The next day we got up early and made our way to Yeppoon to see my American friend. Yeppoon is a small beach town only 30 minutes away from Rockhampton. I had stopped there with Simon and Chris when I was making my way up to Cairns but we only spent the morning there.
This time I got to see my friend Megan who is spending some time there with her boyfriend. She was one of my better friends when I was staying in Byron Bay. She has such a positive attitude and gives love wherever she goes. It’s actually quite contagious.
It had been a while since I was in Byron Bay. At that point maybe 5 or 6 months. We had been in contact for some time and we were always keeping each other updated as to our whereabouts. It took a while but we finally got together and I was very excited about it.
When we arrived Alex realized that he had a pretty serious oil leak coming from his car. We didn’t really know what the problem was. Megan’s friend helped us find a mechanic while we ventured around town.
We hung out at Megan’s place for a while and then we headed down to the beach for a swim. It’s really all there is to do in Yeppoon. Just a small, chill, laid back beach town. There was so much seaweed in the water though. But it was a fun time.
From there we grabbed a bit to eat at this new spot that Megan and her friend wanted to try out. I got a burger and it was the first time I had eaten meat in while. I’d been eating more vegetables and fruits since I started driving down south with Alex. He is a vegetarian. But road tripping, in general, has convinced me that I don’t need meat as much as I used to.
My plan isn’t to go vegetarian or anything. I think humans were meant to eat meat. I just don’t think as much as we’re eating right now. When I was growing up there was meat at almost every meal. This is the story for most people from North America and Europe. You could throw Australia and New Zealand in there as well.
But if you just change your mindset and understand you don’t need meat at lunch and dinner you can cut out a lot of meat from your diet. If you eat meat at lunch or dinner then you’re going to be cutting your meat intake by half. And that’s a pretty big deal.
Anyway, after lunch, we parted ways. But we figured out that we were both going to be in Agnes water at the same time so we planned on meeting up again. We drove up to Rockhampton afterward to go to one of the mechanics that had some time to look at Alex’s car.
We figured out that it was an oil leak from the differentiator. I’ve learned a lot about cars since I’ve started traveling and today I learned what a differentiator actually is.
Alex was worried that the gearbox was fucked. If that was the problem he was going to be out of a lot of money. And to add to that, the parts we would need to correct that problem were going to be difficult to get a hold of.
Thankfully, it was just the seal that was broken and that’s why the oil was leaking all over the place. There wasn’t enough time to do the entire job that day because we got there in the early evening. So we had to come back the next morning so the mechanic could fix it.
That night we drove out of town and literally camped on the side of the road. It was along a river so it wasn’t that bad. But it didn’t compare to any of the campsites we were used to staying at.
We got up early in the morning and it took about 2 hours for the mechanic to fix the car. No issues and we were back on the road in the early afternoon. Next stop – Agnes Water.