Australia

2nd March

We woke up early for our double timed day at 6am and saw a Kurling (one of the island birds) just outside our tent.

We got going at 7:30am to drive to the other side of the island along the beach road and sand tracks, easy to get stuck even in a 4WD.

The first stop was to the only rock on this island which housed a lighthouse, built by criminals. It was only a 5 minute walk up the rock to the museum (about the lighthouses family history, construction and the wildlife on the island) and the views. Apparently you could see sharks, dolphins, rays, whales and turtles from this viewpoint but none had surfaced for us today. Being mosquito central we got inside the museum quickly where we saw our first huntsman spider.

We then drove on to the famous Honeymoon Bay and Champagne Pools.

We walked over the headland to the bay first and you could see instantly why it got its name.

It was beautiful and the sea so warm with fun waves – only the current was once again very strong. Being our morning bath it wasn’t the worst place to be.

As we only had an hour ish after about 30 minutes we headed back over to the champagne pools. Aptly named as the waves hit the rocks first causing a title wave of the white horses bubbles to come over into this sandy pool.

Our guide explained that the aboriginals used these natural pools to trap fish washed in by the waves. Very effective considering Josh tested the strength of the waves well, I did too and but, it nearly knocked me over.

We think the guide felt sorry for us as he said he could see us enjoying ourselves and so ignored the time and found us some huge Cowrie shells whilst beach combing.

As well as the previous shells he also found a Nautilus shell, too big to carry no matter how much I wanted it. It got put back in the Sunshine Coast.

Finally, we headed back to the beach passing a couple of White Breasted Eagles purched on tree branches, waiting for the sea to bring in some food.

At the beach the guide took the new people off to sand board and let us Kayak around Tangalooma wrecks by ourselves. This creates a whole different view of the fish in the water and the sea seemed much clearer too. Afterwards we headed to have lunch with the rest of the group.

The go-pro then started to play up when it was time to go snorkelling a second tome around the wrecks. This was annoying as we saw 5 baby sting rays on the way out to the wreck, me and Josh hung back for Josh to see them and our guide kept urging us closer to him. We half ignored him… hehe. On swimming around the wreck it was the same as before, guide threw bread and the fish swarmed. However, this time my bum must have looked tasty for I got nibbled twice! We also saw a huge swarm of 30+ black parrot fish and very colourful parrotfish (rainbow or spotlight maybe).

A few of us were swimming abit further from the wrecks edge so he told us to get closer to see things. As I swam over the edge of the wreck a wobbygong shark swam out right beneath me and continued to swim below me as I swam. All the others could hear were squeals of delight coming from me. Very annoyed I didn’t have my go-pro but it was insane! I’ve always wanted to swim with a shark in the wild and now I’ve literally swim above a shark going in the same direction. It settled on the sand next to the wreck as everyone else caught up.

Our snorkelling had to end and all to soon we were back on the ferry heading towards the mainland, finding ourselves once again in Bunk Brisbane’s Hostel.