24 April 2012 - Eungella and platypus

An early start for the day, 5.30am to go down and see the sunrise over the beach and the possibility of kangaroos. The sunrise was a certainty but not necessarily the kangaroos.

We were in luck, there was a mob of wallabies near the low tide mark eating something. I was curious as to what they were eating and it turned out to be mangrove seed pods washed in on the tide. Clare stayed for photos while the kiddies and I headed down the beach to look for 'sand dollars'. These are flat, round, urchin type creatures about the size of a 10c piece. There were plenty of live ones about but we were looking for the dead ones that have dried out so we can use them as coins in shop playing. We managed to find a good haul by the time we got to the end of the beach.

A couple of young kangaroos came over in hope of getting some food. We followed the message posted at the campsite saying 'A bread fed roo is a dead roo' and politely told them to go away. They were a bit reluctant to leave us alone but eventually hopped off to look for richer pickings back down the beach.

We had decided to spend today at Eungella (pronounced 'youngella') National Park in the hope of seeing that most elusive of Aussie animals, the platypus. Given our lack of success back in Forrest, we hoped that Eungella would yield success. We had heard several reports from people who had seen platypus in the middle of day at Broken River, outside the usual viewing times of dawn an dusk.

We arrived at Broken River around 11.30am and headed to the viewing platform just upstream from the bridge. Initially there were only a few turtles hanging around but after about 10 mins a platypus popped out on the far side of the river. We were both excited and relieved that we did not have to stick around until dusk for a viewing! Another one popped out shortly after and we spent about half an hour watching them swim around. 

This had made our trip worthwhile but we decided to squeeze in a bushwalk at Finch Hatton Gorge as well. We walked to the Araluen Cascades and after dangling our feet in the water and attempting to catch tadpoles, headed back to the car. It took about 1.5 hrs to get back to camp. After a quick dinner we got the kiddies into bed and after what had been a tiring day, jumped into bed ourselves. All of us were sound asleep before 8pm!