Well after an amazing time in Hervey Bay it was finally time to leave and continue with our travels. As we now go further north into Queensland the places we want to visit, and indeed the general tourist areas get fewer and more spaced out, so over the next few days we had a lot of km's to cover.

The next place we were heading was to Mackay which is 740km north, but on the first day driving we only managed 400km to a place called Rockhampton. On the way up there was NOTHING to see and it was boiling hot as we had to go inland quite a bit so were away from the sea breeze. Anyway, we stopped at Rockhampton for the night and then in the morning did 340km to arrive in Mackay. Along the way we entered into the area of Queensland which primary export is sugar cane. We drove for hundreds of kilometers seeing nothing but sugar cane in all directions before we arrived in Mackay.

Before we left Hervey Bay we were speaking to a couple over a BBQ one night who had come past Mackay and said its quiet, but my god its dead there. Just nothing around of interest to do, but the reason we came was to visit Eungella National Park which we'll get to next.

We checked into Andergrove Park caravan site on an unpowered site for $19 a night (sad but we are members of Top Tourist Parks so get a discount, how sad is that LOL) and found out that each day this site has a bird feeding which ends up with hundreds and hundreds of rainbow lorikeets, ducks and other birds coming in. Quite cool & noisy to see :)

Anyway, like we said the reason we came to Mackay was to visit Eungella National Park where you can see Platypus's in the wild! But, typical ozzies forget to say its actually over an hour outside of Mackay along some of the steepest and twisteist road this side of the Himalayas!! We eventually arrived, a little frazzled from the trip and were gobsmacked when the first bit we went to we managed to spot several Platypus's swimming in the river surrounded by lots of turtles. The Platypus was much smaller than we thought, only about 50cm long but still looked really cute so was worth the trip. On the way back we intended to visit some waterfalls in Eungella but the map we had failed to tell us that the last bit of the 20km road was actually a dirt track! Bummer!! So we turned Bolt around and headed back to sleepy Mackay.

Sunday we got up early to head up to Airlie Beach. No point hanging around in sleepy Mackay anymore, especially on a Sunday when everything that does exist in Mackay, doesn't open so the once sleepy town becomes a ghost town. Anyway, it was a nice easy 2hr drive north through more endless fields of sugar cane to our next stop Airlie Beach, the Gateway to the Whitsundays!!!!