Spotlight: Cape Hillsborough, Qld

Sometimes you have to venture a little bit off the beaten track to discover a gem of a place to park your caravan or RV.

A good example of this is Cape Hillsborough National Park, located 50km north-west of Mackay in Queensland, although in this particular case you never have to venture off the bitumen to enjoy the delights of this bushy coastal retreat.

Although there are other options in the area, one of the best places to stay a few nights is the Cape Hillsborough Nature Tourist Park, which offers a great mix of modern amenities and close encounters with Mother Nature.

To get to Cape Hillsborough, it’s about a half hour drive after the turn off on the Bruce Highway. It’s an easy, if somewhat windy drive in, with the national park closing in around the narrow sealed road over the last few kilometres before the park entrance.

The park itself is well equipped with a good amenities block or two, well-stocked reception shop, 23 metre swimming pool, and plenty of activities for the kids during school holidays (like family movies on the outdoor cinema in the evenings).

As importantly, most of the powered sites are extra-large and well shaded. We nabbed a nice caravan site with concrete slab and decorative palm trees on the upper level about 50 metres from the beach, but for those who want to get right up close to the sand, there are a few sites on the lower level even closer to the beach.

While you could quite easily while away the day, enjoying the peaceful surrounds from a camp chair outside your RV, nature lovers will want to stretch their legs in order to get the most from a visit to Cape Hillsborough.

There are some great nature walks accessible from the caravan park; if you’ve only got time or energy for one, the 5.2km return, Andrews Point Track walk is well worth the effort.

It starts with a steep climb up the forested outcrop, with numerous lookouts to enjoy the stunning views of the surrounding coastline. The return leg  to the park is via the beach at low tide, and there’s also the option to trek out to nearby Wedge Island.

It’s also well worth setting the alarm early for the pre-dawn spectacle of local wallabies and kangaroos gathering on the beach, with the the sun rising over a rocky coastline as a spectacular backdrop. Don't forget to take your camera for a selfie with one of the very friendly, hand-raised kangaroos!

If you’re into shell collecting (as our 12 year old daughter is), it’s worth driving over to nearby Ball Bay. Once again, you’ll need a low tide in order to walk around the left side of the beach, over the rocks, before getting to a small cove where thousands of small shells have washed ashore. Take a bag if you plan to bring home a few, including some of the rarer conch shells.

Cape Hillsborough is also a good base for a day trip to the nearby Eungella National Park. Eungella is about an hour and half drive from Cape Hillsborough, but well worth the effort, as it’s one of the best locations in Australia to spot the elusive platypus in the wild.

Along the way, it’s also well worth a detour to the Finch Hatton Gorge. After parking the car, there are two trails through the sub-tropical rainforest to swimming gorges. We chose the Wheel of Fire Cascades option, which involved a 1.6km walk to a stunning waterfall, with large rock pool at its base (a great way to cool off after the sweaty stroll).

We visited the viewing decks along the Broken River in the Eungella NP around 4pm, and were rewarded with sighting of turtles as well as a number platypus frolicking and feeding in the shallows.

The only downside of a visit to the Cape Hilllsborough Nature Tourist Park is a nightly noise ‘curfew’ of 9.30pm, and a lack of mobile phone reception. However, for old school nature lovers like myself, that’s perfectly fine…