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Published: February 14th 2008
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13th February 2008
The big storm has now passed but we are still having frequent showers. However, 30 degree rain showers do not seem too bad, they just cool you down a bit. There has been some flooding in the area and we saw some evidence of the floods where there was mud from the fields across the road. The first hundred metres of the sea is also turning a red colour as the earth from the land is washed into the sea by the small estuary near the campsite.
We got up early today at 5-30am and after a cup of tea strolled up the beach. The public are not allowed onto the beach until after 6.00am when all turtle activity has finished. We could see the tracks of the Logerhead Turtles going up the beach to scrape their nests and lay their eggs. There must have been a dozen seperate tracks up the beach mostly from different levels of the beach dependant on what time they arrived at the beach. Mother turtles are oblivious to the weather and carry on regardless but the turtle watching was cancelled last night as predicted. These female turtles are huge (1 metre in
length) and they look like rocks being washed up the beach.
We met a group of three girls who had been on the beach all night monitoring the turtles’ arrival and checking to see where they were laying their eggs. It appears that some turtles get it wrong and lay their eggs below the high tide mark which means that the baby turtles would drown as they need to be able to breathe inside their eggs to hatch and survive. If the girls see this happening they can dig the eggs up within the first two hours of them being laid and relocate them above the high tide mark. They have special areas to do this in but to relocate just one nest of 100 eggs can take up to two hours. The girls were volunteers who were here for a week which sounded great fun, I wished I'd known earlier, I would have had my name down. Bob is not so sure as the biting insects are getting a taste for him as well as myself and we are using vast quantities of anti-histamine cream and insect repellant.
The rain has started up again but not the wild wind
so I hope we can go onto the beach tonight.
After we had had breakfast this morning we went into Bunderburg and posted our travel log and then visited the ginger beer factory. Bunderberg is famous for its ginger beer and other brews all of which are brewed by the old fashioned fermentation method and are delicious. Of course we had to sample all the different flavours and were tempted to buy a few bottles to take back to our cabin.
We have just returned from the Conservation Park where the turtle tour was cancelled again due to the bad weather. This was mainly due to the road here being flooded and so park rangers and any other visitors could not get here. We had walked from the camp site. It was very disappointing and frustrating to know the turtles were there but we could not go on the beach to see them. As we have to leave tomorrow we shall not get another chance.
The next problem will be getting to Gladstone as the Bruce Highway is closed at the moment with floods. We have now made it to Gladstone despite floods. Unfortunately we could not divert to Agnes
Water, which is supposed to be very pretty, near where Captain Cook arrived in Australia, as the roads were flooded.
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Annette and Vern
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Eating well
Glad to see Bob is continuing with his diet, would hate to see him fade away. Hope the weather gets better for you soon, we could do with the rain here!