In which we hit the road again, this time on our own – in a car, not a truck; sail away round the Whitsundays and drive back to Brisbane via the beef capital of Australia and turtle beach.
After breakfast, Connie drove us back to Robina station, the same station she collected us from back in the middle of December last year. From there we caught the airport train, which took a lot longer than the suburban train we caught down from Brisbane nearly three weeks before.
At the airport, we had no problem collecting our car, although it always amazes me how many options for this cover and waivers for that risk you end up forking out for over and above the base fee you’ve already paid and still end up with the potential to loose thousands in the event of theft or an accident.
The first leg of our mini road trip took us back out through cow country and into a huge area of mechanised agriculture – I’ve no idea what they grow there – made up of enormous fields – probably 100s of acres each – that reminded us a bit of the mega farms we saw in Hungary, only bigger.
We drove 100s of kilometres along super straight roads to the town of Miles. We arrived there about 7.00 in the evening, but even at that time, stepping out of our air-conditioned car, the warm wind hit us like a hot wall.
Our motel room was very nice, but pretty expensive we thought. When Juli expressed her surprise at how much we were being asked to part with, the receptionist answered: “Welcome to gas pipeline country.” Turns out there’s a major infrastructure project going on in the area, with hundreds of out of town workers all needing somewhere to sleep. Basically the hotels and motels around there can charge what they like and we were lucky to find a room at all.
Fortunately the motel were happy to let us hang around there, so we filled the time by checking and sending some e-mails. (It’s been really handy having Juli’s little netbook with us. I don’t know what we would have done without it, especially after I blew-up my tablet computer.)
One of the e-mails we received was from my cousin Naomi in Freemantle with some worrying news about her mother, my Aunt Maria in Perth. Auntie, though no longer in the first flush of youth, was apparently keen to look after us in her home while we were in Perth. Unfortunately, however, it seems she’s had something of a health scare that’s got everyone there quite worried and requiring a stay or two in hospital. So Naomi (who is currently looking after her mother-in-law, husband Max’s mother) and her sister, my cousin Anne (who has no space in her compact city flat) are very kindly (considering their other worries) putting their heads together to come up with a solution to our little accommodation problem.
While Juli continued e-mailing, I made myself useful by swotting some of the huge flies that were pestering us as we sat by the pool. These things – which we now know are called March Flies – are really big. Bigger than horseflies (Clegs as they call them in the north east of England) with a really nasty bite, if you give them half a chance. Between us, we scored quite a few kills.
However, the fallen didn’t remain still for long. No sooner had they hit the ground, than they were swarmed over by hundreds of tiny ants, who would carry the flies – sometimes still twitching, at least initially – away to their nests and pantries. It was fascinating to watch the ants working together to carrying their load up and over all sorts of obstacles. We think they must have had a feast that night and thanked their ant gods for their great bounty. Mind you, the ants didn’t quite get to eat everything we killed for them.
The ants were following a very particular route back to their nest, which at one point passed in front of an old fridge. Underneath this fridgee there lurked in wait a small Gecko. At least once, the wily gecko watched and waited until the ants carried the fly within striking distance of his hiding place then shot out, lightning quick, to take the fly and a few ants into the bargain, I’d imagine.
Before we knew it, with so much to distract us, it was time to walk to the jetty. There to meet us was Pete the skipper (an Aussie) who was obviously in charge of everything nautical on board, and Aoife (Irish, pronounced Ay-fer) our hostess, who was responsible for everything else. Before long, all the passengers had arrived: us two, plus three other couples, making a total on board the boat – a 43 foot sailing catamaran called ‘Whitsunday Getaway’ – of 10.
Aoife had prepared a welcome fruit platter and some drinks, then showed us to our cabin, which was towards the front (forward) in the left-hand (port) hull: quite ‘cosy’ but with it’s own en-suit shower room and loo (head).
While we were getting comfy in our cabin, Pete motored us out of the harbour and off out, past the north end of the Molle group of islands, which are: South Molle; where Connie met Bob; biggest of the group North Molle; tiny Mid Molle in between; and West Molle, the closest Whitsunday island to the mainland, now a luxury resort and renamed ‘Daydream Island’ by the owners, but still shown as West Molle on the charts.
We continued north east to our first anchorage off Scrub Hen Beach on Whitsunday Island (Largest of the 74 islands) at the south end of the passage between Whitsunday and Hook island (second largest) called, not all that imaginatively, the Hook Island Passage.
That evening, after a lovely supper of barbequed Barramundi and one of two bottles bubbles we’d brought with us, we chatted with the other couples. With us were: Meng (Chinese with a German father) and Shirley (originally Chinese, but now living in Brisbane); Marco (Swiss-German) and Nina (German living in Switzerland); plus Alexandre and Alexandria (both French living in France). The eight of us talked about our lives, our jobs and what else we’d all done or were going on to do whilst in Australia.
And that was that for our mini roadtrip: five days and 2,000Km up; three days and 1,280Km down, with a bit of messing about on a boat in between. As I write this (on day 221) we are about to start our descent into Perth after a bit of an eventful flight, but I think I’ll leave that for another post.
Day 207 to 212 (driving from Brisbane to Airlie Beach)
We’d booked a small rental car online to be collected from Brisbane airport, to where we’ll be returning for our flight to Perth, but first we had to get up there to collect it.After breakfast, Connie drove us back to Robina station, the same station she collected us from back in the middle of December last year. From there we caught the airport train, which took a lot longer than the suburban train we caught down from Brisbane nearly three weeks before.
At the airport, we had no problem collecting our car, although it always amazes me how many options for this cover and waivers for that risk you end up forking out for over and above the base fee you’ve already paid and still end up with the potential to loose thousands in the event of theft or an accident.
The first leg of our mini road trip took us back out through cow country and into a huge area of mechanised agriculture – I’ve no idea what they grow there – made up of enormous fields – probably 100s of acres each – that reminded us a bit of the mega farms we saw in Hungary, only bigger.
We drove 100s of kilometres along super straight roads to the town of Miles. We arrived there about 7.00 in the evening, but even at that time, stepping out of our air-conditioned car, the warm wind hit us like a hot wall.
Our motel room was very nice, but pretty expensive we thought. When Juli expressed her surprise at how much we were being asked to part with, the receptionist answered: “Welcome to gas pipeline country.” Turns out there’s a major infrastructure project going on in the area, with hundreds of out of town workers all needing somewhere to sleep. Basically the hotels and motels around there can charge what they like and we were lucky to find a room at all.
***
Day two saw us continue along the Warrego Highway to Roma, site of Australia’s first oil well – they have a Big Rig – and to 1000’s of bottle trees. As well as looking like what they’re named for, they’re also adapted to store precious water to help them survive drought conditions.
From there we headed north up the Carnarvon Development Road to Rolleston via more endless open grasslands, dotted here and there with hardy cattle. Every now and then there would be an patch of scorched earth, often near a rest area, perhaps where someone had discarded a cigarette. Sometimes we saw green grass growing up round the blackened trees where the fire had been. We wondered if this was growth following fire or as a result of the water used to extinguish the blaze.
On the way, we turned off to take a look at Carnarvon Gorge, which is said to be worth a three or four day visit. We only had a few hours, but had to turn back after the sealed road leading to it became a gravel track, which our car hire agreement prevents us from using. Unfortunately, we only discovered that the tarmac doesn’t go all the way after already driving 30Km. (Apparently there’s a further 20Km of un-surfaced road after that.)
Rolleston is a very small town and the hotel/motel we’d booked from the tourist information centre in Injune, further down the Carnarvon Development Road, was the only alternative to the campsite, which, in 40+ degrees Celsius heat, we didn’t much fancy. Inside our room, which had had its curtains closed all day, the temperature was 35°C and it took the ancient A/C unit a number of hours to bring the temperature down to something a little more comfortable.
***
The next day, we turned northwest on the Dawson Highway to Springsure (another small town) then north along the Gregory Highway to Emerald. On the way we were almost run off the road by a police car, which was escorting a double-width load being moved south, driving straight at us. Presumably the driver was trying to make a point, like we would have missed the vehicle he was escorting.
Emerald – named not for the gem but for the green fields which once surrounded it – stands at the centre of the world’s largest sapphire field. It is estimated that 90% of all sapphires on the world market today come from this one area. Its other claim to fame is as the home of the world’s largest painting on an easel – a copy of one of Van Gough famous Sunflower paintings – which is of course known as the Big Sunflower.
We took another side trip west along the Capricorn Highway then north, through Sapphire to nearby Rubyvale (home of the Big Miner) – I swear I’m not making this up – where small scale mining operations – mostly one-man bands – scratch a living in the middle of nowhere. Many of them are retirees who come up from Victoria and New South Wales for the Winter when it gets a bit too cold for them down there. They own the mineral rights, but don’t own the land, so aren’t able to build permanent shelters, and so live in caravans.
A very helpful woman in a gem shop above a working mine you can visit told us three things I didn’t know about Sapphires:
- Like diamonds, the price of sapphires is determined by the four Cs: Carat, Clarity, Colour and Cut.
- Sapphires come in many colours. Not only blue but green, yellow and pink too.
- Sapphires are an aluminium based mineral, but when chromium is also present when the mineral forms (in volcanoes) rubies are made instead.
We still didn’t buy any though.
By the way, just after Sapphire, we crossed back into the tropic of Capricorn, the region between the equator and an imaginary line 23.5 degrees below it, marking the furthest point south where the Sun is directly over head at midday.
Continuing north on the Gregory Highway, we arrived at the end of another 40+ degree day at Clermont, where we found accommodation at a rather grotty motel. We wanted to stay at the Commercial Hotel, which is one of the last few remaining traditional heritage style outback hotels, but unfortunately they had no vacancies (more out of town workers) but we did have our Friday fish and chips there.
Clermont is, unfortunately, famous for a terrible flood they suffered there in 1915. 50 people lost their lives: Australia’s worst natural disaster up until that point. The floods were so high that, once the waters had receded, three pianos were found left high in the branches of trees. One of them – or rather a replica of it – is still there.
That night we watched some terrible news footage of similarly catastrophic events caused by extreme conditions at the opposite end of the weather spectrum. As recently occurred on Tasmania, draughts in New South Wales have lead to severe and extensive bushfires and the loss of property. Fortunately no human lives have been lost yet, but hundreds of cattle are reckoned to have lost theirs. The worst of it is that these fires are likely to have been set deliberately, probably by teenagers with nothing better to do known as Firebugs. Apparently bushfires due to lightning strike or other natural sources of ignition are unusual.
***
North again on the Gregory Developmental Road – part of the Great Inland Way: an alternative long-distance route to the Pacific Coast Highway between Cairns and Sydney – we continued our journey towards Charters Towers. Now the boarding-school capital of Queensland, at the time of the gold rush (late 1800’s) it grew to become the second largest city in Queensland after Brisbane. It’s population today is a tenth of what it was at its height.
100’s and 100’s of dead straight kilometres through red sandy soiled scrub with only a few trees but some amazingly hardy, skin-and-bone cattle somehow surviving in a landscape of desert-like conditions for most of the year. I couldn’t tell you what the breed was, but they have very distinctive long, floppy ears and what could be fatty sacks on their backs and necks. The reminded us a lot of the kind of cows we saw in parts of India.
This is the kind of driving cruise control was made for. Unfortunately, our bottom of the line Holden Barina didn’t have that, but its car radio did have an auxiliary input jack, to which we connected Walt, Juli’s Sony Walkman MP3 player, via a lead we bought especially in Clermont. It really helped to pass the hours of arrow straight road.
Incidentally, it was on this stretch of highway that we saw our first four waggon-long Road Train. That’s over 70 metres of ‘we stop for nothing’ coming down the way at you on a two lane (one in each direction) highway.
Half-way along the highway is the Belyano Crossing Roadhouse. Just about the only sign of life for hundreds of kilometres in any direction. We stopped here for lunch: excellent burgers and malted milkshakes. Good chips too. They may be the only place to eat and in the middle of nowhere too, but they don’t take the mickey with their prices, have good, clean facilities and have taken the trouble to create a lovely little garden for the benefit of their patrons. I think it must take a very special kind of person to live out there.
Charters Towers, though not the boom town it once was, is a lovely place and we found an amazing old hotel – The Royal: oldest of the towns 95 hotels. The owner, who’s spent the last two years renovating it, took great pleasure in showing us round. It more than made up for not getting in at the Commercial Hotel in Clermont, and we were given a fantastic corner room with a king-size four-poster and a spa bath. Such luxury, and at a lower rate than some of the grotty motels we’d stayed in previously.
The owner, Tony (Italian), also put us onto the fact that the town has a drive in-movie, which was playing that evening. Frankly, it wouldn’t have mattered what it was showing, but in fact we had a choice of either seeing Skyfall again or Madagascar 3 plus Rise of the Guardians, a new Dreamworks production.
Predictably, we went with the kids flick. The memory of sitting in our hired car eating pizza and pop with people in deckchairs and loungers in the backs of their utes all around us is going to stay with me for a while I hope.
***
I’m sorry we didn’t have longer to explore Charters Towers and all it’s history, but the next morning we said goodbye to Tony and, after an excellent breakfast at the Cookhouse Cafe, where one woman cooked and served a dozen other customers while we were there, headed east along the Flinders Highway to Townsville.
Townsville was a bit of a detour for us, but it’s a major town on the central Queensland coast, and we thought, since we were in the neighbourhood, that we should take the time to at least drive by. Well, it’s got some nice buildings, but a drive by was enough.
Heading south now on the Bruce Highway (National Route 1) we passed through sugarcane country. Miles and miles of it. The fields are so vast and cover such an area, that, rather than using trucks to transport the crop for processing, they have a network of narrow-gauge railway lines and some of the longest trains made up of dozens of waggons I’ve ever seen.
Stopping only for a cup of coffee in Bowen (nice sea-side town) and to take a photo of the Big Mango (just outside of Airlie Beach) we arrived at the Airlie Beach Motor Lodge shortly after teatime. We were given a really nice room with it’s own veranda, and after a quick cup of tea, headed out to explore the town, check out where we had to reconfirm our trip with the booking agents and get some dinner.
Airlie beach is not quite what I expected. I think I thought it would be a bit smarter than it is. I don’t know if it’s changed very much, but it’s a lot more backpacker-y than I had imagined. It doesn’t help, of course, that the main street through it is currently being dug up along its entire length.
Mind you, the town has a fresh seaside feel to it and a really nice lagoon that’s very popular with families. It’s also very necessary if you fancy a swim at this time of the year, as the sea is full of jellyfish, some of which are too small to be seen, but whose sting can still be life threatening.
All missions accomplished, we returned to our motel to catch up on e-mails etc. the Wi-Fi signal, though free, didn’t extend to our room, so we had to sit out by the pool where it’s strongest. While there, one of the other guests asked: have you seen the snake?” She then showed me a tiny snake curled up on a table outside one of the rooms. According to the receptionist it was probably a tree snake and quite harmless, though she then went on to add that they sometimes drop down out of their tree, which might be a bit alarming if you happened to be sitting under it at the time.
***
As mentioned, we had to re-confirm our trip with the booking agents. Actually we should have done that sooner, but what with being on the road, we missed that. Going into their offices meant that we could pick up a brochure about our trip and all the other trips this particular booking agent handles. I have to say, that, what with booking it through Greyhound, a backpacker orientated service, I wasn’t sure what kind of sailing adventure this was going to be. However, looking at the brochure has reassured me that Juli has found the perfect trip for us.
After sorting that out, we got on with the important business of finding breakfast. Harry’s Cafe had the solution to our quest in the form of Danish style, chicken and avocado open sandwiches. If we ever do an Adam and Corinne and emigrate – don’t worry, Pauline, we won’t – it’ll have to be somewhere that grows avocados. Maybe New Zealand: I hear they have no snakes nor venomous spiders, except one that lives on sea cliffs.
Back at the motel, we had a bit of admin to take care of. We’d miscalculated how many nights we had on the boat and needed to book an extra night in Airlie Beach for after the sailing trip. Also, we needed to arrange accommodation for the nights after Airlie, including going to see the turtles on Mon Repos Beach near Bundaberg, plus nights ether side in Rockhampton (Rocky) and Brisbane. Lyn, the very helpful receptionist, was able to help us with all of that including booking us on to a turtle tour.
Lyn and Juli also had a lengthy conversation about Menopause. Lyn mentioned something about Natural Hormone Replacement Therapy (NHRT) she’s had good results from. Juli still has to be careful about oestrogen – even plant-based oestrogen – but it certainly sounds like something we need to look into. Again, if anyone out there knows anything about that…
I spent most of the rest of the day blogging and doing laundry while Juli went out to have another look around town and take photos. While out she found the perfect gift for someone we know who’s also celebrating their 50th birthday this year and who should expect to find something lovely in the post this Spring.
That evening, our last on land before cruise number two, we got a take-away pizza (seafood) and enjoyed it back in our room, washed down with the bottle of Viognier Juli bought from Ballandean Estate when we visited with Sam and Simon.
Cheers.
Days 213 to 216 (Sailing the Whitsundays)
We weren’t due to meet up with the crew and other passengers on the boat until 4.15pm, so we had lots of time to get ready for our sailing adventure. However, even after packing the small bags we’d be taking with us, loading everything else into our hired car and having a late and leisurely breakfast, we still had several hours to kill.Fortunately the motel were happy to let us hang around there, so we filled the time by checking and sending some e-mails. (It’s been really handy having Juli’s little netbook with us. I don’t know what we would have done without it, especially after I blew-up my tablet computer.)
One of the e-mails we received was from my cousin Naomi in Freemantle with some worrying news about her mother, my Aunt Maria in Perth. Auntie, though no longer in the first flush of youth, was apparently keen to look after us in her home while we were in Perth. Unfortunately, however, it seems she’s had something of a health scare that’s got everyone there quite worried and requiring a stay or two in hospital. So Naomi (who is currently looking after her mother-in-law, husband Max’s mother) and her sister, my cousin Anne (who has no space in her compact city flat) are very kindly (considering their other worries) putting their heads together to come up with a solution to our little accommodation problem.
While Juli continued e-mailing, I made myself useful by swotting some of the huge flies that were pestering us as we sat by the pool. These things – which we now know are called March Flies – are really big. Bigger than horseflies (Clegs as they call them in the north east of England) with a really nasty bite, if you give them half a chance. Between us, we scored quite a few kills.
However, the fallen didn’t remain still for long. No sooner had they hit the ground, than they were swarmed over by hundreds of tiny ants, who would carry the flies – sometimes still twitching, at least initially – away to their nests and pantries. It was fascinating to watch the ants working together to carrying their load up and over all sorts of obstacles. We think they must have had a feast that night and thanked their ant gods for their great bounty. Mind you, the ants didn’t quite get to eat everything we killed for them.
The ants were following a very particular route back to their nest, which at one point passed in front of an old fridge. Underneath this fridgee there lurked in wait a small Gecko. At least once, the wily gecko watched and waited until the ants carried the fly within striking distance of his hiding place then shot out, lightning quick, to take the fly and a few ants into the bargain, I’d imagine.
Before we knew it, with so much to distract us, it was time to walk to the jetty. There to meet us was Pete the skipper (an Aussie) who was obviously in charge of everything nautical on board, and Aoife (Irish, pronounced Ay-fer) our hostess, who was responsible for everything else. Before long, all the passengers had arrived: us two, plus three other couples, making a total on board the boat – a 43 foot sailing catamaran called ‘Whitsunday Getaway’ – of 10.
Aoife had prepared a welcome fruit platter and some drinks, then showed us to our cabin, which was towards the front (forward) in the left-hand (port) hull: quite ‘cosy’ but with it’s own en-suit shower room and loo (head).
While we were getting comfy in our cabin, Pete motored us out of the harbour and off out, past the north end of the Molle group of islands, which are: South Molle; where Connie met Bob; biggest of the group North Molle; tiny Mid Molle in between; and West Molle, the closest Whitsunday island to the mainland, now a luxury resort and renamed ‘Daydream Island’ by the owners, but still shown as West Molle on the charts.
We continued north east to our first anchorage off Scrub Hen Beach on Whitsunday Island (Largest of the 74 islands) at the south end of the passage between Whitsunday and Hook island (second largest) called, not all that imaginatively, the Hook Island Passage.
That evening, after a lovely supper of barbequed Barramundi and one of two bottles bubbles we’d brought with us, we chatted with the other couples. With us were: Meng (Chinese with a German father) and Shirley (originally Chinese, but now living in Brisbane); Marco (Swiss-German) and Nina (German living in Switzerland); plus Alexandre and Alexandria (both French living in France). The eight of us talked about our lives, our jobs and what else we’d all done or were going on to do whilst in Australia.
***
The next morning, we motored north through the Hook Island Passage then turned east to Dumbbell Island. There we changed into our provided ‘Stinger’ suits (full body, one-piece protection against stinging jelly fish, just in case) and were given snorkelling gear. Pete then got us and all our gear into a small hard-bottomed, inflatable dingy with an outboard motor and took us over to our first reef.
Meng and Shirley, who hadn’t quite got their sea legs yet, and Juli stayed in the boat, but leaning out over the sides: Juli on one side with her head under the water, Meng and Shirley on the other, well, let’s just say they were helping to attract the fish for Juli, who, through her mask, was able to see the many colourful fish that were swimming around the reef just a few feet below the dingy.
Meanwhile, the rest of us splashed about in the water, face down, with varying degrees of proficiency. You didn’t have to swim far to see an amazing variety of coral and fish, both beautiful, and varied in their shape, size and colour.
Safely back on-board the catamaran, we all helped to hoist the main sail and unfurl the jib. Pete then sailed us (no motor) to our second stop of the day, past Esk Island to the centre of Whitehaven Beach: 6km of pure-white silica sand that we had to ourselves. To be honest though, impressive as it was to see from the sea, once you’re standing on the beach, it’s just a lot of very bright, soft sand, which Pete was very keen we should leave there, and be sure not to bring any of it back on-board with us.
After lunch, Juli and I stayed on the boat, while Pete took the others back to the beach. While I rested in our cabin, Juli stayed top-side to see what she could see from up there. She was rewarded with the sight of several Sea Turtles and one flying fish, which she said jumped a good couple of metres above the surface of the sea.
Once the beach party were back on-board, we sailed back and round to Tongue Bay, where Pete once again ferried us to shore. From there, Aoife guided us along a small path with stone steps up through trees to Hill Inlet Lookout, a viewing platform quite high above Hill Inlet which lies on the other side of the headland from Tongue Bay, between the lookout and Whitehaven Beach. At low tide, you can see some amazing patterns of sand spits and bars with only a low covering of picture postcard perfect turquoise sea.
Beautiful as the view was, all I could see was the squall coming in from the ocean and heading our way pretty quickly. Sure enough, before we got back down to the beach, the heavens opened and we had to chose between what little shelter there was or swimming in the rain. Fortunately, these tropical downpours rarely last more than a few minutes, and by the time Pete had come back out to pick us up, the shower had passed.
Back on-board, while we dried off, Aoife prepared some snacks to keep us going. Meanwhile, Pete motored (with wind assistance) all the way back past Dumbbell Island, past the north end of Whitsunday Island, on along the north side of Hook Island then round Pinnacle Point to a long, narrow, sheltered mooring in Butterfly Bay. (Too sheltered for mobile phone coverage.) Here, dinner – barbequed chicken – was prepared and served.
That evening, under a canopy of stars - there may be no network coverage there, but there sure isn’t any light pollution ether – we heard a lot of splashing about in the dark waters around us. Several theories were proposed but none confirmed as there wasn’t a powerful enough torch to spot where the noise was coming from.
During the night, however, half a dozen or so kamikaze Squid launched themselves out of the water and onto the deck, where, understandably distressed, they proceeded to empty their ink sacks. Glad I didn’t have that to clear up.
***
The next morning we motored back out of Butterfly Bay and into Luncheon Bay, from where we took the dingy into Mantaray Bay for some more snorkelling. This time, I took my (fingers crossed) waterproof camera with me and was rewarded with some excellent still and video images of the reef and all its wildlife, including a rather murky clip of a Sea Turtle that happened by.
Back on the boat, where Juli had remained, the rest of us were very interested to learn that, in addition to reading, Juli had been feeding breakfast leftovers to a weird looking thing called a Bat Fish. These large but toothless creatures are so tame, they were swimming up to Juli, who was sitting on the bottom step at the back of one of the hulls, and eating right out of her hand. I shot some nice clips of Nina doing the same thing, only in the water with them.
Once the Bat Fish were fed, it was time for our Lunch, where else but back in Luncheon bay. After lunch, Pete motored us round the north end of Hook Island, down between it and neighbouring Hayman Island, past Black Island (renamed Bali Hai by someone promoting the Whitsundays in the 1950s who thought ‘Black Island’ too bleak a name) to just off Langford Island, which has a long spit of sand, on which we landed by dingy, and more coral to explore.
There, we donned our snorkelling gear once more and went back into the water from the beach. With the sand under her feet, Juli felt a bit more confident about coming in too and used her own snorkel (purchased in Kuala Lumpur – thanks Brenda and Yvonne for the advice) for the first time. I’m not sure Juli would claim snorkelling as her number one favourite thing to do yet, but she certainly increased in confidence.
Once Juli had done enough snorkelling for one day, I went out on my own a bit further to the reef. There wasn’t a great deal more to see there, and I was about to head for the shore, when I noticed two Sea Turtles, swimming together and quite close to the surface, which meant they were better lit for my video camera to capture them. I spent a good few minutes following them from a distance so as not to spoke them, when suddenly I was joined by some other snorkelers, who wanted to get rather more up close and personal with these beautiful creatures. The turtles had been quite happily swimming along, minding their own business, but now decided to head off into the murk away from their pursuers and, unfortunately for me, the limit of my lens. Hey ho.
Back on the boat, sitting aft where most of the eating goes on, Pete, who had been forward where Meng and Shirley (now feeling a lot better, by the way) where sitting sharing a romantic moment, came back with the very exciting news that Meng had just proposed to Shirley, who had accepted. On hearing this, Aoife went straight to the fridge and produced a bottle of bubbles, permanently kept chilled and on-hand just in case such an occasion arises during a trip. Of course, we were only too happy to contribute our other bottle of bubbles to the celebration and last supper – barbequed steak, washed down with some more wine supplied by Marco and Nina – while we all admired Shirley’s new ring.
During and after diner we heard more splashing about in the water with still no idea what was causing it. However, later, Juli saw two large fish – she swears they were reef sharks – swimming around and under the boat.
That same evening, as if sharks and an engagement weren’t enough for a night to remember, we saw the Southern Cross for the first time this trip, just above the horizon. Later on in this trip, when we’re crossing the Nullabor Plane, the Southern Cross will be higher in the night sky earlier, so, with the dark skies we’re expecting to find there, the only problem with identifying it, will be making it out amidst the billions of others we’ll be able to see there.
***
The following day – our last on the good ship Whitsunday Getaway – we popped back to Black Island for a bit more snorkelling. I was surprised and a little alarmed to see that Shirley was planning on wearing her brand new and somewhat imperfectly fitting engagement ring while snorkelling, but, I guess, having so recently acquired it, she was not yet ready to be parted from it, and, in deed she wasn’t, so that was alright.
After Black Island, we motored south and east to a small cove on the south side of Hook Island called Cave Cove (see if you can guess why) where I got some more nice shots of the coral there, but, due to a low battery, no more video. Juli, who stayed in the dingy, was doing ‘virtual snorkelling’. This was achieved by her sticking her masked face in the water, while Pete pulled the dingy along behind him as he swam through it, which was brilliant of him.
From there, sadly, as our time on the Whitsunday Getaway was nearly up, we sailed back to Airlie Beach. On the way, though, we both got to have a go at steering her, which, when you’re meant to be going in a specific direction but the wind isn’t, is a lot harder than it looks.
Back in the harbour, we said our good byes and thanked Pete and Aoife for a brilliant time before trudging back to our very nice but not quite as lovely motel, missing the cooling sea breeze already. After showering, a bit of a rest and checking our e-mails plus sending a few more, seeing as it was a Friday, we went out again for fish and chips.
Back in our room, I discovered that the little flap covering the card slot on my camera wouldn’t close properly, nor would the other flap covering the data/charging port on the other side open. It seems I should have rinsed the camera in fresh water after every exposure to salt water and the damn thing was now jammed up. I struggled with it for a while and eventually took the open flap’s catch apart, cleaned it, put it back together again and managed to get it to close. That allowed me to give the camera a good rinse and a soak in fresh water. That must have done some good, as, after drying it off and a bit more fiddling about, I did eventually manage to free the stuck-closed flap. More than a little relieved – I think I might have given up on technology completely if I’d kyboshed another bit of kit – I put it on charge and so far, touch wood, it’s been okay. Phew.
Days 217 to 220 (Airlie Beach back to Brisbane)
I spent most of our extra day in Airlie Beach at the motel writing about our sailing trip and sorting through all the photos and video I took. Meanwhile, Juli drove just out of town to nearby Cannonvale for groceries, to try and save a bit of money by not eating out all the time. She also bought envelopes in which to send more stuff back home and more petrol. Apart from that, we had to re-pack (for the umpteenth time) and generally get ready for our return road trip back down to Brisbane.
***
The next morning, we said good bye to the very helpful staff of the Airlie Beach Motel, jumped into our hired car and headed back inland to Proserpine then south once more on the Bruce Highway. We couldn’t help but notice that, despite the news reports of dry weather and bush fires down south in New South Wales and Victoria, the countryside all about us up in central Queensland still seemed pretty green and lush.
Today’s destination was Rockhampton via Marlborough: an easy drive straight down the A1. We needed to find somewhere to stop for lunch though and, looking at the map, identified a place called Clairview as a likely spot and the only point on this stretch where the highway meets the coast. In fact it’s a tiny town with a few houses, a campsite and a boat ramp, although you would have been hard pressed to launch anything that wasn’t amphibious when we were there as the tide was out a good kilometre or so. In fact, as we ate our sandwiches, we watched as one couple walked out for a paddle, but gave up half way, turned round and walked back again without even getting their feet wet.
We got to our motel in Rockhampton at about teatime, and (after putting the kettle on – first things first) sent a text to Kellie. You may remember (if you’ve been following this blog from the start) that Kellie is the ticket sales agent at Greyhound Australia who helped us (Juli mostly) through the process of buying our Kilometre passes and booking all the side trips and excursions we’re doing while we’re in Australia. She was the wonder woman who came back to the office well after her normal working day on the morning we had the problem with our bank’s anti fraud system, and we had arranged to meet up while in Rockhampton where Kellie lives and works. We heard back from Kellie later that evening with the sad news that she’d been with her family all day while they watched and waited with her father who is seriously ill (in hospital, I think) with cancer. Under the circumstances, she quite understandably felt unable to spend any time with us that evening, but suggested we meet for coffee early the next day before she started work. Now, I’ve never been a morning person anyway, but, more importantly, we felt that having to get up early to meet us was probably the last thing Kellie needed after a day with her sick dad. So, in the end, we decided to make Kellie’s life a little easier and scratched the fixture, but took a rain check for ‘next time’. We wish Kellie, her dad and her family all the best.
***
Before continuing our journey the next morning, we had to pop into the post office to send a few parcels home: a couple of gifts and the envelopes Juli bought in Airlie Beach, now full of more of the stuff we collect as we go.
After breakfast in a great cafe near the post office, curiously furnished with old church pews and decorated with scarves, we left Rockhampton (and the tropics) behind us as we continued south on the Bruce Highway. The countryside here was not nearly as green as yesterday: lots of small trees and very little grass, considering Rockhampton is said to be the beef capital of Australia.
On the way south we passed the longest train I think I’ve ever seen. It went on for ages, comprised entirely of coal waggons. It must have been at least a kilometre long and had four locomotives: two at the front and another two in the middle.
Our destination today was a seaside town near Bundaberg called Bagara. Our route took us away from the highway at a place called Miriam Vale, past turnings for somewhere called 1770 (written as seventeen seventy on the map – there’s a story there, I expect, but I’m writing this on a plane so can’t look it up) and a tiny town called Rosedale, where we stopped for tea at a delightful little place called the Tiny Teahouse. We had some excellent cakes and picked up a takeaway for the evening.
At the Motel in Bagara, we collected an e-mail from the turtle sanctuary confirming our booking for a tour that evening. Just as well we booked, as we discovered when we got there that that night’s session was completely full, which meant there were 300 people wanting to see turtles laying and hatching there that evening.
We arrived a bit before sunset and were split into five groups. We were in group two, so had to wait in the centre a short while before being called down to the beach. In the centre, which is open during the day too, they have lots of information about the conservation work they do and what they now know about the lifecycle of turtles, so there was plenty to keep us occupied.
Before long, our group was called down to the beach, where the ranger accompanying us explained more about the work they do and why it’s so important. He also explained that it was important for us not to use torches or flash photography or anything else which emits light, such as mobile phones, until he told us we could.
The ranger took us along the beach, our way well lit by moon light, to a roped off area where several clutches of turtle eggs had been moved to. The conservators do this when a clutch is at risk, perhaps because the mother has laid her eggs too low on the beach, or, as in this case, because they’re going to be monitored as part of a research project. This project was a long-term study of changes in hatchling fitness.
The PhD student running the project had put small mesh fences round the buried clutches so that the emerging hatchlings couldn’t run off down the beach as they normally would. We stood and watched as, one after another, dozens of newly hatched Loggerhead turtles fought their way to the surface only to find they were trapped in a cage.
The whole process took quite a while, and some of our large (60) group began to get a little restless. They felt, I think, that this captive breeding was not what they had expected or paid to see. Nor was the general mood helped by the selfish disobedience of a number of badly behaved children who, having been given ring-side seats but told to sit back, insisted on standing up and blocking the view of everyone else. I think the young ranger was somewhat out of his depth when it came to wrangling these children, so, of course, they sensed it and did exactly as they pleased, which included poking sticks and stones through the mesh of the cage. Why, we wondered, were the parents not doing more to control their children? Perhaps they couldn’t see what their little darlings were doing.
Anyway, eventually, the ranger decided that was it for our group and escorted us back to the centre. On the way back, we noticed that other groups were watching other hatchlings making their way down the beach and into the ocean. Others, we knew, had already seen turtles laying clutches of eggs. Why, we wondered, hadn’t we.
Back at the centre, Juli raised some of these points with the staff there. It seems we weren’t they only ones less than impressed with how the evening had panned out, and were told that, if we wished, we could wait a while and would be taken out again, which we decided was a good plan. I don’t think ether of us wanted to leave feeling the way we did.
It was suggested that we might like to sit in their amphitheatre where we would be shown a video presentation. From this we learned that new hatchlings from there swim out to sea and into a strong current that runs south along the east coast of Australia. (Anyone whose seen Finding Nemo recently – like us – may remember that this is how Nemo’s dad gets down to Sydney from the Great Barrier Reef.) This current turns or merges with another going east, which eventually takes the young turtles all the way to the west cost of South America. Another current carries them north up the coast to yet another at the equator that brings them west, all the way back to feeding grounds off the east coast of Australia or Papua New Guinea. The whole journey takes the turtles 15 years and they then spend another 15 years feeding on clams and other shell fish, until something instinctual tells them to mate.
A female turtle will mate with about half a dozen males. She stores their sperm within her body and uses it to fertilise about four clutches of eggs, which she lays on a beach near where she was born, with about two weeks between each laying. The whole process, therefore takes about two months, during which time she a) doesn’t eat, and b) uses only the cocktail of sperm she collected when she first mated.
Shortly after the video ended, our now much smaller, adults only group were taken by a different guide to a different part of the beach, where a female Loggerhead turtle had just made it up out of the ocean to the dunes at the top. We were only allowed to follow her after she’d dug what they call a body cavity in the sand – a small hollow she lies in during the egg laying process – and once she’d started to excavate the egg chamber, into which she would shortly by laying her cutch. They keep visitors away from the turtle until that point so as not to spoke her into turning round and going back out to sea.
It takes her about 15 minutes to dig the 50cm deep chamber, which she does with her surprisingly dextrous back flippers. She uses these to scoop out flipper-fuls of sand, which she then flings over her shoulder. Interestingly, the hole she digs is wider at the bottom than at the top.
When she’s done digging, she moves on to laying. Her eggs are about the size of ping pong balls and she lays about 130 of them per clutch. We were lucky enough to have with us The man who started the conservation centre back in the 80’s, Dr Col Lumpis, who’s been studying turtles since the 60’s. He reached in to the chamber and retrieved a few of the eggs which he allowed us to touch. One by one, he took hold of our index fingers and gently pushed them a millimetre or two into an egg, which gave way beneath our touch. Turns out the surface of a turtle egg is soft and slightly leathery, not hard and brittle like a hen’s egg, and we were assured that no harm would come to the unborn turtle within.
While she was laying, some of the trainee researchers were learning how to measure and record details of this female, including the number on a tag in its flipper, which had been placed their, their records revealed, some 19 years before, which meant that this particular female was about 49 years old: the same age Juli and me. In fact the tag they found was one of two which would have been placed originally, so a new one was fitted while she was laying. The tag number also told the researchers that this was the second clutch she was laying this season.
After about 15 minutes, she had laid all she was going to that evening and begun the process of covering over her newly laid eggs and firming down the sand over them with the full weight of her body, some 100Kg, apparently. Once that was done, she slowly turned round and made her way back down the beach and back into the ocean, while we followed at a respectful distance.
As we walked down the beach, the ranger explained that, as this was her second clutch, the team could expect to see her again in a couple of weeks time and then once more a couple of weeks after that. After that, though, they wouldn’t be seeing this turtle again on that or any other beach for a further three to five years, when she will, like as not, start the whole process over again.
Finally, she told us that, on average, they expect to see about 30 females lay on that particular beach each evening at this stage in the season and about the same number of hatching events too. We felt privileged to see just one laying female do her thing for us and very glad that we chose to hang around to see it happen.
***
After the excitement of the night before, and having not got to bed until about 1.30 in the morning, we had rather a sleepy morning the next day. After checking out as late as we could, plus a bit of local shopping, we made our way back towards Bundaberg, then turned south south west down the Isis Highway to pick up the Bruce Highway once more at Childers, which is another lovely old (in Australian terms) town with many federation and 30s style buildings still fronting main street.
On the way, we drove through acres and acres of sugar cane fields. We’d been trying for ages to take pictures of these huge plantations, but it’s difficult to find an angle that does justice to their vastness and, because mostly you’re on the highway when you do, it’s just too dangerous to pull over to take the shot. However, we did sort of manage it here.
From Childers we drove on past Maryborough, down through Gympie, then turned east off the highway for lunch by lake Cootharaba, one of the spots where Bob used to bring the family camping and recommended to us by Connie. We were glad she did, although she had assured us we’d see Kangaroos on the lake shore but we didn’t see any while we were there.
From there we drove on to the seaside town of Tewatin, which has a Big (ish) Shell, and from there to Noosa Heads, which is a very smart (and popular) beach/surfing resort with crystal clear waters.
Back on the Bruce Highway again, via a small diversion to snap the (genuinely) Big Pineapple, we made our way south toward our final destination, a motel not far from busy Brisbane airport. With the aid of the road maps we bought in Robina, another I printed from Google Maps plus another sketch map in the Golden Chain Motels directory, we found it relatively easily, despite missing the highway turn off I meant us to take; all my fault, I hasten to add.
And that was that for our mini roadtrip: five days and 2,000Km up; three days and 1,280Km down, with a bit of messing about on a boat in between. As I write this (on day 221) we are about to start our descent into Perth after a bit of an eventful flight, but I think I’ll leave that for another post.
TTFN - N
