Cape Hillsborough National Park

Cape Hillsborough National Park is about 30 km north of Mackay and we have been here for 4 days. Being school holidays the camping park is full and there are lots of family groups, we have been surprised at how many people camp with young babies and there are little ones crawling in the sand and pushers everywhere - certainly the parents of today are more adventurous that I ever was.
The camp is on the shore of Casuarina Bay and the beach is fringed with coconut palms and in some parts heavily wooded with native trees which grow almost to the sand. Cape Hillsborough is the youngest volcanic area in Australia, formed from a series of volcanic eruptions 30 million years ago and there are spectacular rock and cave formations at both both ends of the bay.
At some times of the year turtles lay their eggs here, there are many native birds, brush turkeys, bats and butterflies and at sunrise kangaroos and wallabies visit the beach to nibble on the seed pods that wash up onto the beach.
We went with our neighbors, Dennis and Patsy, to fish from Wedge Island which can be reached at low tide from a rocky causeway - the tide was out and we decided to take a short cut through the water - what we didn’t realize was that the sand turned into mud and was almost impossible to walk through - we had no choice but to go on, but going was very difficult, it was mud up to mid calf and my sandals were sucked off (were there stone fish waiting for me to step on!) and even getting my sandals back out of the stiff goo was a real struggle. And then there was a long walk back over the rocks. We got separated from D & P, they got back after us, by then the tide was coming in and they had to wade back through knee deep water. Needless to say there wasn’t any fish for tea that night but lots of muddy clothes and bodies. The next day L cleaned all the gear and said “to hell with it” and bought some delicious wild barra fillets for dinner.
There are many marked walks in the area, yesterday we took one which started off in Melaleuca woodland, then became a boardwalk over mangrove swamps and ended in eucalypt open forest and vine thicket - there is a very diverse environment here, one thing that is missing is a Telstra signal, so not easy for addicted mobile phone and internet users. If you have been wondering what has happened to this blogger, that is the reason, perhaps I have been taking for granted the easy access to the internet, we will wait and see.