After reaching the highest point of our coastal trip – the Whitsunday Islands – it was time for us to leave the comfort of the seaside hotel, to hop on the camper van and slowly but steadily head back home. Cape Hillsborough Beach was just 1.5 hours away but we couldn’t make it on time for the sunrise and for the heaps of kangaroos using the early morning tide to feast on mangrove seed pods.
We did find a kangaroo near the beach though (rather a wallaby), probably the slowest seaweed-eater in the herd who was just retreating to the forest. There were heaps of butterflies as well, and a picturesque sign warning about the charms of Cape Hillsborough Beach – marine stingers, currents and crocodiles. Luckily, none of these were present during our stay, replaced by millions of crabs instead.
Every square centimetre of this enormous beach was mined by countless perfectly shaped miniature sand balls – the spherical artwork of the sand bubbler crab. 2 kilometres long and 150m wide shore, conquered by exquisite crabs and their gourmet sand cuisine. The seemingly static landscape was coming to life with each step we made, with hundreds of tiny fellows frantically running away.
The bubbler crabs are not the only crustaceans living there but are the only ones who feed during low tide by filtering sand through their mouthparts, leaving behind balls of sand and oddly shaped patterns, which the next high tide disintegrates. The sand bubbler crabs are really small – less than 1 cm – much like the round blue soldier crabs, famous for their ability to walk forwards, rather than sideways..
After an hour or so spent in the impressive and uninhabited vastness of Cape Hillsborough’s beach and a colourful encounter with one broad-fronted mangrove crab, we concluded that if there is a place where one could almost see the past presence of dinosaurs, megalodons and pterodactyls, this should be it. Every part of the landscape including the greenery, the islands near the horizon and the scattered rocks looked and felt ancient.
We then had a nice picnic lunch intensely observed by two wallabies and one kookaburra, and 2 driving hours later we parked at our next camping spot – Clairview Beach Park. We had chosen it on purpose because it’s located right on the water and is a famous fishing spot. With 1/4 of our family being very much into fishing and 3/4 being very much into eating fish, we do our best to gravitate towards water.
The low tide seascape is what made us fall in a long-lasting and immediate love with this place. Armed with fishing rods, camera and a thermos of freshly brewed Turkish coffee (and solid boots as well), we wandered the moist sand dunes and the bare rocky reefs with colonies of oysters. All the birds and all the colours just for ourselves.
Fish was something we didn’t see that evening but we got the chance to witness an incredibly fast high tide swallowing the shore in a matter of minutes. All the rocks we were sitting on an hour earlier got submerged in water, changing the desert-like surface into a calm and exotic setting waiting for the sun to set. My daughter and I had to abandon the mangrove trees we had been using as a photo backdrop, and search for dryer lands. This ended up being one of our most beautiful walks and one of my rare photo sessions, photos of which I am using in the ‘About me’ section of this blog.
