

Anyway, getting the car made me realise this is when I'm happiest, bimbling along exploring at my own rate, looking at what I want to see. Driving really gets you in touch with the place you are exploring, I reckon. The slopes, the road condition, the cryptic signs you don't understand, the unfathomable systems for obtaining fuel and food and toilet facilities. The tour bus came a close second, but I like it best of all when I've got an open road ahead of me and the radio blasting and the windows down - aaah.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. After I got the car I didn't immediately hit the road and start doing impressions of Thelma and Louise, no I went to look at Townsville Sunday Market. Townsville had been utterly dead yesterday - very surprising for a Saturday but I hadn't seen more than four people together on the streets all day if you discount Maggie Island. But I had woken up today, looked down from my balcony, and seen the mall below teeming with people, a welcome change to the surroundings. So I checked myself out and packed the car, then wandered around, expectations already adjusted for seeing a lot of worthless Ozzie tat, but completely unprepared for seeing precisely the same tat I see in craft markets in the UK that I had hitherto assumed was unique to us. I quote, as an example, something I saw at Grantham Game Show namely old drinks bottles that had been reheated, and flattened and turned into clocks and cheese boards. Thought they were the invention of an enterprising Brit but clearly its an international business. The whole craft stall market is probably part of a global syndicate touting croquetted toilet roll covers and doiley covered jam to every corner of the globe. Frightening.

I treated myself to another eggs benedict before I left, then struck out for Bowen (a random point picked between Townsville and Mackay to break the journey up and cited to have nice beaches). I finally got to witness a proper Aussie road - not a scenic one or a challenging one, but a proper long cornerless utility road that crossed flat featureless hinterland, broken up by only the ocassional road house and irritating truck that required overtaking. It certainly tested my ability to keep awake. I had to have the radio up particularly loud and the windows down particularly low. I wondered for a while if the car had cruise control but then deliberately didn't look for it because that was just making it too easy to fall asleep behind the wheel.

I meant to have a rest stop at Ayr but it was shut. I'm beginning to realise that the Aussies take their Sundays seriously, or perhaps that the Brits have just got used to being exploited into working 7 days a week now. Either way the whole of Australia seems to down tools at the weekend and you can't get food, fuel, nuthin'. I think the only things open are roadhouses and even then only very grudgingly and you're usual greeting with a sneering 'Waddayer want mate?'.

So yes, my planned shop and grub stop in Ayr was curtailed by the entire town being devoid of humans bar one dog, wandering around pretending to be a dingo. Thus I pressed determinedly on to Bowen and got there a couple of hours later, feeling a bit twitchy.

Bowen is a bit spread out. You get signs for Bowenshire a good 80km away from the town, and the town CBD is also miles from the outskirts and the initial faded 'Welcome to Bowen' sign. It appears to be based around a salt works, or at least there is a fair amount of heavy industry around and lots of flat open plains with drying water. It certainly isn't anything related to sugar cane, though there were a few plantations close by the township.

I drove around Bowen randomly for a bit and then finally admitted to myself that I had no idea where my motel was and I should have downloaded a map. Working it out from the address though, it was claiming to be directly on the Bruce Highway and Bowen was a turn off from it so I gambled and rejoined the highway for a bit longer, looking for signs. Sure enough, it was about 5km down the road from Bowen - hardly the nice central location it was claiming - and when I checked in I had to wake up the receptionist who had fallen asleep in front of the football with a small ratty little dog on his chest. He had a glass eye and a funny look about him, and when I got in my room and saw my bath/shower looked exactly like the one in Bates Motel I started to get a little scared. At least there was no view of a house on a hill, just a very windswept ocean peninsula. None the less,I immediately dumped my bags and headed off back into Bowen central.

I wanted something to eat, anything. I had been given a free advertisational map by Bate's one eyed receptionist and it listed about 5 Bowen restaurants - none of which opened on a Sunday. It also listed a number of take-out joints - most of which just served breakfast and closed before noon. I would have even settled for a packet of crisps but none of the grocers were open and the bottle shop doesn't serve anything with vitamins or protein in it - it's a company mission statement. So how the hell do people eat round here? I'll tell you - Bowen has three fabulous, drop dead gorgeous beaches, and slap bang on each one is a Butlins-esque resort full of loud drunk youths and working class aussie families, which supplies all-in deals so said youths and tired mothers get fed and watered gratis and don't have to worry about anything except getting laid or whether little Wayne and Muriel are going to swim too far out and drown themselves. It means that more maverick explorers like myself are utterly excluded and left to starve. We also get displaced onto the outer beaches with the pointier sand and slightly less blue water. I still had a quick swim though, though I was half expecting some burly resort guy to leapt out and shoo me away at any second.

By cruising down Bowens grid system in a systematic fashion, I finally found one lone food establishment open - a takeaway pizza - and I leapt on the opportunity though it was probably one of the worst pizza I've had in a long time. The only thing that improved it was that I took it to a secluded cove away from the Butlins camps, and me and a seagull shared it while I watched a truely beautiful sunset occur over the headlands. Bowen is very pretty. It's just a shame that it's a ghost town on a Sunday night and full of arseholes that's all.

When it got dark and me and the seagull had finished our pizza, I set off back to Bate's. I put a chain on the door to deter psycho-esque shower stabbings and tried to stay awake but couldn't, I was progammed to Queensland hours now and dark meant sleep, despite me having a good book to read and entertaining crap on tv. It also suggested that I'd be up at bloody dawn again, further confusing me - crikey in England I'd happily sleep til gone afternoon, what's going on here? Oh well, more time to spend at Eungella I suppose. Oh yes, I was meant to be staying in a open sided tree hut on a platypus filled creek in the Eungella rainforest on Mon/Tues but I had a last minute change of heart. This was based loosely around my previous experiences in swags being freezing cold and eaten alive by insects - I just couldn't face that again so I cancelled my treehouse booking and rang up a slightly more costly resort that offered you your own lodge with aircon and soft beds (and mozzie nets, and a restaurant that does you afternoon picnic hampers), and was minutes away from *the* most reliable viewing spot for platypuses. I feel slightly ashamed that I have chosen a comfortable mod-con chalet for a back to basics treehut commune with nature but...I have 25 mozzie bites on one leg alone, there must be more comfortable ways to commune with nature...