Last time we were in Townsville, we had some friends recommend Crystal Creek but didn’t have time to go up there. So we made sure we stopped in on our way past this time. Everything was super green - not surprising after the floods.
Little Crystal Creek was an awesome little spot. The water was a bit cool, but a great little swimming hole. The waterfall was suprisingly strong and hard to swim over to due to the current flowing away from it.
After Eungella, we stayed the night at Seaforth. There wasn’t a whole lot there. We got fish & chips for dinner, and instead of seagulls they had curlews that bug you for some instead!
They get really big tides there as well, so the swimming net was kind of pointless if it is not high tide.
We got recommended going to Cape Hillsborough at sunrise to see the kangaroos and wallabies feeding on the beach.
We wanted to go snorkelling at Port Douglas, so decided to make a road trip of it so we could visit family in Rockhampton on the way up. Our first stop was to visit Eungella National Park.
I visited here as a kid, but didn’t remember much other than seeing a platypus at dusk and dad getting a leech.
Broken River was a nice walk, and there was a cafe at the top but not much to see in the middle of the day.
On our last day we set straight out to the end of the walking track to Big Bend. When you are not doing the side tracks it doesn’t actually take that long 11km and took 2 hours although is still a massive distance and so we were pretty tired by the time we got to the end for a break.
The actual walk itself was great, with lots of different creek crossings and scenery.
The actual hikes are all a single path that follows the creek, with a bunch of side paths. It’s recommend to go to the end first but as we were going with Rachael’s dad Mark, we did them in the order we came across them and aimed to do the main 4 in the lower gorge.
The first side track is for Moss Garden. The water seeps through the sandstone gorge over thousands of years and then hits the basalt layer where it is forced outwards.
I’d always wanted to go to Carnarvon Gorge when I lived in Rocky, but never quite got there because it’s a fair way inland. We worked out though that it’s actually not that much further (2.5hrs or so) from Toowoomba. It really is in the middle of nowhere though, the closest fuel (and shops) are at Injune and Rolleston.
On the drive in you pass through Bandana Station which had a bunch of cattle on the road, but we also saw a few Bustards and Emu’s.
We were up in Rocky again (for the 4th time this year), this time for my cousin Kate’s wedding. Making the most of our time there, we tried to do more sightseeing.
Firstly, we went and saw the new lookout at Mt Archer. It had been nice and warm in Rocky compared to Toowoomba, but we went up pretty early in the morning and up the top there was a bitterly cold breeze like we get in Tbah.
We decided to drive home a different way from Brisbane and come back through Mt Glorious (D’Aguilar National Park). It was a much more scenic drive then going through the city and not much longer from Joyner.
First we did the Maiala walk to Greene’s Falls.
The track to the waterfall was super muddy, but the last bit had a walkway and we even saw a wallaby.
We then drove a bit further to campsite that had a lookout towards Wivenhoe.
In 2012 my friend Jan visited from Switzerland and I did a post Sightseeing at Home and I showed him some of the tourist places around town. Rachael’s sister Lauren was visiting after living in the UK for over 2 years, and so I thought I’d do another post on more Rockhampton tourist things we did this year.
Capricorn Caves When we were up at Christmas, Rachael wanted to go see the Summer Solstice Tour at the Capricorn Caves.
So last weekend we took our new car off-road for the first time, camping at Double Island. To make the most of the weekend, we left Friday and spent the first night at Mapleton. We’ve been to the Sunshine Coast Hinterland a few times already, so didn’t go anywhere new, but it’s still a lovely part of the world.
Once we met up with Tom, Bec, Sarah and Emily at Noosa, we got the ferry across to Noosa North Shore.
