We went in seperate directions today, Shaun, Chris and Sally went to the Sydney Aquarium, whilst Karen went off for her dose of retail therapy. The credit card survived the experience only $250 worse off - it could have been a lot worse!!
We then spent a couple of hours at the pool in the hotel chilling out - the children still appeared to have excessive energy, the adults being totally exhausted!
We plan to have dinner and get to bed early tonight.
We caught a taxi to the airport and booked in for our flight to Rockhampton, we then drove to Gladstone and stayed in a hotel for the night in readiness to travel to Heron Island the next morning.
There were some EXTREMELY noisy parrots outside the hotel. Apparently the local council are trying to get rid of them and have chopped down loads of trees thinking they would fly away - unfortunately all it has done is concentrate them all in 3 trees and the noise was deafening.
We were out of Mobile phone and internet access for the duration of our stay in Heron Island which was HEAVEN! It was so nice to wander around and not listen to someone else's conversation!Although it did slow down the blog entries.
We went for a snorkel and saw some black and white tip sharks and loads of sea cucumbers. After a quick dip in the pool we got ready for dinner and prepared for the highlight of our trip - turtle watching!
We were very lucky to come across a Green Turtle who very kindly laid some eggs for us and we were able to watch which was truely amazing!! Unfortunately you are not able to use flash photography or lights on the beach in case you upset the turtle (and any others around) so we don't have any pictures to show. But it is definitely a sight to behold and we would strongly recommend it to anyone.
We were kept awake by some really noisy Mutton Birds who had laid eggs all around the island (and four outside our room!). The noise they make can only be compared to that of a wailing baby and they all join in with the chorus as the finale!!
Karen spent the morning doing the washing; not quite her idea of tropical paradise but it was all done by lunch. She then spent time at the pool drinking beer and reading her book! In between Junior Rangers the children spent time in the pool and made a few friends with other junior rangers Ben and Josh. Shaun joined them after his dives and had a crisp stolen out of his hand by one of the cheeky restaurant birds that prey on people with food. They in turn have to protect their baby chicks from the seagulls who unfortunately have a pretty good strike rate, we saw quite a few chicks being eaten!
Tonight Shaun went for a night dive and saw a BIG octopus (3 for 3 - poor photo alas), a shark and lots and lots of turtles trying to sleep on the sea floor! Karen, Chris and Sally decided to go for a turtle hunt around the island as the sun set - the turtles must have seen us go by because we later heard that loads had come up the beach as we walked by! We did manage to see lots of baby sharks flapping their fins around in the water so that helped make up for the disappointment.
When we returned to the room Shaun had just arrived back from his dive and told us about a turtle near to the jetty. So we went to see how it was doing, unfortunately it had chosen a spot where there were lots of rocks and it didn't succeed in laying its eggs that night.
That evening was the seafood buffet in the restaurant and there were mountains of huge prawns, Moreton Bay bugs, crabs, salmon and almost ever seafood you could imagine.
After dinner Shaun and Chris decided to go on one last turtle hunt. Sally was TOO tired and so she and Karen retired to bed - and missed ALL the action!!!
On their way back to the room they also passed two Green Turtles laying eggs and came back pretty full of themselves!
A few tears were shed (by Karen) and none of us wanted to leave this fantastic place. But all good things come to an end and we will have to come back another year in order to see some of the hatchlings - which apparently weren't due until at least the 9th January this year!
We drowned our sorrows on the catamaran back to Gladstone and arrived there two hours later a bit wobbly (well Karen was anyway.)
When we got back to the hotel we went for a swim and tried to persuade a family that were going ut to the Island the next day that they wouldn't enjoy it and we would be more than happy to suffer the trip for them - it didn't work!! We went for a meal at the local Thai restaurant and listened to the noisy parrots for one last time.
The funny part was on arrival at Rockhampton we all had to disembark and put our luggage through security! We then reboarded the same plane and sat in the same seats!!
The journey was Split into four parts 25 minutes between Gladstone and Rockhampton, 50 minutes between Rockhampton and Mackay, an hour between Mackay and Townsville. The last part of the journey between Townsville and Cairns should have taken an hour but due to a storm over Cairns we were held outside for about half an hour. We experienced quite a bit of turbulence, which we all thought was great fun - some of the other passengers didn't find it very funny though!!
We landed approximately half an hour late and decided to do some shopping around Cairns. Unfortunately the weather was pretty wet and we came back to Mission Beach after a few hours. We stopped off at Innisfail for some shopping and then drove to our exchange home.
On the way back we spotted our first Cassowary bird - in the middle of the road!! Every time we tried to drive on he kept coming back on to our side of the road!!
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