When limestone is more important than bats

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Day 76 - Yeppoon to Carmila Beach

Another big drive today so we were hoping to leave the Big 4 site near Yeppoon nice and early. With one thing and another, the clock struck 9am before we were on our way.

We took a minor detour into Rockhampton to stock up on supplies. With the caravan in tow we took our chances in the carpark of Coles where the nice security man helped us park and kept an eye on things while we shopped! We only forgot a couple of things, washing up liquid and beer - not sure how we forgot the beer!

Before we left the area entirely we wanted to play tourist a bit more and indulge in the nearby Mt Etna National Park and the privately owned Capricorn Caves. Both are close together and close to the township of The Caves just north of Rockhampton so it’s not much of a detour from the route to our free campsite destination of Carmila Beach which is much further north and just south of Mackay.

We choose to go to Capricorn Caves first where we find our arrival is just in time for the hourly guided tour. The caves have stayed in the same family, the Olsens, for a number of years now and rather than mining them they have worked hard to preserve them and share them with tourists and those who choose the splendid Cathedral Cave to hold their weddings in. Our guide is Melissa who starts the tour in the dry rainforest area just outside the caves entrance. She explains how the Madeira Vine is quickly taking hold in Australia and strangling the native plants and trees it comes in contact with. Part of their job is to dig out the roots of this vine to try to stop it from spreading. She’s looking forward to the summer months! Inside the first cave we are introduced to ‘headache rock’ and a few others that will make your visit more memorable if you don’t look where you’re going!! As we walk through, minding our step and watching our head we make our way through the cave network and Melissa talks about the work done by the Olsens to install a more suitable boardwalk for the brides to follow on their wedding day, it also makes the caves wheelchair accessible too! In one of the caves Melissa asks if anyone knows what we’re standing on, there are a few guesses of sand, concrete but the correct answer is bat poo! They’ve brought in a mining team to try to access the cave beneath where we’re standing and they went through 20 metres of bat poo and still didn’t hit limestone! The bats still live in some of the cave system and they’re proud to have the largest colony of Ghost Bats in the southern hemisphere. We were hoping that a couple of the bats would still be around this morning but sadly not. We make our way through to the Cathedral Cave where we take a seat in the series of pews. Melissa explains that the natural acoustics in this cave are better than the Sydney Opera House, to prove it she plays a version of ‘Angels’ on the inbuilt CD player the cave has and starts the light sequence to show up the splendour more vividly until the lights are out and it’s so dark you can’t even see your hand in front of your face! Queue ‘SAS’ attack from Mr Howells where he attempts to move from the seated position he had next to me and move to somewhere completely different to start poking me or blowing on my face! He used to do this years ago and I’m ready for the attack and infact defuse it before he has chance to launch! Go me! The acoustics were brilliant and my harmonies weren’t bad either, it was really great sitting in the cave singing away but probably a good job that it was pitch dark! Making our way from Cathedral Cave back outside is the second best part of the visit! First of all you have to go through the tight zig zag cave system which is great fun and then it’s the Indiana Jones swinging wooden bridge that takes you above a 20ft drop into the unknown! Away from the cave system and the gift kiosk you have to walk through when returning, we find a lady giving a talk to a group of school children and she’s holding a Flying Fox! What a gorgeous creature and he’s obviously very fond on this lady! We catch that he’s been brought up by humans and when they tried to return him to the wild he just kept coming back to them. She handles him often and wears the same checked shirt when she does so, he now recognises the smell and goes crazy (in a lovely way) when she holds him and he’s a real show off!!

Back at the car & caravan we get chatting to the couple parked in front of us. They’re changing a flat tyre on their double axle caravan, it’s the second or third flat they’ve had on their recent tour. Luckily they’ve got a decent jack and thick pieces of wood to help them do the job and the tyre doesn’t look punctured so hopefully they’ll get it sorted easily and cheaply enough. It makes us question if we’ve got all the tools we need should the same thing happen to us. We probably need to get a shovel and a small trolley jack, at the moment we’ve got a trowel and a couple of bottle jacks. Probably not essential immediately but we’ll need to re-assess at Cairns.

Time for some lunch and we thought Mt Etna National Park would be a good spot. We struggled to find the entrance to the park but managed it eventually. We quickly checked out the information hut which told of the battle to save Mt Etna and it’s surrounds from mining companies who wanted it’s limestone. There are a large colony of bats which they take guided tours to at night and there’s a walk to Bat Cleft from Mt Etna itself. We walked the self guiding walk from the information hut hoping to find the caves and the route to Bat Cleft but no luck. The place is deserted except for the frog in the toilet at the little lizard outside! We have lunch and then check another of the information board which provides a map of the area showing that Mt Etna and therefore Bat Cleft are on a different site. No drama, off we go with caravan in tow to find the caves having re-fuelled ourselves with grub! We come to what we believe is Mt Etna but there’s a dwelling at the top of the track Tom Tom is telling us to go down and a million signs saying ‘Keep Out, Mining Land, Private Property’. We are out of season though so if it’s entirely possible that because of the mining you can only walk Bat Cleft with a guide. We swing round and park up which prompts the local police driving past to check that we’re ok. We’re fine, just looking for the bat cave!

Nevermind, back on the highway we go and although Carmila Beach is a good couple of hours drive we should make it just before 5pm. We tend to keep a watchful eye on any traffic build up behind us if we’re not able to keep to the speed limit. Like the UK, if the speed limit is 110 kph then that’s what everyone likes to do, at least! When you’re towing you tend to stick to 100 kph dependant on the road conditions which vary greatly especially if you’re not on the main highways! The chap in front of us has a 5th wheeler on the back of a Ute and it’s not the quickest in the world but he eventually does pull over to let us and the traffic behind us passed him.

We start to see the ocean on our right hand side and eventually get the signal from Tom Tom to come off the highway. Carmila Beach (Camps 5 ref 85, Qld) is mainly beach and sugar cane fields with a few dwellings, a hotel and a gas station thrown in for good measure! The campsite is on the beach and the last 300m is a narrow sandy track according to the Camps book so we’re ready for our first bit of sand driving with the caravan! There are several camp segments to the site, the first is where the 2WD & normal caravans seem to have gone but it’s pretty full and as we drive in people are just staring at us! We find a spot but decide to check out the track further along on foot! Whilst I’m doing that I spy a very smart looking motorhome and quickly realise it’s the Tassie Tumbleweeds whom we met at Petrie Park! There’s no sign of them and I’m supposed to be finding us a spot, which I have, so I run back to Darryl to let him know. With his driving skills and a bit of luck we’re in our spot which doesn’t give us an ocean view but does give us the option to dine with an ocean view just around the corner should we wish!

By the time we’re set up and we’ve lit the campfire, somebody turns the lights out and it’s pitch black with the exception of the fantastic stars in the sky! We never got round to say hi to the Tassie’s but we will go seek them out in the morning! With lots of thuds and rustles from the bushes we fall into bed looking forward to a bit of a relax at the beach tomorrow.

Dar and Sar

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Comments

[Jan Kettle]

Cute Flying Foxes
I love the flying foxes and can't think why they are considered pests!