Airlie Beach is the gateway to the 74 forested islands of the Whitsunday group which are scattered between the mainland and the outer Great Barrier Reef. Here we splashed out on a 4 and a half star caravan park (which had a swimming poool, mini golf, outdoor cinema etc) and two day trips out on the water.
Our first was to 'Reefworld' - a commercialised floating platform on the reef. The Great Barrier Reef is over 2000km long and actually consists of 900 individual reef systems. 'Reefworld' has an underwater viewing chamber, a glass bottomed boat, diving and snorkelling stations, changing rooms, showers, a sun deck, cafe and souvenir shop. It wasn't exactly the experience we'd been looking for but is a nice safe way to explore the reef. Which was just as well. On the day we visited there was a really strong current ripping through the snorkelling site, which caused us to cling onto the rope trails that are provided for novices with all our strength. The current was pulling away from the boat so we were swept quickly over a lot of the coral on the way out, and on the way back were so exhausted from struggling against the flow that we just wanted to get back to the boat. However, we did see some giant clams (over a metre long) doing their filtering thing. After stuffing ourselves on the buffet lunch we both feel asleep so missed the afternoon's snorkel and just woke up in time for the last glass bottomed boat ride of the day. Whoops!
The following day we took a luxurious sailing trip (alcohol included!) on a big mauve catamaran around the islands. The highlight of the day was a visit to the stunning Whitehaven beach - it's had to believe that such perfection exists. We also did more snorkelling and saw schools of big Parrot Fish getting serviced by little cleaner fish darting around their gills.
On leaving Airlie Beach, we detoured to the lush Eungella National Park and found a lovely campsite with its own private creek in which we cooled off. Angie had her toe nipped by the resident Yabby - a freshwater crayfish. The campsite owner brought out his pythons for our entertainment. He carried around his neck a female, but he also brought out a heavy looking sack. In that was a large male that he had found! He was showing it off to us when suddenly a stream of liquid came flooding out of its tail end - it took a second to realise it was having a pee. Then, the stream turned brown and lumpy. It proceeded to flick its tail around and spray poo (just as you would imagine it coming out of a hosepipe) all over the owner and onto the nearest bystanders! It was hilarious and very smelly. At dusk we went down to a recommended nearby river to spot some platypuses. This is one of the most reliable areas to see them in the wild. Well, we saw a lot of cockatoos and thousands of tiny baby frogs that scattered away from our footsteps as we made our way along the bank but no platypuses. Probably didn't help that we both took books to read, so not much looking was done!
The next morning we did a particularly lovely rainforest walk up to a gorgeous swimming hole at the base of a waterfall. A couple were already there when we arrived and showed us a turtle and big fat eel that they had been feeding sandwiches to. We thought twice about getting in with the eel, but it was so humid and the water so deliciously cool that we took the plunge. While Angie was getting undressed, she dropped the van keys into the water just where it was overflowing out of the pool and down some rapids. By the grace of her guardian angel, the keys wedged between two rocks and Darren managed to retrieve them, but it was a bit too close for comfort!
After a long day of driving, covering 400km, we pulled up at a village called The Caves, just in time to join a tour to the nearby 'Bat Cleft'. At this time of the year, 80% of Australia's population of female Little Bent-Wing Bats raise their young in this dome shaped underground cave. On the walk up to the site we learnt how it was saved from open cast mining by conservationists, in the longest running environmental battle in the country's history - 35 years. We arrived at the cave entrance at sundown and were immediately overwhelmed by the ammonia from the bat's droppings wafting through the air. We watched a little group of rock wallabies watching us as we got harnessed up, prompting Darren to ask if we were expected to abseil the 70m down into the cave! In fact, the harness was just to keep us safe as we took it in turns to peer into the entrance and look down the narrow space between rock walls where the bats were streaming out.
Over 200,000 come out to feed at dusk at this time of year, and invariably while you are standing there, one or two of them collide with your body or full on in the face as Darren experienced. However, they feel very soft and furry and it is only slightly unsettling! Hanging about just around the entrance and in the bushes nearby we saw 7 or 8 snakes - carpet snakes, pythons and tree snakes. They literally grab the bats out of the air as they fly past. It's a pretty amazing sight. On the way back we saw some big round Orb spiders and marvelled at the intricate webs they had spun while we were occupied with the bats.
(Angie:)
My obsessive desire to see a Manta Ray, or any kind of ray for that matter, made me book a third trip out to the Great Barrier Reef - a day at Lady Musgrave Island. The island was named after the wife of a captain. Apparently she held 'outrageous tea parties'. We spent a long time speculating what could have been so outrageous about them!
The trip out to the island was rough to put it mildly. It was like being on a rollercoaster for 90 mins. Everyone was told to stay in their seats and the crew hovered around wearing rubber gloves and relieving people of their freshly filled sick bags! I wasn't feeling a 100% but I concentrated on the horizon, tried to relax into the movement as my stomach felt like it had been left on the ceiling and amused myself by watching the less fortunate. That was OK until the guy sitting behind me joined their ranks, and was very noisy about it.
On arrival in the calmer waters of the turquoise lagoon we got an hours snorkelling over a coral drop. I was told that it was very unlikely that I would see a Manta Ray as the tide was too low. I felt a little disappointed but it was a good session anyway - the most memorable sight was a 2m long Potato Cod which hung about under the boat, but there was some nice coral - patches of flourescent orange, green and blue - and lots of colourful fish including some large Moorish Idols.
After lunch we took a guided walk on the island to see the bird life. We were invited to snorkel off the beach and from a not particularly promising looking area, I had 2 hours of the best snorkelling I've ever experienced. It started with the sighting of a blue-spotted ray (hurray! A real live ray at last - not particularly big but with pretty bright blue spots and more importantly a willingness to pootle around in the sand while I floated overhead), moved onto a trumpetfish (a strange looking long narrow fish with a head like a seahorse), gained momentum with an Eagle Ray (a sleek bluey-black ray with a body the shape of a bird in flight, 2ft in diamater but with a tail about 3 times that length), speed up with two beautiful green turtles chilling out ontop of some coral, virtually took off with a huge stingray (the size of a dinner table with a thick long tail), touched the sky with a Wobbegong Shark (a 3m long bottom-feeding shark that was skulking around under a rock ledge) and climaxed with a MASSIVE loggerhead turtle that let me follow him and kept turning around to look at me with expressive eyes set in a head the size of a football. Wow. I was a happy girl after that and the fact that I hadn't seen a Manta Ray didn't seem significant at all.
While Angie was on her day trip, Darren hired a mini-chopper for the afternoon. It was basically a moped made to look like something better. Its top speed was 55kmph but it was fast enough for a bit of fun. He drove around the area humming the classic Easyrider theme, found a nice beach to relax on and then collected Angie from the marina. He drove her out to a headland for some nice views and a look at the plaque where Captain Cook first landed in 1770. In fact they are so proud of this, that the town was renamed '1770' in the 1970s.
That evening we visited Mon Repos Turtle Rookery for our second night-time wildlife viewing session. It is the largest nesting site in Australia and one of only two sites in the South Pacific for the endangered Loggerhead turtle. We visited at the time of year when laying is coming to an end and hatching is mid-flow. We were extremely lucky and saw both fascinating events in one evening. When we arrived signs informed us that visits can take up to 6 hours - and ours did - but it was worth every second of the wait.
We were first taken to watch a female turtle (about 4 ft long) laying her eggs. They are very susceptible to being disturbed in the early phases on nest making, but by the time we were let onto the beach, she was in mid flow of popping out her 100 or so eggs and seemed totally oblivious of the onlookers. The researchers were measuring her shell (even chipping a barnacle off it) and checking her identification tag on her flippers and she just carried on laying. She had a big section at the back of her shell missing, caused by a shark bite. The females lay an average of 5 clutches of eggs in a season and store sperm from up to 8 different males in their bodies so each clutch of eggs will have more than one father. They dig a 30cm deep chamber in the sand and plop the eggs into it. We all got to hold one of the eggs - they are very similar in appearance and texture to a pingpong ball, and unlike hen's eggs have a flexible leathery shell.
After she'd finished the laying and started to fill in the nest with sand (spraying it over those onlookers that were too close, including Darren!), we were told we were allowed to take photographs. Suddenly 30 camera flashes went off in close succession and gave us a good idea of what it must be like to be a celebrity at a premier! We watched her go back down the beach and disappear into the inky water, leaving her babies to fend for themselves from now on.
We returned to the centre, ticking off another oz wildlife sighting on the way - a cheeky little bandicoot - and settled down to wait for news of a hatching. We agreed to wait until 9.30, then extended it to 10 and then to 10.30 - after we'd waited that long we might as well wait a little longer - and then finally at 10.45 we got the news we wanted. When we arrived at the site, two had already emerged from the sand. In total, only nine cute little hatchlings came out of the nest. Unfortunately most of them were not fertilised. Of every 1000 hatchlings, only 1 will survive to adulthood, so our little batch didn't seem to have very good odds. Some of the onlookers stood in a line down the beach to guide the hatchlings to the water with their torches. When some went off course, they were picked up and set back on track. It all seemed to be interfering with nature, but as hatchlings can get preyed upon by crabs and seagulls before they've even got to the water, this little bit of help seemed to be a good thing.
It was all very special and magical. Their decline in numbers is tragic - part of the problem is that although they can live to 150 years, they do not reach sexual maturity for 30 years. This is a long time for them to avoid sharks, boat propellors and ingesting plastic waste.
Travelling south through Queensland we are gradually getting into more and more developed areas. A lot of the state is still very green, but everywhere land is for sale and buildings seem to be going up all over the place. In fact, Australia recently overtook Brazil as the country with the fastest rate of forest removal - and Queensland is the worst offender in Australia. Oh dear.
We have been lucky and not had much rain since leaving far north Queensland. But just like the UK at the moment, they desperately need it. Instead it's been one sweltering day after another. Our van has no air conditioning and limited circulation so its been soooo hot at night that we've had to sleep with towels next to us to remove the perspiration regularly - nice!
Our van has a wire mesh safety guard wrapped around the front to protect the windscreen, from large road kill we presume. However, all that it's done so far is obscure Angie's view of the road as she peers over the steering wheel (she looks very small driving such a big vehicle) and collected dozens of insects that are cruelly pinned onto it while innocently fluttering across the road - we've had a delicate red dragonfly, many beautifully-coloured butterflies, and even a stick insect. By the time we can stop to rescue them, some of them haven't made it and those that have are miles away from home. It makes us sad, but does give us something to look at during the long monotonous drives!
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