We went on a family camping trip to Yeppoon during the September School holidays. We stayed at the Big 4 there and really loved all of the extra facilities you get - like the swimming pool, playgrounds, jumping pillow and outdoor movie cinema. The only negative is that we were in the unpowered camping area and so a very long walk away from the toilet block. We now have a powered camping trailer set-up so would definitely go back there.
We were in for a very windy week - it made the weather nice and cool but not so nice when trying to set up a tent. We have an instant up tent that usually takes us 10 minutes to get pegged in but it took us about an hour to set up on this day. That's never a good thing when you've got 2 children who have already spent 6 hours in the car and just want to go play.
Here's Amita being Lizzie's swim coach at the pool. If you went in the middle of the day it was pretty quiet but always crowded in the morning and afternoons.
They also had a big slide that Amita loved going down. Lizzie was too young to go on it.
Here's the resident emu. we discovered he (or she) really likes eating blueberries. I went to the toilets early one morning and on the way out, when I turned the corner, the emu was standing on the path right in front of me. I think the emu was as surprised as me.
On the beach at Yeppoon - we didn't go swimming but found lots of shells.
On the main street at Yeppoon is an amazing playground and water park (they call it the Kraken). Amita is the shadow right at the top of the spiderweb.
Here's Lizzie playing in the waterpark at Sunset.
We went to Zambreros for dinner one night and got Nachos. The girls were very unimpressed with the sour cream on top (their version of Nachos is cornchips and plain cooked meat).
We made a visit to Mt Hay, which is about an hour drive out of Yeppoon (30 minutes past Rockhampton) and went looking for thunder egg rocks. Here's the girls posing in front of the rock garden. It had giant crystals and minerals in it.
Here we are trying to find the perfect specimens. You need to look for rocks that are spherical. We ended up with 4 bags full of rocks and the man cut all of the good ones open for us and we could keep them all (cut and un-cut). After we got home I sprayed the thunder eggs with some lacquer and they look amazing. Our uncut rocks are in a pot in on our balcony so we have our own rock garden now.
Rockhampton has a free zoo at their botanical gardens. We saw otters, kangaroos, koalas, chimpanzees, dingoes, snakes and lots of birds.
After the zoo we went to Sizzler for dinner and Lizzie showed us her new catch-phrase
The windy weather was great for kite flying and we all learnt how to do it.
The windy weather was not so great for our sun shade though and after coming back to camp one day we found it collapsed. The wind had bent the poles beyond repair. Luckily it was on the last afternoon there and we weren't too upset as we needed a reason to buy a bigger and better sunshade.
Our last day was spent on Great Keppel Island. We had been talking about going on a boat to get to the island for a while and Amita was really worried about it. I think she'd been watching a lot of Moana and imagined a raft taking us over. She was relieved when she saw the ferry.
There are a few different beaches around the island and as I wanted to go snorkelling on the reef, we had to take a hike. The tripadvisor comments said the trail was only a short hike but it ended up being quite steep so it took our little legged family a little bit longer (and numerous trips for Steve back and forth to get the girls over obstacles). But we found the beach with the reef. Amita and Lizzie enjoyed collecting coral and unique shells.
Here's Steve and Amita in the shallows. The water was beautiful! Amita swam in the shallows most of day. Lizzie was not very keen and spent most of her time on the sand.
Lizzie made the Great Wall of China!
I went snorkelling and of course forgot our waterproof camera back at camp so there are no pictures but I loved it! Amita wanted to try snorkelling too so I helped her swim out to the reef but as soon as we crossed from the sand to the reef (it made the water appear a lot darker) she started to freak out so I took her back to shore. I later learned she was very worried about sharks. It certainly crossed my mind too but there were other snorkellers and kayakers further out than me so I rationalised that they would be eaten first.
Here we are about half way down the trail looking down at the beach we would go to.
Family selfie at the top of the trail.
We scored window seats on the boat ride back and the choppy water was sending spray onto Lizzie. She loved it!
On our way home we went through Mount Morgan, which is where Grandma Green used to live when she was younger. We read her journal entries about living in the town and tried to pin point the different locations but I think everything has changed so much now that it was too tricky. Steve had a look in the cemetery for some of his ancestor's grave sites too.
Here's a picture from the lookout over the mine.
