Bloody Hell, not another island!

Our goal is to get to every island off the coast of Queensland. How are we doing?

This time it was Lady Elliot Island (LEI) which is 85 km. off the coast of Bundaberg. John had planned it all, another "not to be missed" place which we could access very easily. After the worst thunderstorm we've experienced in the early morning before our flight, we weren't sure we'd even have a flight. The power went out, the wind must have been blowing at 40-50 mph, and we were pretty sure 1-2 inches of rain had fallen. Our flight was at 8:40am and by the time we got up the weather had improved and we were on our way.

This is a charter flight which I could really get used to, no ID's, no XRay, and just walking onto to flight. We were in the air only about 25 minutes before the Island was there.

Bundaberg by air

The 2 tan plots are the Bundaberg Tennis Club where we play.

 We arrived on the Island by 9:10am and we were ready to get going snorkeling! 

LEI is a coral key, and the southern most island in the Great Barrier Reef.

If you see the strip that goes from side to side in the top third of the island, that is the runway where we landed. They have 4-5 flights daily from Bundaberg and Hervey Bay.  The big thing here is seeing the Manta Ray, which we could see from the air on descent. The rays are huge, 8-10 feet across, and 6 feet long. They are blackish grey on top and white on the underside. They come to the island to get cleaned, and feed. Up until just a week or so you could also see Humpback Whales doing their migration, the same path that we saw when we went whale watching in August and September.  The whales are gone now, but we are right at the cusp of seeing the turtles come and nest on the sandy beaches here and best of all Bargara.

http://www.ladyelliot.com.au/files/pdf/manta-rays-fact-sheet.pdf

We got to our room and changed into swimsuits so we could get into the water and start snorkeling. The weather wasn't great, cloudy and a bit cool(73 or so), but we thought the next day might be even cooler so let's get on with it! We headed to the far side of the island where the low tide doesn't make a huge difference. We saw a couple of turtles, Green Turtles which look brown, and lots of beautiful fish and coral. Because it was cloudy, the water clarity wasn't great, and I got cold so we finished our swim in about 45 minutes. We don't have an under water camera so no pictures to show.

Part of the mission of LEI is that it's eco-sensitive. In short it means you don't get fresh linens or towels daily, and you can't buy bottled water. That's not entirely true. They also have educational walks and lectures on the flora, fauna, and fish. We sat in on the Manta Ray talk which was a power point about the Rays here on the Queensland coast. Elana was the naturalist who spoke and she gave an interesting talk on them. We headed from there to a Rim Walk, which is a walk during low tide on the coral reef which is visible when the water is low. Elana lead us around giving us information about the sea life which was around as we walked.

As you can see, the weather wasn't sunny and warm!

We were a little disappointed with the knowledge base from the naturalist, she only identified about 10 different animals, which compared to other walks we've done, was pretty lame. We saw these starfish,

Blue Linkia Starfish

and loads of sea cucumbers. Some Red Eyed Crabs, a Moray Eel,

There were lots of these little crabby's around

We walked for over an hour on the broken coral skeletons that make up the rim, which the shallow edge of the shore where the waves crest. As we walked the naturalist lectured us on climate change and it's effect on the GBR. One effect (she said) was on the turtle population. The temperature of the sand where the eggs are laid determine the sex of the turtle hatchling, and if it's warmer you get more females. John remarked that would be a good thing, more females laying eggs and turtles being hatched. She didn't respond to that observation. There's no doubt that the Reef has been effected by the increase in tourism, sunscreens being one of the biggest chemicals its exposed to. It's a double edged sword here in Queensland in that you need the sunscreen to protect you from the damaging rays of the sun, especially through the shallow water when you snorkel. BUT, the coral doesn't like it so they ask you to apply it well before you get in so it's absorbed and not easily rinsed off. I'm not sure it doesn't rinse off whenever you apply it, but it's become a habit to get the lotion on first thing anyway, so if it helps the Reef, I'm all in.

http://www.ladyelliot.com.au/files/pdf/coral-fact-sheet.pdf

We returned from the walk and get ready for our dinner, which was served buffet style in the dining area. Unfortunately, dinner was a miss, the salad bar was tasty but the main course was beef ribs and they were so tough that you couldn't eat them. Scout and Bear would have loved those leftovers!

We were pretty tired from all the activities so we headed to our room, which was very basic, no TV or radio, or IPod dock. Luckily we brought books to read. 

I have yet to mention the biggest event on LEI, which was the migration of literally tens of thousands of birds. We are talking Alfred Hitchcock stuff here. The majority of them were Black and Common       Noddies,  black-naped, bridled, crested, roseate and sooty terns; pied and sooty oystercatchers; wedge-tailed shearwaters, silver gulls and the threatened red-tailed tropic bird.  If I were a serious bird watcher that would have been the highlight but it was too small an island for so many birdies! When the wind died down it stunk like, well, bird poop. And the squawking was non-stop, day and night. I guess there were some night only migraters who settled in looking for "that someone special" and they made noise all night.  Truly it was creepy as the pictures show.

http://www.ladyelliot.com.au/files/pdf/birds-fact-sheet.pdf

Common Noddy

I'm talking about you

Thousands of nests

Really spooky

Can you see what I mean? I think these were all that Common Noddy, too darn many of them!

This is the rare Red Tailed Tropic Bird


We did get awakened many times during the night as something was nested under our building. The buildings are all raised off the ground for drainage when the cyclones blow in. That leaves lots of real estate for the birds to build nests that are protected from the elements.  There were as many bird enthusiasts as snorkelers on the Island, and if anyone ever saw "Mr Hobbs takes a Vacation" with Jimmy Stewart, the birdwatchers we saw were dead ringers for the character in the movie.

If you've never seen this movie it's worth finding it and watching.

So you might have figured out that the birds in the country are FREAKING ME OUT! Ever since the Magpie swooping trauma I have been PTSD with any loud and aggressive bird. Enough, now you all (all 5 of you) know.

For the curious out there, we did see Manta Rays! They are incredibly lovely to see flying through the water with their entourage of cleaner fish trailing behind. They hung out by the reef rim where the bottom fell off quite abruptly, the naturalist said to look there and that's where we found them. Since the Island is known for Manta's it would have been a deal if we hadn't seen them. We also saw Green Turtles and maybe a Hawkhead Turtle. John saw a different Ray, a Cowtail Ray, in the lagoon where he also swam with a couple of Green Turtles.


       http://www.ladyelliot.com.au/files/pdf/sharks-and-rays-fact-sheet.pdf




All in all it was a fabulous couple of days, and except for a warning light going on during the flight home and our 10 year old pilot (Ok, he was a bit older than that but not much) flipping through the instruction manual to see what the red flashing light meant, we had a nice flight back to Bundaberg.

OK, he was even shaving. The light was a low fuel light, and the tank pumper met us on the air strip after we landed in Bundaberg. We were very glad to have landed without any issue, but you never want to see a flashing red light. 

Here is a couple of You Tube videos of Manta Rays and Turtles swimming, enjoy!

The Sand Island

We finally made it to Fraser Island, (pronounced F-razor) Queensland. This has been a location that everyone said we needed to visit. Fraser is the largest sand island in the world. It's about 70 miles long and 15 miles wide. It's literally a 2 hour drive from Bundaberg to get to the ferry that takes you there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraser_Island

The jetty where you get on the boat.

We left on Thursday from Bundaberg and had 2 1/2 days on the Island. We stayed at Kingfisher Bay Resort, a beautiful resort on the west side of Fraser. 

The room was not super deluxe but nice enough. The resort has a relaxed feel to it, lots of open areas and pools with bars, definition of a vacation destination!

We arrived with half a day to organize what we would try to fit into our 3 day, 2 night stay on the Island. We had booked an all day tour of the Island for Saturday, with a quick turn around to get on the last ferry Saturday evening. We decided to go to an informational meeting with one of the rangers at the hotel lobby. She gave us good info about walks around the resort and even talked up a walk to Lake McKenzie...which is 2 1/2 hours one way.  

The thing about a sand island is that, um...it's all sand. That means the roads are all sand, which makes them very tricky to negotiate in a car. I will go into that in a bit. But it also means that walking is tiring, especially up and downhill. I was not up for a 5 hour trek on sand, not that interesting without a guide, and really difficult going. We opted for a shorter walk along a path that took us to some interesting forests and a fresh water creek. This is some of what we saw.

The path

We heard there were brown snakes lurking about, just in case I had my snake stick, this would be good for Dingo's who got overly friendly.

We were hoping to see the wild dogs, 

                                          From the overlook we could see the bay and jetty.

 This is a tree with insects markings, the zig zags are from a moth larvae that lives under the bark until it matures, and emerges as a moth. Metamorphosis at its' best.

We learned from the ranger that you had to do this walk at low tide, otherwise it is impassable.

As you can see, the day was cloudy with rain predicted. Not exactly what we ordered but that's what we got.

This leads to our plans for a sunset drink and nibbles (and Australian term) at well, sunset. (5-6pm)  This little event was at the Jetty Bar which has a lovely view of the sunset.

We pre-ordered a prawn platter and anti-pasta platter and waited for the day to improve. Guess what! The day got worse, rain, and not just a sprinkle, started about 2pm and progressively got heavier as the afternoon wore on. We called to the Jetty Bar and asked to have the platters delivered to our room but no one was available to do that. Now what? John made a mad dash to the Bar, collected the platters and raced back. Not that water doesn't improve things, but the drenching of the nibbles did not improve them. Actually I don't think they would have been all that good without the rain, but it was really sub par. (We gave that a low mark on Tripadvisor)

If the night had been lovely, this is what we would have enjoyed. Oh well.......

The next day was our full day tour of the Island with a big 4 wheel drive truck. Renting a car or not was a big discussion point. When John asked people at work about driving on Fraser, the guys were all for it, lots of good fun mate. When I asked gals, it was, don't do it, asking for trouble. I looked into the cost of renting a high 4 wheel drive and it was $200 for 1/2 day and $400 for full day. That decided it, we could be shuttled about the whole day with someone else dealing with the road conditions for $300. Maybe our next time there we can try driving. 

Morning "Tea"

The Truck

We had a full bus with many German tourists on board. Our driver, Peter, spoke German and made his passengers feel right at home.

We are getting about with quite a bit of jiggling about, Peter saying the roads were in better shape due to the rain we had received the day before. If this was a better ride I can't imagine what it was like without the rain. Going through sand is similar to driving through snow, really deep snow. You sort of go sideways when it gets soft and deep, and then the 4 wheel drive kicks in and you bounce back into the rut and move forward with a jolt. The best driving was on the beach where this picture was taken. The speed limit on the beach was 80k/m, where the roads were 30k/m. The week we were there was right after the 2 week school holidays when there were 9000 campers on the Island. Without the 9000 campers the beach highway was very busy. There are obviously no lanes on the beach, and the tide being high or low dictate how much space there is to navigate. Much of the difficulty of driving on the beach is people getting stuck by the incoming tide.

 OOPS

Lots of high ruts to navigate

What happens when the levels on the beach changes.

We have a Rav 4 which does have 4 wheel drive but not enough clearance to get around on Fraser Island. (Even John agreed!)

This is what school holidays looked like on Fraser Island.

Skeleton of Maheno

This is the ship wreck Maheno which was a hospital ship among other things until 1935.

We had the option here to take a short plane ride over the Island to see what we couldn't from the land. It was amazing...

Our pilots

Da plane

Butterfly Lake

Heart Lake

 Shipwreck from above

Cool, huh?

We even saw a whale and her calf from the air.

The flight was only about 20 minutes but well worth the $75/person cost. I need to thank Theresa and John Seem who gave us a gift certificate for Kingfisher Resort before we left and we used it for this plane ride. One of the other land forms you can't really see from the ground are these 'sand blows' which are acres of sand that get blown across the island when the conditions are right.

But the really amazing thing was when we got back on the ground and saw these Dingos, mom and pups, just walking the beach and looking for food. 

This is a puppy.

Dingos are native to Australia, they are similar in looks to German Shepard's only blond. The dogs on Fraser are among the most pure as they are mostly breading with other Dingos. Here in Bundaberg you see what looks like Dingos but they are mixed with domestic dogs and aren't pure. They are beautiful, these young ones looked scrawny, and they were looking for food on the beach, but what a joy to see them!

www.ehp.qld.gov.au/wildlife/livingwith/dingoes/pdf/dingo-facts.pdf

You have to be careful when approached by a Dingo, never turning you back on them, but they should leave you alone. Mom with pups, that's a different story...we never got out of the truck to test that one.

After a nice lunch at the Eurong Resort on the east side of the Island, we resumed our afternoon ride and learned how Fraser Island was discovered and used for decades for lumber. This area was Aboriginal Land with about 800 Indigenous living there. The area was discovered rich with old growth lumber and was over forested, this making the lumber companies wealthy but leaving environmental scars on the Island. The lumbering industry ended its' time on Fraser in 1991 when Fraser was declared a World Heritage site and protected. 

http://www.fido.org.au/moonbi/moonbi108/Logging_Backgrounder.pdf

The last stop was Lake McKenzie, a fresh water lake close to  Kingfisher Resort. The lake is known for it's crystal clear water and silica sand beaches. The late afternoon is when the water is warmest and the sun at a cosy angle. It had clouded up a bit for us but it was lovely. I didn't go in the water, but John did, and he enjoyed it. (Reminded him of Lake Geneva in July!)

Had to bring our Sendik's bag here and take a picture for Karen Rader!

You can see the silica sand beach, it felt like powered sugar.

So our time was over and we had a quick turn around to meet the last ferry for Hervey Bay. Everyone said this was a "not to be missed" place and it is a beautiful piece of Queensland. We may or may not have time to get there again, but we are so glad we did get there.