Bowling Green Bay National Park

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After a slow morning, we carried on towards Townsville. We almost made it there but couldn’t resist stopping at the lovely Alligator Creek for a night’s camping. It’s part of the Bowling Green Bay National Park and had been recommended to us by some other travellers in Mackay. It’s a really peaceful, basic campground in a small and surprisingly quiet area not far from the Bruce Highway.



Alligator Creek itself flows between two rocky mountain groups – Mount Elliot and Saddle Mountain. There are shy wallabies, not so shy bush turkeys and a couple of walks around the area. We took it easy with the 4km walk to Cockatoo Creek. The other option would have been the 16km walk to Alligator Falls but we didn’t feel up for that at the time. The creek was crystal clear and delicious; what a shame we hadn’t taken our swimmers otherwise we would have gone for a dip. The views were stunning and we soaked up the wonderful peace and serenity of the place. In the evening we had a nice black-and-white movie night (Some Like It Hot – hadn’t seen that in aaages) and slept like logs.



The following morning we had our hands full with the cheeky bush turkeys which were obviously used to nicking campers’ food. We ended up having to throw rocks around to keep them away. Apart from one turkey with a broken leg, which we fed! Unfortunately the campground only had cold showers, otherwise we would have been tempted to stay a second night.

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