26th Feb - Rockhampton to Bundaberg

We started this exceptionally amazing day with breakfast at the Korte’s resort restaurant and then we checked out and took a short drive up to the Capricorn Caves where we had a 9am tour - it turned out that no-one else was booked on the tour so we had the tour guide all to ourselves. It is so named as this area lies on the Tropic of Capricorn.

The tour guides name was Sarah. She was very knowledgeable about how the caves were formed millions of years before the dinosaurs, how they are for ever changing and how the soil and roots growing through there erode the stone (as it is made up of limestone and coral) over time.  It is amazing to see the different shapes formed and different cracks and nooks/holes that have appeared over time. Pam was particularly good at the “that rock looks like”:type of questions.

The caves have been owed privately since the 1800s and in the last 30 years was owed by a couple who had recently both passed and  both who were loved very much by the staff.

There are lots of different tours to do we went for the Cathedral Tour as it was just steps and bridges. Other tours involves ropes and climbing through small holes (not Pam’s idea of fun)

Pam found it very interesting especially when us and the guide sang “Strawberry Fields” in the Cathedral to sample the great acoustics. This space is also used for Opera performances.

Can you make out Batman hanging upside down?

Come on down!

Mark and our guide Sarah in the auditorium

Our Bohemian Rhapsody moment - look up to skies and see

Then we travelled to Cooberrie Wildlife Sanctuary in Yeppoon. Here we meet the Aussie wildlife for the first time. We hand fed kangaroos and scattered food all over the place for “birds” from ducks to peacocks to chickens to emus.

Most of an emu and duck and chicks (if that is even a duck!)

The highlight of our visit was holding Calypso

Our first koala

She took a particular shine to Mark giving him a real cuddle.

Afterwards we found how much of a relaxed state she was in.

Koala poo or wee - who knows!

Pam’s shirt was just as bad, if not worse, but it was well worth it. The fun was not over yet. We saw more animals from crocodiles to monkeys to wombats but at 1pm we had the interactive encounter. Pam held everything except the snakes. Her favourite by far though was the bearded dragon.

This is a wombat. They have cube poo you know!

Mark was happiest being a tree for the birds which Pamela also did but followed up with holding a cockatoo. We had met these earlier and they just said hello constantly in an Aussie accent. Mark tried to teach them the English accent but they weren’t having it.

We left here very happy and travelled back to Rockhampton to have a look at this town. It has some very old buildings and lots of character with some great riverside walks and buildings.

We also saw this marvellous building and our first big(ish) spider.

After a nice drink and snack we made our way down the coast to Bundaberg. This was a slightly shorter drive for us today but we had gone in a circle to see the caves and kangaroos etc… so it felt long.

We reached our booked cheap and cheerful motel but dashed out again as we had to get to Mon Repos beach by 7pm to check in for our sea turtle experience.

Pam here, I was so excited to be doing this. Originally Mark could not get a ticket but when we got to the desk they had a spare one for him (Yippee!!!!!!)

We were group 4 out of 4 so had to wait to be called. This did not take and by 8.10pm we were heading with our guide to see some turtles hatching( this was in the dark with very little light and some sand dunes as well as a gravel path.

We arrived 20 mins later to cage number 1 in which there were some little heads popping out ready to hatch. After about 20 more mins and a little nudge they started to appear one by one out of the sand through the railing and then they were collected by one of the ranger volunteers to then to be carried nearer to the sea. There were 51 turtles - I counted them all. They were all very  small and grey (loggerhead sea turtles).

Newly hatched loggerhead sea turtles

Once collected we went to the beach nearer to the sea to stand in 2 parallel lines and then the turtles were released out of their holding bucket to run to the sea together. It was so exciting to see but we were only allowed to take one photo due to the light (distracting the turtles)

Once they were all in the sea we walked back, collected a certificate for our endeavours and drove back to the hotel.

This activity could have lasted until 2am in the morning but luckily it started for us early (after we had bought some food) and ended by 10pm.

We drove the 20mins back to our room and collapsed dreaming of Australian animals.