Mt Hay & a wood pile

Another clear blue sky morning , where to go & what to do ??? Checking the tourist info we had , the decision was made to go to Mt Hay and the thunder egg farm . "Thunder eggs", you say ? - scared chooks maybe ? no it's much simpler than that . More about that later , as we talk to Garry for a while over a cuppa , before he heads off to work . It was lunch time before we knew it , so we had lunch before going .
  We took the back way to Gracemere , going past Paradise Lagoons - a large property owned by the Acton Family who are very high in the beef cattle world . Paradise Lagoons  stretches from Gracemere to Rockhampton and Alton Downs - where we are staying .

  It was 40 kms out to Mt Hay , and the day was warming up - 31degrees when we arrived . The thunder egg farm also doubles as a caravan park - very rustic , and there is the shop and a workshop.

In the workshop they cut & polish stones , you can purchase the finished product , jewellery and pewter products . You can even buy random thunder eggs , for a price depending on their size , and have it cut to reveal the inside - you may have something awesome , or a rock !!

                                                           A cut & polished thunder egg

  Thunder eggs are volcanic gas bubbles , formed as lava cools , then minerals in liquid form seep inside , then crystallise . This all happened 120million years ago .

Gwen , the elderly owner , explained lots to us about the rocks in the shop and where they came from. Her son is in Western Australia , and has his own shop similar to here - they swap stone etc . The stone from WA is an amazing red colour , with splashes of yellow & orange , and looks amazing when cut & polished .

 Outside the shop was a rock garden , where there were many specimens of crystals & other types of rocks .

  I'm pretty sure this wood be one of the only shops in the world that has their own wood pile of petrified wood - it actually had a couple , and there were also large sections of petrified tree trunks as well .

   We headed back in to Rocky for some fuel before going out to Rockhampton Ski Park on the Fitzroy River . There is a caretaker who lives here and looks after the lawns and other areas .

 We headed back up the road and round the corner and were back home , beer time !!

Here is a map link :-https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=z1G8gwwxwyYo.keck_b_8UTQg