The Big Push!

If we thought yesterday’s road trip was a challenge, today’s was going to be the biggest of the holiday, some 532 kilometres from Yeppoon to Airlie Beach.

However, before we embarked on our epic voyage we had some unfinished business with Koalas, so we set off in hunt of Cooberrie Park. 

It soon became clear that our sat nav is not very good at finding animal parks and made us think that perhaps it was programmed by an over zealous animal conservationist (the sort that liberate guinea pigs and free goldfish).  Anyway, after some guidance from Gail, the lovely and helpful receptionist at Yeppoon Big 4 campsite, and Samantha applying some, until recently unknown, map reading skills, we found our way and arrived at the park just after opening.

There is nothing flash about Cooberrie Park, it is a family run animal sanctuary that has taken in a menagerie of stray and wounded animals from around Queensland.  Luckily for us, and in truth for the animals, these have included Australia’s ‘Big 5’ (similar to Africa’s Big 5 but not quite as well established as a tourist puller) of kangaroo, koala, dingo, emu and…duck (ok, so we were one short and needed to scrape the barrel a bit – in hindsight I suspect we should have gone for wombat or crocodile!). 

The park was very quant and you could wander around feeding the birds, getting down and dirty with the kangaroos or just trying to find the deer who had run off and were now hiding (they obviously sensed our like for venison). 

Samantha fed the ducks (one of the ‘Big 5’!) and immediately became some form of ‘Duck Rumpelstiltskin’ as they followed her around the park mixing freely with the kangaroos and occasionally picking a scrap with a chicken.

And then we came face to face with our holy grail, the little blighters who had evaded us since Sydney, the koalas.  There they were in their compound doing what koalas do best: eating and sleeping (this left Jonny wondering if Samantha may be related as she often says “full belly, sleep”?) – how cute, how lovely, how cuddly.

But wait, there is an opportunity to get closer…do we want to hold one…do we ever!  And with that, and a donation to the parks coffers, we were cheek to cheek with Zorro, a three year old Koala and who was the softest, cutest thing we had ever seen (except for Charlie and Jack of course).

  

So with the search for koalas put to bed and the other animals of Cooberrie Park well fed and well stroked we continued our journey up north.

There is a long stretch from Yeppoon to Mackay with basically nothing in between.  That might not seem that odd, we have stretches in the UK where there is not much (I’m thinking of The Fens for example) but what is surprising is that this stretch is over 250 kilometres long and takes 3 ½ hours to drive!  At points we would be going for ages without seeing another car, lorry or person, only the occasional cow for company.

We found a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere (Marlborough) and stopped for a short break and bite to eat.  We treated ourselves to a couple of toastie sandwiches, pork ribs and that well-known Australian delicacy…battered hot dog!

We eventually reached Mackay.  Now if Rockhampton is the beef capital of Australia, Mackay is the sugar capital.  Never have we seen so much sugar cane in one place: not a few fields, or a number of acres but miles and miles of the stuff, in fact there must be over 150 miles of the stuff between Mackay and the Whitsundays, as you can no doubt tell by this well framed picture from the TeamJam photographer (I thinks she is getting better!).

We safely arrived in Airlie Beach, our gateway to the Whitsunday Islands, at 6:45pm, a little weary, having spent nearly 7 hours on the road, had two fuel stops, two rest breaks and covered over 500 kilometres of Australia’s most boring road!

PS – The last bit is only joking there was actually some lovely views along the way but when you see it for 7 hours it becomes a little tiresome.