Fraser Island trip

My cousin Elisabeth and her friend Robyn came to visit us from Victoria, Australia. Robyn is a native of Victoria and Elisabeth has lived in Australia for many years. It was wonderful to have a captive audience to answer all of our questions about Australia, like: what does “fair dinkum” mean; what’s a Yabo?; And why do some people go to the mall without shoes? (The answers are respectively: really!?; the Australian equivalent of a redneck; and because they are a yabo.)
It is a good thing that Elisabeth and Robyn are good sports because the weather did NOT cooperate with us at all. First off, we were originally supposed to meet them in Brisbane with Toboggan but the weather prevented us from heading south. They were very flexible and added a flight from Brisbane to Bundaberg (on top of their train ride from Wangaratta to Melbourne, and flight from Melbourne to Brisbane). It had rained pretty much every day since Christmas and it poured all day the day they arrived and just stopped long enough to get them from the airport to the dock and a dinghy ride to the boat. They arrived with all sorts of treats from Victoria…local wines, olive oil, nuts, chutney and lots of treats on which we nibbled all week.
We had planned to spend the week at Fraser Island which is across Hervey Bay from Bundaberg. The whole island is a national park and the largest sand island in the world. The day after they arrived the winds were still very high but we thought we would make our way down the river to the mouth 9 miles away so that we would be in a better position to leave the next day. The rain held off for our trip down the river but rained on and off for the rest of the day as we went for a walk and a swim. After a couple days we headed out across the bay although the winds were still up at 20 knots and there was a 2 meter sea in the bay.
As we arrived at Fraser Island, I was on the bow of the boat scouting out the best place to drop the anchor when I saw something very large in the water. I didn’t say anything to the girls because I wasn’t sure what it was and I wasn’t sure how squeamish they would be about swimming with something big out there. After we dropped the anchor, we were enjoying happy hour in the cockpit when we heard what at first I thought was a whale but I couldn’t see any spray. As we listened closer, it sounded more like someone surfacing after holding their breath a long time and letting out their breath in a loud puff. There were several of these noises around us and Robyn and Steve spotted a large head sticking out of the water. They thought was a seal. As the head came closer, we could see it was a very large turtle with a head the size of a small child and a huge shell to match. (We learned later that they were loggerhead turtles.) There were at least 4 of them and they stayed around us for the rest of the afternoon and right through the night. In the middle of the night, I went on deck to take down the flag because the wind was blowing so much, the flapping of the flag was keeping Steve and I awake. The turtles were still there and they were creating a green sparkly path through the water as they swam. They were reacting with the bioluminescence in the water. We have seen bioluminescence before when the wake of our boat stirs up the algae in the water but the glowing green turtles were really a sight to see.
The next day, during a break in the rain, we took the dinghy to shore but it started raining again before we got to the beach. Like I said, it’s a good thing Elisabeth and Robyn are troopers. We took a long walk down the beach following some dingo tracks but we never saw the dingo. The sand made a bizarre squeaking sound when we walked on it like the sound of cleaning windows. After a while, we saw a couple dolphins swimming in quite close to shore, apparently chasing fish. We followed them up the beach hoping they would come a little closer but they always stayed 100 feet off the beach. We also passed a couple of rays floating along in the shallow water.
The next day, we headed back to Bundaberg because the weather was still somewhat unsettled and we didn’t want to get trapped on the Island and have our guests miss their flight. It was a beautiful sail back with 25 knots of wind behind us and the seas 1 to 1.5 meters. It was a good thing that we left when we did because the wind was 30 – 35 knots the next day with 2.5 meter seas. On our return, we anchored at the mouth of the river and rented a car to drive 15 km to the Mon Repos Turtle Rookery which is the most significant loggerhead turtle nesting area in the South Pacific. We arrived at 6:30pm as instructed and waited until the turtles came ashore after dark to lay their eggs. Our turtle showed up around 10 pm. It was worth the wait. As the turtle was digging her 50 cm deep hole, the park ranger dug a bit of a trench behind the turtle so that we could see what was going on. The turtle’s flipper dug as adeptly as a human hand. Then we watched all 126 eggs drop into the hole like ping pong balls on bingo night. (She was just one egg short of the average number of 127 eggs laid). 50% of the turtles laid eggs in areas too low on the beach to survive due to sand erosion and this was one of those cases. After the poor exhausted turtle finished laying her eggs and filling in the hole and patting down the sand around the hole and dragged herself back to the water, the park ranger dug up the eggs and we helped move them to a new hole higher up the beach where they would be safe. This practice has resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of turtles being hatched at Mon Repos although the loggerhead turtle is still endangered. It was nice to give nature a helping hand.
The next day we headed back up the river to downtown Bundaberg, where Elisabeth and Robyn took us out for a fabulous Indian dinner. It was a real treat. Of course, the following day when they flew out, the sun appeared and it was a beautiful day. Oh well, we all had a great time in spite of the weather.