Auswildlife.com

If you are travelling along the central Queensland coast, then Cape Hillsborough is certainly worth a visit. There are some great opportunities for some beach landscape photos and there is also some interesting wildlife. The wallabies in these photos are Agile Wallabies, a very common species in the savannah grasslands across the semi-arid Australian tropics. Interestingly, there are not that many places where you can easily see them in the wild (yes, well they are not really wild but they are free to range – so wild in that sense!) .  This is one place to see them and another that I can think of, is the East Point Reserve, not far from the Darwin CBD in the Northern Territory.  I’m sure there must be other places  but Cape Hillsborough may well be the only place where they come out onto a beach. This all seemed a bit odd - why would they come out onto an exposed beach where they might risk predation etc?  I was told that they were usually on the beach between about 5 and 7am, so I decided to go and see for myself. Running a bit late as usual, I got there at about 7am and there they were! Then I discovered that they were eating bits of vegetation that had been washed up, including the seeds of some of the local mangroves. So there it was – they were feeding! In this area, predators such as dingoes are long gone and being in a national park, there are no other pets (dogs) allowed, so they probably feel quite safe.

Cape Hillsborough offers quite a few other attractions as well. There are a number of walking tracks that lead through the coastal forests and along the shoreline. As mentioned, most of the area is national park and there are some really nice camp sites near the beaches. Do beware of the sandflies!  Most (all?) of the campsites are run by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, and so you must pay a camping fee. Here is some information from the QPWS people.

If you want to go more up-market, there is a Cape Hillborough Nature Resort (with much better pics on their website than I managed to get!) .  The Resort has camping sites as well as cabins and some are right beside the beach (where the wallabies are to be seen).  This is where Cape Hillsborough is on Google Maps (just north of Mackay).