Tuesday 29/05/18
Our next trip out from Mackay started at 5am, as Bob, Glenn and I headed out to Hillsborough National Park to see the Wallaby’s and kangaroo’s on the beach. It was a 90 minute drive and we arrived just after daybreak. Having grabbed a coffee from the cafe we headed down to the beach to see that a small crowd of people had gathered and the wallaby’s and ‘one’ kangaroo were all around.
This is a trip really worth doing (especially if you love wild animals and nature as I do), even though it means a really early, before dawn start. The campsite have a guide who is on the beach to talk about the Wallaby’s and kangaroos who are living in the area. The guide feeds them a special diet of kibble which is served on plastic flat disc’s so they can eat without digesting the sand, they are all quite tame, but you’re not allowed to pet them, they will come right up to you and sniff.
They come down to the beach at dawn every day to feed on the mango pods that wash up there. The campsite quickly realized the potential for tourism and now hundreds of people turn up to see them each morning. We were lucky on our visit, as there was only a small group of people when we were there. We spent about an hour or more on the beach, I even managed to see a Wallaby Mum and her baby.
There are organized tours to the site, which vary in price from around $50 – $110 per person, but we simply drove ourselves. There’s no fee to visit the site as it’s a public beach in a National Park.