We had a family holiday to Hervey Bay, with a house booked at Toogoom and took the oppurtunity on the shorter drive up to visit some of the places on the drive north we hadn’t got to yet.
The Muntapa Tunnel was a nice quick detour - although besides the tunnel itself there isn’t much to see.
Not far from there is the The Palms National Park. This one has been on our list to visit for a while but we’ve always had the dog with us and so couldn’t go.
After getting rained out earlier in the year, we rebooked our camping trip to Straddie. We had storms forecast this time as well, but we were able to get our tent up just before it rained.
The Cyliner Beach Campsite we stayed at was really good, was right on the beach and some local Kangaroos and Curlews.
We were camping just near Point Lookout and so we went toSouth Gorge Beach for a quick look before it rained.
After checking in at the caravan park, we decided to do the short Shamrock mine walk first. There were a bunch of holes in the ground including an open pit that you could look down which was pretty cool.
From here you can also see Castle Mountain Lookout, which we didn’t attempt (as it’s a 22km walk) but would be a good view if you had more time. After a quick look at the lake, we went back to the caravan park.
We made a quick stop at Auburn River National Park on our drive to Rockhampton.
We started with the Gorge Top Walk which was not overly exciting but had a spectacular view at the lookout at the end. Even though we got there pretty early in the morning it started getting really hot so Lyra did not enjoy being in the carrier.
The walk to the Gorge lookout was a much much shorter and easier one, but the view was not as impressive.
The National Parks Website doesn’t have any info about this walk for some reason. There were signs at the top and bottom with information though.
The ascent trail starts at First Turkey just past the waterhole and toilet block for the mountain bike tracks, with a sign that says to allow for 4 hours each way. We were staying with Rachael’s parents whilst in Rocky so I just walked from there with the plan to meet Rachael at the top for lunch.
A few guys from work and I did the Mount Cordeaux/Bare Rock track in Main Range National Park.
Rachael and I had done the short Rainforest circuit at the start of the track on the way back from Boonah a few years ago. From here the hike up was mostly through rainforest and not to steep.
At Mt Cordeax there was a nice lookout back towards Lake Moogerah.
It then continues on a little bit further on Bare Rock track to another lookout.
We tried to drive south as quickly as possible to get away from the rain. Getting through Cairns took ages due to the traffic all being backed up, and the rain was still very heavy.
There was a bunch of waterfalls we had skipped on the way up that we had planned to visit on the way back, but we decided they it would be a bit too dangerous due to the heavy rain.
We left Cairns super early to drive up to Port Douglas to do a sail to the Low Isles.
The sail out was pretty uneventful and the weather wasn’t particularly great, it kept raining off and on.
Once we got to the island though we got to go snorkelling off the beach. We saw turtles and giant clams, so was pretty cool!
We did a tour of the island as well, which has a couple that live on it permanently that work for the BOM, and some housing for researchers.
On the Sunday we got the Kuranda Scenic Railway up to visit our friend Jaimee in Kuranda.
Was a slow train, but a nice journey and impressive to think about the effort that was involved in constructing it.
Barron Gorge was a bit disappointing after seeing photos of it in flood about 2 weeks earlier. But still nice that the train stops for 10mins to have a look.
Kuranda itself was nice, lots of markets and food places.
We stayed the night at Cardwell, was a nice little beach town with views of Hinchinbrook Island. Pretty much everywhere was closed for dinner as apparently it was the “off season” so only had the pub or fish and chip shop to choose from. There was a resort style section that looked abandonded, not unlike Seaspray at Zilzie. We had pizzas at the pub and there were pretty good.
In the morning we did Cardwell ParkRun and it happened to be the first birthday, so we got a free sausage sizzle for breakfast as well.
