Hydeaway Bay to 1770

After 5 days in Hydeaway bay where we also spent NYE it was time to move on from this ideallic paradise. It was a sad day in a way, as it meant we would also be heading south and we would now be homeward bound. It’s funny but after spending so many weeks all living together in such close quarters, you would think we would be ready to head home but it is so easy to get used to this life of being on the road and travelling that we are all really loving this experience, even with the 3 days of torrential nth qld downpours!
On our way down to Mackay we decided to check out the Eungella National Park and the Finch Hatton Gorge where we might be able to see the platypus in the wild. What a wild afternoon that was, we had a spectacular walk through the rainforest to get to the gorge which is about a 2.5km walk, once at the gorge it is picture book waterfall into an amazing freshwater swimming gorge. The swim was well worth the humid walk to get there, the water is apparently the same temperature all year round as we spoke to one of the locals that visits here often. He obviously knows the area well as he was confident doing his backflips into the water from the rocks above (see picture below) to say it was refreshingly cool is an understatement. On the walk back through the rainforest, we experienced the “Rainforest” in all it’s glory! It absolutely bucketed down down the whole way back, what a cleansing way to start the year we thought..
The next couple of nights stops were just that, overnight stops one in Blacks Beach on the coast at Mackay, and one night at Kinka Beach near Yeppoon. On the way down we stopped into Koorana Crocodile Farm, were we got to see first hand just how big and scary looking the mighty crocs of Queensland are up close. Koorana is a commercial crocodile farm that captures and breeds crocs and has over 3,000 cros at any one time. We also learnt a lot about the habits of crocodiles which we were shocked to know can lie quietly under the water up to 5 hour unnoticed. They hunt by stealth and are extremely quick when they attack unsuspecting (silly Sydney tourists) swimming in every gorge in QLD, (we did check the signs)….