As you will already know if you read Mondays posts, I didn’t drive directly to Mackay from Rockhampton, I took the scenic route, The Capricorn Coast Tourist Drive.
I thoroughly enjoyed the drive, and the whole area along the coastline from Emu Park to Yeppoon.
I have no regrets in taking that detour, but had I not gone I would have had time to go somewhere else quite special.
Eungella National Park
About 90 km west of Mackay is Eungella National Park. Eungella, according to Wikipedia, means ‘land of the clouds’. The highest point in the park is Mt Dalrymple at over 1200 metres high. So I think we can safely assume it would have taken me at least an hour and a half each way just to get there and back.
The park itself covers over 500 square kilometres. Even if I’d spent two hours in Eungella, how much of it could I have seen? This is surely a place that deserves much longer in order to explore it to its fullest.
So I decided that Eungella National Park was for another time just for those reasons alone, but there was something else that made me decide not to go. Eungella National Park is one of the best places in Australia to spot platypus in the wild.
Platypus
We like platypus on Bobinoz:
- Monotremes, Platypus, Echidna and Pullenvale
- Platypus: A Bad Photo & a Good Video
- The Platypus Journey: Rare Footage of the Elusive Monotreme
- Kunghur: The First in Our Series of Ninja-breaks
I say platypus, but I mean more than one of them, which some would say is platypuses, platypodes or platypi. I know three little girls, one of them my daughter, who would just love to see a platypus in the wild, let alone a bunch of them. It didn’t seem right that I should go to this park to see them on my own.
Today though, through the power of YouTube, I’m going to see what I missed. So it’s just about possible that I am looking forward to watching these videos more than you are. First up, here is a very quick video about Eungella National Park…
I think I was right not to go, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have had time for that 56 km walk.
What’s in the rainforest?
If all you ever see when you walk through a rainforest are trees and lush green leaves, you’re not paying attention. This video is quite a bit longer at over six minutes, but it has some absolutely fascinating photographs of rainforest wildlife, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It certainly didn’t seem like six minutes to me…
As much fun as a three-week road trip is, it’s not enough. Hopefully, at some point I’ll go on a much longer road trip, and I’ll set aside plenty of time to see Eungella National Park.
