South of the Whitsundays, the Bruce Highway travels through rural country until it hits the beaches of the Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane. It may not be the tourism heartland of the state, but there's plenty to discover. The most spectacular of the Great Barrier Reef islands, Heron Island, is off the coast from Gladstone. Heron's reefs are a source of enchantment for divers and snorkelers; its waters boast 21 dive sites. In summer giant turtles nest on its beaches, and in winter humpback whales cruise by.
North of Gladstone are Rockhampton and the Capricorn Coast, named after the tropic of Capricorn that runs through it. Rockhampton is also a steppingstone to the resort island of Great Keppel. The reefs and islands off Rockhampton are not a commonly visited part of the Great Barrier Reef, yet they offer some good dive sites, most of them not far out to sea. To the south, off the small town of Bundaberg, lies another tiny coral cay, Lady Elliot Island, which is a nesting site for tens of thousands of seabirds and has a first-rate fringing reef. Two little-known attractions in Bundaberg are its good shore scuba diving and a loggerhead turtle rookery that operates in summer on the beach. Farther south lies the world's largest sand island, the World Heritage-listed Fraser Island, which can be negotiated only on foot or by four-wheel-drive.
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