Day 1
We left Airlie Beach early the next morning, heading south again as we had 3 days to get to Hervey Bay for our Fraser Island trip. Some of the people on our Whitsundays trip had talked about a national park called Cape Hillsborough about 2 hours south of Airlie. So we chose to make that our next pitstop.
Cape Hillsborough is a small coastal park which peaks at a ruggedly 300m high with sheer cliff faces. There is a 3km walk up and around it that takes you to Andrews Point and other lookouts from which you can see the beautiful Wedge Island and you can also spot turtles swimming in the wake.
The beach on the lead up to the national park walk
Lots of insects and butterflies on display
The walk ends on the beach which feels like something out of a movie set. Empty and covered in huge, volcanic like (but covered in iron according to Chris) rocks.
After our walk we got back into the van and were going to head to our campsite for the evening, when all of a sudden, we spotted a large group of kangaroos enjoying their early evening meal. So of course we had to stop and watch and take pictures.
We got to what we hoped would be our campsite for the night in the national park, but they were fully booked :( so rather than waste time trying to find somewhere, there was still a couple of hours before sunset so we got on the road and drove an extra 100km and found somewhere to stay along the way thankfully.
Day 2
Having driven an unexpected extra 1.5hrs the previous day meant we had slightly less of a mammoth drive to do today. Only 520km!!!
We wanted to get to Town of 1770 in time to do a chopper ride around the local countryside which left at 2pm, but the single carriageway Bruce Highway was shut about 100kms from our destination due to a bridge crash. So we sat on the side of the highway for 2hours waiting for the Highway to reopen, but by the time it did, it was too late for any activity that afternoon :( c’est la vie!
Some of the brilliant signs between Mackay and Rockhampton!
On the upside, we booked ourselves onto a surf lesson for the next day :)
Town of 1770 is called this due to it being the landing spot of Captain Cook back in 1770 (funnily enough) and the birthplace of Queensland. It is also the most northern surf spot on the Australian East coast.
We had a nice BBQ and chilled out for the rest of the night.
Day 3
We eagerly got up ready for our surf lesson. We met our surf instructor at 9.30am and things were not good. Due to the weather being so good, there was no surf! We were gutted! So no surf for us today, nooooooooooooooo!!!
Rather than hang around in a tiny village we just got on the road as we had to be in Hervey Bay for 6.30pm that evening for a meeting for our Fraser Island trip.
It was only 200km to Hervey Bay which we did in no time. As the weather was still amazing, we headed straight to the beach to chill out reading for a few hours before checking into our free hostel :)
We had our meeting re our trip which seemed to be a parting of a lot of money and credit card details as we were hiring a 4x4 car and it was all precautions. But it was noted very quickly there was a lot of girls on our trip and the leader was a complete geek lol! Much ribbing on our parts lol!
After the meeting, we had food shopping to do with our group of 7 for the trip. We all realised quickly we were going to get on very well. Us, the two northern Stephs, the young Irish couple Richie and Gemma and the German Andre.
As it was early to rise the next day, we thought we’d head to bed early, only to be kept up by the hostel bar and the occupants of the next room till 4am :( and up at 6am :( not happy!
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