NORTH QLD ADVENTURE - DAY 6 - VISIT TO FINCH HATTON GORGE & EUNGELLA…

 We had a pretty early start this morning as Richard and Dorothy Follent were joining u on our adventure today.  Dorothy had never seen platypus in the wild so our mission today was to see them up at Broken River in the Eungella National Park.

The best time to see these little creatures is early morning or late afternoon, and seeing as it is a good hour’s drive from Mackay where we are all staying, and none of us are early risers, it was deemed the best time for us to see them would be late afternoon…

We figured that if we were going to drive all the way to Eungella, then we might as well leave early and visit Finch Hatton Gorge on the way up…

Dorothy and Richard arrived at the caravan park at 8.40am and we set the lead with them following us and we headed up the road with our first stop as Finch Hatton Gorge plugged into our Navman.

The drive there was beautiful.  The country side is very green at the moment and mostly we passed through farm land travelling there.  So many sugar cane farms…. For me so many memories of my growing up years in Bundaberg.

We arrived at Finch Hatton Gorge just before 10am and decided that we would do a walk first before having morning tea.

On the way into the gorge we had to cross several creeks all with water running over the road….  We also drove past the Platypus Bush Camp which was one of the options we looked at when initially planning our trip.  I am kind of thankful now that we didn’t book there as I think we might have had some trouble getting our van  in there..

Finch Hatton Gorge is a wonderful landscape of waterfalls, lush flora and volcanic boulder formations… There are many walking tracks which weave through this sub-tropical rainforest.  We chose to do the 1.8km walk to the beautiful Araluern Cascades waterfalls which started from the Picnic Area.  

It was a good choice as although uphill most of the way, it was a relatively easy walk and we were well rewarded when we got to the actual falls.   The falls are the closest to the parking lot and  then just a short walk from junction of where the main trail splits.  They aren’t exactly high,  but they are quite stunning with the water cascading down filling the lower pool with a healthy amount of water for swimming.  The rock pool looks more like a formal swimming pool in its shape and size and there are flat rocks that are close to the waters edge making it easy to get in and go for a dip. 

There were a couple of people swimming in it when we got there and I must admit the water did look very inviting, but we hadn’t come prepared for a swim.  We did however spot an fresh water eel hunting and swimming amongst the rocks…

We walk took us approx. an hour and a half and once we arrived back at the Picnic area, we located a table, set it all up and had a rather belated morning tea together..  Cups pf tea all round and some Lemon Crisp biscuits..

We left at approx. midday as we still had another 20kms before we got to Eungella and half of that distance was a rather steep climb up the range…

At the top of the range we called in to “The Historic Eungella Chalet” for lunch.  This building and restaurant is perched right on the top of the range with commanding views down through the Pioneer valley…

The Chalet was built in 1933 as a guest house for people requiring clear mountain air and has been a landmark in this local area for decades.  It is located adjacent to the head of the Mackay Highlands Great Walk.   It has always been a popular guest house, restaurant and even a honeymoon destination for people looking for good food, clean mountain air and a quiet place to relax whilst taking in the views or watching the mystical clouds roll by. 

We ordered our lunch, Richard and Dorothy ordered steak sandwiches and chips, and Steve and I shared a Chicken Schnitzel with salad and chips, and we sat at the front of the restaurant so we could enjoy the magnificent views down through the valley..

The last time Steve and I were here some 17 or 18 years ago, there were a lot of

Paragliders jumping from the ramp here…. The sight then was spectacular… we were not in luck today, in fact at the moment the jump ramp is closed… We did however see to paragliders up in the sky as we drove up the range….

After our lunch we went for a walk out on the front lawn to take in more of the view and photograph it…  They also have some wooden sculptures that look like they have been carved with a chainsaw out on the front lawn these days….

We left here just before two to head towards Broken River… On the way we spotted a sign for the “Sky Window Circuit Walk” so we decided to stop and check it out and inevitably we did this walk…   

 

It was only a short walk, not quite a kilometre but again we were treated to some stunning views of the Pioneer Valley from a different angle…  I love that this walk had no fencing and the on one side of the walk it was like walking next to a walled garden.  The lookout is exactly what it sounds like, the perfect opportunity to look back at where we had just driven from - into the sky.  The view of the valley here compromises of Netherdale, Finch Hatton Pioneer Valley and beyond. 

The path also had quite a bit of green moss growing on the sides of the path which really made it look very pretty…  It was so beautiful and the best part was that we were mostly walking in the shade.

Another reason I loved this walk was because of its beauty as it was so beautiful and mostly we walked in the shade…  

By the time we had finished this walk it was getting closer to 3pm so we decided to make our way to Broken River to see if we could see the Platypus.  Dorothy had never seen them in the wild before so for her sake we were really hoping we would see a few..

 

This area is one of the most reliable spots in Australia to spot the elusive platypus in the wild, and although the best time to see these special monotremes are at dawn or dusk.  We were hoping we would be lucky enough to spot them mid to late afternoon.

Once we parked the car, we met some folk coming back from a walk and they told us they had seen a few platypus playing down along the track to the left of the little shop so we took the walk down the left side of the river to see if we could spot some there also.  We waited for a long time but were not rewarded.  I choose to lay on a bench to have a rest as I felt pretty confident the others would let me know if they spotted one, and my back was a little sore so I wasn’t keen to aggravate it any more by standing for a long period of time…

Steve and Dorothy moved further up the track to see if they could spot anything there, but all they managed to see where lots of turtles and a couple of snakes swimming in the river, along with fish.

Around 4pm we thought we would go back and cross under the bridge and see if we could spot any of these shy creatures in their natural habitat swimming below from the viewing platform under the bridge.  We were told to keep an eye out for air bubbles as the platypus feeds from the bottom of the river but surfaces to chew its food and breathe.

It wasn’t long before we spotted these bubbles and a little platypus surface.  We were beyond happy and excited and we watched this little platypus for quite a while dive and surface, dive and surface until he started heading up stream and out of clear view.  Steve took several photos…

Once we couldn’t see him anymore, we decided to take a walk a bit further upstream ourselves to the next viewing platform to see if we could see any more…

This time we were fortunate enough to have the whole platform to ourselves and it wasn’t long before we spotted one directly below us.  We had amazing views of this little creature from here and he seemed to spend a lot of time right before our eyes.  We were able to get quite a few good photos of him and I can say that the sights we witnessed from this viewing spot made our day.  We were all feeling pretty pumped…

It was after 5pm when we finally left Broken River, but there was one more lookout we wanted to visit on the range before the sun went down. 

One of the waitresses at lunch time had told us about the spectacular views from Pease’s Lookout. 

The lookout is situated about 4.5kms along Dairymple Road.  The road there was quite small in areas and we had to stop for a few minutes at road works.  We were thankful that we didn’t have the caravan hitched behind us…   You were able to park right at the lookout and it was a short climb down to the viewing deck. 

I must admit the views were spectacular particularly with the late afternoon sun highlighting the valley below.

It was sunset by the time we left here to make our way down the range heading home… Dorothy and Richard followed us home until we got to about Marian when they diverted east to take a shorter route to North Mackay along a link road here.

We continued back into Mackay where we refueled the car ready for our departure the following morning…   We also ducked into Coles quickly to get a loaf of bread as we were both pretty tired and figured that toasted ham, cheese and tomato sandwiches sounded like a good alternate for dinner tonight.  It was just after 7.30pm when we got back to the Caravan Park.  We have had a wonderful day made even more special by us being able to view the wonderful little platypus.