Meeting Kangaroos on the Beach at Cape Hillsborough QLD

In our last article we told you guys we left Airlie Beach after living there for 5 months and that we decided to hit the road again on the first of January.

Our first destination was the Leap Hotel in the same named community the Leap, about 20 kilometer North of Mackay on the Bruce Highway.

Side Note | A must have when you are on the Road and looking for free camping in Australia is the App WikiCamps. It only cost about 8$ but you can find thousands of free/cheap camping spots in Australia, which saves you a lot of money as some caravan parks charge ridiculous fees, especially during school holidays.

Think about 40 – 50 Dollar per night per Caravan and 2 adults for a powered site at some parks. Sem is mostly free as he is under 3, but if you have older kids and you have to pay for example 8 dollar per kid per night, prices will be skyrocketing.

Another thing we like about free camping is the amount of space and freedom you have compared with caravan parks where you are sleeping closer to your neighbor than to your husband and which are jam-packed with screaming kids. No Thanks, If we can, we prefer nature over busy caravan parks while on the road.

The Leap Hotel Free Camp

The Leap hotel provides free camping spots next to the hotel and asks for some support of the hotel in return, like a drink of a meal. Great deal!

You can use the toilets at the pub, but there is no shower. We have our own portaloo in the caravan, and we shower anywhere we can along the way. ( Public showers at waterparks, outside showers at bush campgrounds or at the beach )

We arrived early in the afternoon when nobody was there yet, so we could pick a great free camping spot on the outskirt of the campground.

After setting up camp, we chilled out and enjoyed the surroundings of this great free camp on the Bruce Highway.

Lion asked the lady at the bar when we could come in to have dinner, and the lady told him from 6 pm. So off we went a bit after 6 pm and then we got told by another lady that there was no food because there was no chef hahaha. But she could make Pizzas or Pies.

Well, A good homemade pizza is always good, so we went with that and it didn’t disappoint as the pizza’s where yummo! Turned out the lady worked at a pizza shop before 🙂

After dinner, Sem went to bed and we watched a movie, before trying to get some sleep. We got about 4 hours of sleep as we are in the middle of a heatwave here in Queensland and it was smoking hot.

As we free camp we don’t have power, so no air conditioner, and on top of that we had a massive storm passing us, so we had to close the windows too. We were basically a few eggs in an egg boiler at that moment. But we thought, we are used to extreme heat, and if we can survive this night without aircon, we can survive many more!

Kangaroos on the beach at Cape Hillsborough National Park

We had to wake up early anyway as we wanted to catch the sunrise at Cape Hillsborough and see the kangaroos on the beach.

The sun came up at 05.22 and Cape Hillsborough is 30 kilometer from The Leap Hotel, so we got up at 4.30.

The scenery up to Cape Hillsborough is lovely and so is the area around Cape Hillsborough resort. At Cape Hillsborough Resort you have the best chance of seeing the Eastern Grey kangaroos and the Agile Wallabies on the beach.

Unfortunately, it was pretty cloudy and raining a tiny little bit when we arrived so we didn’t manage to capture a stunning sunrise photo, but we did see a lot of kangaroos on the beach at Cape Hillsborough.

We could see that they are used to humans as they weren’t shy at all, so we could interact a bit with them and make some great photos.

At a certain point, Sem was more interested in splashing in the little puddles on the beach than the kangaroos and he ended up soaking wet and sandy, but boy this little monkey had some fun 🙂

We decided not to do the walking tracks at Cape Hillsborough national park as the weather wasn’t really great and in our opinion wasn’t really a must do.

So we hopped into the car and drove 380 kilometers to Rockhampton to stay the night at a lovely place. Well, we thought, till we got kicked off by a very moody ranger.

Read about that here. Stay up to date and never miss any of our adventures by leaving your email address here.