We found two couchsurfers for Mackay, each of them for one night. The first one was Dish. We are actually still not sure if it is his real name or a nickname. He is, anyway, a very relaxed guy around 30 years old, originally from Los Angeles and in Australia since 8 years. Until now he worked in the mines, but as this is a very hard job (4 weeks working, 1 week off) most of the miners don’t stay there very long, just long enough to save up good money. That’s why he was moving to Brisbane when we arrived starting a new job at XXXX (Australian beer brand). Even though he moved out of his house on Friday, he hosted us the night from Wednesday to Thursday!!! In the evening another friend of Dish came over and we drank beer and chatted, until they wanted to go to a bar and we went out to explore the nightlife of Mackay. In fact, only one bar was open that day and it was what you would expect from a bar in a city full of miners. Young and attractive waitresses, almost only men in their twenties with obviously too much money in their pockets. Actually we wanted to buy a beer for Dish, but before we realized what happened we drank 3 beer, 2 spirits and a shot provided by Dish.
In the meantime, Kerstin was asked to participate a wet-t-shirt-contest, but she grateful refused. As the number of beauties was not very high in the bar, two of the waitresses had to participate (at the end there were 4 girls ^^). And then it began. First the price money was collected (they said it’s for breast cancer, a likely story…). It was collected by an auction and the winner was allowed to shower the girls with ice cold water. Every bidder had to pay directly, but could be overbid directly. In the end, the most active bidder won for 120$ (after he already bid another 4-5 times, so he payed at least 250$ in total). That was almost the highlight of the contest, because the contest itself was done in around 10 minutes. The four girls danced more or less well in a little swimming pool for kids and got a shower by the guy who won the auction. After this kind of disappointing show we made our way home (at 2AM, the other two stayed until 5AM), in order to be fit the next morning and visit the two national parks around Mackay.
After we got some sleep, we packed our stuff and drove to Cape Hillsborough National Park. There is an around two hour hike with some lookouts to some parts of the Whitsundays and also some very beautiful bays. One of them is very famous for turtles and we were even able to spot some in the water. After another little walk through a mangrove forest, we drove to the actual highlight of the day, the Finch-Hatton-Gorge. It belongs to the Eungella National Park, which is mostly famous because it’s a dead sure spot for Platypus. Since we already saw some of them in Carnarvon Gorge, Dish and his friend suggested us to go to Finch-Hatton. This was an incredible good hint! The gorge is within a rain forest and the river feeds some pools, two of them open for swimming. The first one (Araluen Cascades) is only a 30 minute walk from the carpark which makes it very famous for locals and their children (we only saw a couple of tourists, so one could say it’s a bit of a secret hint). The second pool (Wheel of Fire) is another 45 minute walk away, which means less people. It’s amazingly idyllic to go for a swim surrounded by rainforest! It was even possible to jump from the cliff (which is officially forbidden of course) in the extremely cold water.
At the evening we drove to our second host in Mackay, Luke and his flat share, with another Aussie and a German backpacker couple. One night is always quite short for the best couchsurfing experience but we all made the best of it and had long chats, funny stories and just a nice evening. Among other stories, Luke told us about his experience of the Oktoberfest in Munich. He had to pay 150€/night for a spot on a campground!!! We wouldn’t have thought that we would be surprised about costs in Germany anymore, as we are now kind of used to the Australian prices…
The next morning, we went on in direction Brisbane, but this is (ah you know 🙂 )