Three days from Rockhampton doing some caving and then up into the hills behind Mackay, in the Eungella National park hunting for Platypus.
Day 20 – Capricorn Caves
Woke up excited today as we’d decided to try caving. I’d done it with school and not particularly enjoyed it with some mild claustrophobia setting in, but I was a pretty wussy child so I was confident that I’d do better this time. After visiting Cheddar Gorge caves earlier in the year Evie had expressed a desire to do some proper caving so this was a trip I wanted to make happen. Unfortunately, Aiden was not as keen when we first mentioned it and had to be talked into it. I was pretty sure he’d love it when he got there but he was worried about the dark and tight spaces.
The Capricorn Caves at Mt Etna were less than half an hour from our cabin so we headed up for our 10am tour, signed in and had 20 minutes to kill before the tour started – it seemed that we were going to have a private one as no-one else turned up 😊. There’s a little learning room here with information about how the area has changed over time and the history of the settlement of the area. The people who found these caves and own the land were early settlers back when you simply had to claim a tree, get a survey of the area done and then the land was yours for a minimal land lease rent! It would have been quite amazing to be part of a community who built a bridge over a river and then went across to explore for the first time and set up new towns and build homes. The owners of this land found this dry cave system and explored it with candles and ropes around their waists. Pretty scary if your candle ran out and you were trapped in the dark. It only takes a few hours until you start to hallucinate apparently!
Unlike those initial explorers, we were heading in with the lovely Lydia as our guide and armed with headtorches. After reassuring us that there are no poisonous spiders or snakes found in the caves she took us in.
We were shortly presented with our first practice route when Lydia pointed out a gap low to the floor which we could supposedly fit through… Aiden (who seemed to be feeling a whole lot better about the whole thing now we were actually doing it and he had a light on his head) quickly volunteered to go first so we proceeded in size order. This was good as the kids skipped through quickly, being small and flexible, whilst we took a little longer to wiggle our way between the rocks. No fear for me this time which I was pleased of, just a little initial reluctance to get dusty whilst commando crawling through powdered bat guano. Nice.
We roamed back and forth through the cave systems, walking larger tunnels with occasional squeezes and were then sent off down little chutes and funnels, like the “Whale’s belly”, the “Flowerpot” and the “Dungeon”. The kids favourite was the “Whale’s belly”. You start in a large cave and have to climb up into a small hole at head height, wiggle on your front down through a 3m passage and then have to climb up again to another tiny hole which you have to squeeze through with your legs waving behind you. The kids made it look easy, I couldn’t move for a bit as there was nothing to get your feet onto so you can push forward and I couldn’t pull forwards as too much of my body was hanging off the ledge behind me. After some ungraceful wiggling I made it. Chris, as with most of it, had more trouble squeezing through the tiny gaps, especially with his longer legs. He also got his shoe caught and nearly left it behind. Haha.
Second favourite was the “Dungeon”. You slither in on your belly and have to find your way out (you can’t come out the same way). There’s a dummy tunnel off to the left for about 10m which gets you all excited until you reach the dead end. It’s actually a climb up which you can only see from one side of the cave. The kids loved trying to find it.
In the “Flowerpot”, which is cave with a ceiling collapsed by the roots of a fig tree, we were sat on a nice smoothed, yellowish rock which it turns out is a favourite of the Rock Wallabies who come down here to cool off by weeing on the rocks and then rolling in it. They can’t sweat so this is their way of wetting their skin to lose heat. We’ll all be showering tonight!
We got to go in the large “Cathedral Cave” where they hold weddings and opera performances because of the acoustics. A pretty amazing place to get married.
The way out is through the zigzag passage. This is a narrowish passage which literally zig zags through the rock and is the normal exit for the tour groups who come to look in the cathedral cave i.e. it’s very easy. To make it harder Lydia suggested we turn our torches off and go through in the dark. You can literally not see anything so you have to put your hands on the walls and follow the zigzags. It’s amazing how disoriented we become when we can’t see. I ended up almost crouching before remembering that she’d said that you can walk upright the whole way. The darkness is so oppressive that you feel that there must be something above your head. We went back through the passage a couple of times and met a Cave Spider – massive but harmless. Glad she’d told us that they were ok before we met it in a cramped space!
From there we walk over some wobbly wooden bridges (which we ran over to make them bounce). On the walk back down to the centre we were treated to an Echidna snuffling about by the path. This one was a bit braver than the other one and didn’t roll up so we could see his long nose. These oversized hedgehogs are strong enough that they can dig into the ground with their powerful claws so they can’t be picked up or turned over. A good defence.
Whilst the caves are cooler than outside (where it was 32 degrees), they are still about 21 degrees and caving’s pretty active so you get warm! We were glad of a cool drink and decided to have lunch here and help support this small enterprise. It’s got a lot of eco accreditation and the people running it were super friendly. At $5 for mug of delicious pumpkin soup and $12 for a really nice lasagne with salad and a sensible portion of chips it was great value and yummy.
We picked up some ice creams and got in the car to start the four and a half hour drive north. We carried on the coastal route, which is pretty much flat and straight, with open eucalypt forest dotted with cattle farms and thicker woods with blackwood. These woods have the interesting mix of the almost white eucalyptus and the nearly black bark of the blackwoods in contrast with each other. These were some of the largest plains we’ve seen, covered with browned grasses, odd trees and crossed with dry creeks.
This road goes on for ages with little variation in scenery and few bends. There are many signs on the roads here about taking breaks and even odd bits of trivia on the side of the road to wake you up. ‘Survive this drive’ seems to be the mantra.
Spoke too soon about the roadkill… Poor wallabies.
When we stopped to fill up we put the kids to good use cleaning all the dust and dead flies off the car 🙂
We’d decided to stop wherever we saw something interesting during this long drive. The Dugong Sanctuary sign definitely counted so we turned off the highway. The road took us through Clearwater, a tiny town which is right on the seafront – we didn’t realise we were so close! The sanctuary is the general area of sea, but you can look for them surfacing off shore. No chance for us with the tide this far out though!
There was a mini playarea, toilets and that massive beach though which made for a nice break from driving. We wandered down onto the beach and found mudskippers, crabs and a curlew.
Back on the road we turned inland and headed for the hills of Eungella National Park. The sugar cane industry is very evident here and we pretty much drove through a processing plant with all the conveyer belts carrying the cane over the road. There are a number of these big processing plants out here with their large chimneys belching white smoke into the sky.
After leaving the towns we headed up through a long valley of sugar cane farms, before a steep climb up into the rainforested hills at the end. Our home for the next 3 nights was a cabin on a farm. Down a dirt road and then the 1km long driveway through cattle fields on the hills to the farmhouse and cabin perched on the top. What a site! No need to worry about key safes – this front door doesn’t even lock!
Dianne came down to greet us and welcome us to the farm and after hearing about the platypus in the dam we headed back down the road to one of the lakes on her land to see if any platypus wanted to show themselves. We’d left it a little late and light was fading fast though so we couldn’t see a lot. As we had to make our way back up and had no torches we couldn’t stay long. The temperature was plummeting too and the cabin was cooling down. Luckily there are electric blankets and blankets (and a log burner although we didn’t get around to lighting it) to keep us toasty.
Worldschooling:
Caving was a totally new experience requiring confidence and athletic skills so I’m pretty sure that counts as P.E!
Bird species seen: 119
Day 21 – Hunting for Platypus in Eugella National Park and Broken River
There are a number of board games and jigsaw puzzles at this little cabin, and one in particular had piqued our interest the night before – the Settlers of Catan. So commenced a pretty epic 5 hour game (it’s meant to take an hour to play but we didn’t know what we were doing and kept getting distracted by things like breakfast and lunch which slowed us down).
You essentially have to place your settlement on a map of resources, build up resources and use them to expand your settlement, trade and develop into cities. The kids, especially Aiden, loved this game. It was a good introduction to negotiating and required some thought on strategy so does this count as worldschooling? If it does then that would be amazing!!
I did have to drag them away from the game after lunch though as it still wasn’t finished and I wanted to go out and look for platypus – that was why we were here after all! After convincing them to get dressed we headed out, stopping to do the Skywalk circuit on route. It is only 500m round to get the views off the top of the ranges.
We also headed down part of the track back towards Eungella looking for the fig tree arch. We didn’t find it but it was a lovely path through the rainforest and we were being a good birdspotting team again.
Next stop was Broken River in the Eungella National Park. This place is known for its platypus so people come from far just to spot them (it’s why we were up here!). There are a number of viewing platforms and the platypus have become more used to people than the others in the country, which improves your chances of seeing these elusive creatures.
We planned to do the 1.6km trail around first before coming back to the lookout spots closer to 5pm as they are nocturnal. The whole area is beautiful, and we enjoyed walking up the river trail.
As we headed round though we stumbled upon a rocky shelf which ended above a large pool in the river. We bumped into some people leaving there who said they’d seen one a few minutes before so we sat and waited. The kids were very good as we knew we would need to be very quiet. We’d had discussions about the size of platypus before this with Dianne. Chris thought they were about 70cm, I thought a little less – about 50cm, but we were both wrong as they are only between 30 and 45cm (the bigger ones are further south and on Tasmania).
As we sat scanning the water we suddenly saw a ripple on the surface at the back of the pool. Was it one? Something was definitely coming up and staying on the surface for twenty seconds or so and then diving again. As it came a little closer we could see in the binoculars that it was definitely a platypus. Much excitement ensued, especially as it seemed to be coming closer to us. Long story short, over the space of about 30 minutes it eventually ended up pretty much swimming past us, mere metres away and we ended up with three in our little pool, all to ourselves 😊. A really lovely family moment experiencing this together. Oh, and a point for me for spotting the first one…
After our little platypus had swum past us we figured it couldn’t get much better and headed on to complete the circuit, calling in at the other lookouts on the way. Whether it’s always this good here we won’t know, but there was another platypus at each of the next two lookouts! There were also some turtles, including a very cute baby one.
Back home feeling pretty satisfied to finish our game of Settlers of Catan (I won 😊). The kids insisted on another game so the kids and Chris started one whilst I advised and did some planning.
Bird species seen: 122
Day 22 – Finch Hatton Gorge
Woke to a cloudy and windy day, although the cloud had cleared before breakfast was done. After finishing the latest game of Catan (Chris won this one) we drove back down out of the hills via the general store in Eungella. It’s really like going back in time around here. This place is like a hardware store, newsagent, grocery shop, coffee shop/café and the local chippie all in one! We could buy all sorts of random things here, when I walked in a couple were talking about buying binoculars. There are some very basic food supplies too.
We headed on down out of the hills through Finch Hatton, which is very much a sugar cane farming town. The cane train runs line runs through the houses at the side of the road, either past front or back gardens. The store here is slightly bigger with more random things and a bit more food choice. As we were getting milk we decided to stop on the way back.
Onwards to the gorge. This is clearly where the tourists come around here as there are suddenly loads of holiday cabins, and café’s off the road even though this is no where near anywhere else. Being winter I suspect it was a bit quieter than normal but there were a fair few cars in the car park.
There are two trails to the falls here, the first falls are only a 1km detour off the main 4km trail so of course we decided to do both. The trail to the first falls was through rainforest so it was lovely and cool. Despite the lack of rain, we could hear the falls from a way off, but as we got closer this was replaced with trance music! We were not alone at the falls, a group of young men were sunbathing with their music and there were a few others there as well.
As it was lunchtime we decided to climb over the stream and up besides the falls so that the sound of the cascading water would drown out the music. It was also shady there. An excellent picnic spot it turned out and we got to watch the boys jumping into the pool from the other side. We also saw a black snake on the rocks below us which was a little nervy, Chris and I immediately starting checking the rocks we were sitting on. In hindsight we should have been doing this as we got there perhaps!?
The path which goes beyond these falls was great, following the rocky river bed up, climbing stairs alongside long cascades of water. There is a crossing point where you have to step stones across. We’re not quite sure what happened but Aiden lost his footing somewhere and went headfirst down the other side of a rock, the last thing I saw before looking down at the stepping stones to get there as quick as possible was his feet in the air. But when I looked up half a second later he was standing next to the stones in the water looking rather bemused. The scrapes on his chin and arm suggest he somehow managed to catch himself on the rock and get his feet down. Impressive really! He was a bit shaken but ok. He’s a bit of a liability at the moment!
Carrying on up the steps we emerged at the Wheel of Fire (named after a flower) which is another large pool with a much larger cascade of water coming down the gorge. It’s also set in a deeper part of the gorge so the tree covered slopes tower above you. Combined with the cascades, the green pool and bright blue sky I was struggling to think if I’ve ever been anywhere more beautiful. We chilled out here for a bit and had a tiny paddle to see the cascade better. It was absolutely freezing though – our feet felt numb after a few minutes. There was no way any of us was going for a swim – even Chris!
The walk back was less eventful, although a Wompoo Fruit Dove pooed on Chris to our amusement. We called in at the store on the way home for some canned veg, milk, bread and ice creams on the way home.
I hopped out of the car on the way back down the drive to walk back and spot birds. Loads of Eastern Yellow Robins and Willie Wagtails, but not much of anything else that I could get. Saw a Brown Falcon though. As I walked back in Dianne came over to say that one of the cows had calved a few hours ago literally 50m from us so of course we went to have a look. When we complimented her on the delicious oranges she offered to take us to get more from the orchard. Yes please! Armed with a long handled lopper we headed to her orchard and to the orange tree, which was massive and covered in oranges. Trying to catch them as they were cut proved to be impossible (for the kids and I anyway – perhaps Chris should have caught and I should have cut! They bounce off all the branches on the way down and so its hard to predict where they’ll come down.
More Settlers of Catan before bed (a win for Evie this time).
Bird species seen: 131
Catch up on our route here from Brisbane to Rockhampton or follow the adventure to Airlie Beach and Townsville (coming soon).