sv evi

We have been here just over a week now, and we have seen so much wildlife!

We rented a car from the marina and woke up at 5 am in order to see kangaroos on the beach at sunrise at Cape Hillsborough National Park.

The kangaroos were quite fast! It was cool to see how they walked, by putting their tail down for balance, then dragging their hind feet forward. They weren’t very scared of us, and came quite close.

Next we drove an hour and 15 minutes to Eungella National Park, over some gravel roads, and some roads that were paved in the middle, but narrow, with gravel on the edges. When you passed another car, you had to move over so half the wheels were on the gravel and half on pavement.

We spent a long time looking for a platypus at the first lookout spot, then walked along the river to the another lookout spot where we saw several!

Then we left Mackay and motored out to St. Bees Island to meet up with our friends Andrew, Jen & Isobel on SV Due South. We enjoyed 3 nights of dinners together and the kids had fun playing on the beach.

The reason we all wanted to go to St. Bees Island was because we had heard they had a population of wild koalas there. The beach on St. Bees was only accessible at high tide and about 90 minutes after high tide because the bay was so shallow & reefy. We landed the dinghies just before high tide and started looking for koalas. We found koala tracks on the beach, and everyone else followed the tracks. I looked up a grassy slope to see eucalyptus trees, and thought I would go take a look in the trees for koalas. I was a little leery about walking in the knee high grass because of poisonous snakes…but went walking anyways. I surprised a wallaby who hopped off.

I had checked 4 or 5 trees when I saw a furry grey ball! Oh my gosh, it was a koala! It was sleeping, and holding on to the branch with all 4 paws. It was wedged in a crook of a branch. I texted Riki and Jen that I had a found a koala, and everyone made their way towards me. Unlike the kiwi in NZ, the koala stayed put until everyone could see it. It was hard to get a good photo at first, because the leaves were blocking it. But then Riki climbed the tree to get a better photo, and the koala moved a few feet away from him, further out on the branch.

We parted ways with SV Due South, and are now island-hopping our way north in the Whitsunday Islands. It is humpback whale migration season, and we saw a mom and calf while at anchor yesterday morning. Today we motored right by a humpback whale (at the beginning of this next video).

We are so happy we came to Australia! It’s been sunny everyday, the people are very kind, and oh, the wildlife!