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Published: April 19th 2008
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Leaving Gladstone
Nice photo that avoids many of the smoke stacks First day at the Reef, and I'm pooped. The bus trip was very long and uncomfortable, because the coach wasn't meant for long travel the seats didn't recline and there were no reading lights. I basically slept in about 5 or 6 different positions, only to wake up briefly when we stopped for stretch/pee breaks (for which I promptly went back to sleep again). Sleeping was awkward and left me achey...
Finally, after 7 hours in the bus, we reached the glorious Gladstone. Basically, it's an industrial place and pretty much looks the part--lots of smoke stacks, sort of a little run-down looking, but one of the key producers of aluminum (said in Oz 'al-you-mini-um,' not the American 'al-oom-in-um') and the southernmost end of the natural range of the saltwater crocodile (which we didn't see... fortunately? I kinda wanted to see one, but seeing the industry, I'm not surprised there were none around). After a glorious brekkie at McDonald's, the bus dropped us off at the ferry terminal parking lot. We quickly unloaded so the driver could catch some sleep before having to pick up the next wave of Heron Island MARS-ers who were returning to UQ later that afternoon.
Inside the ferry
The seats are comfy, trust me We were supposed to take the ferry at 9:30 (I think), but were delayed until 11:30 because some passengers, who were resort guests, had their plane delayed. Let me explain... there are two ways to get to Heron. You can be like most people and catch the ferry over, which is a two hour ride that is not for those prone to seasickness, or you can take the Helicopter, which is expensive, classy, and fast. As there were 52 of us poor students, we were taking the ferry. Additionally, once you get to the island, which is quite small, you either work at the Heron Island Research Station, or your a guest at the classy Heron Island Resort (which is ridiculously expensive--I was told $500 a night!?). We were staying at HIRS (Heron Island Research Station). HIRS is a bit of an interesting mess at the minute as it burned down last year, literally just after UQ had finished renovating and refurbishing the station (evidently the fire was caused by a gecko chewing through an electrical wire... I don't know if I believe that--I can't picture geckos having massive teeth, but that's what they told us). More on that
Tankers
Waiting to pick up shipments at Gladstone.. later.
Anyways, back to my story. The ferry had been delayed, so we all sat around in the park near the ferry terminal, napping, playing cards or chatting. I ended up bringing out the pack of cards that I'd brought (I learned from the Moreton Bay trip that cards are the fastest way to make friends), and met a bunch of new people playing Golf, Egyptian Rat, BS, Go Fish, and other various card games. It was a good time.
When the ferry finally came in, we were loaded last (resort guests get priority treatment everywhere on the island and have privileges over labbies, which rather frustrated me... 'paying guests' get rights. We had paid as well, obviously not as much, but still! >__<). We had some movies about Heron to watch that were playing on the ride over--I managed to stay awake for the first one (the history of the Island, Resort and Lab Station) but totally crashed during the middle of the movie about the fish that live around Heron. However, I did learn that Heron Island is a coral cay (basically, it formed because coral reef grew out of the water and wore down into sand), it was passed over as a bird guano mining site back in the day, but was the site of a turtle soup cannery in the 1920-30's (ie: catch the sea turtles that nest there and chop them up into soup. Yum?), and the original resort took over the buildings that were abandoned by the soup factory, and HIRS is the longest running coral reef research station in the world.
After the two hour ferry ride (for which I slept about 1/2 of), we landed at Heron and were the last to unload (paying guests first). A quick intro to the island by the staff, an intro to the kitchen by chef Maggie (who is a total kitchen Nazi; honestly I don't think I've ever been quite as afraid of anyone else... and I even like Kitchen Staff, having been one for many a year!), dropped our stuff off into our assigned tents and finally ate lunch (it was about 3 PM, we'd had brekkie at McDonald's at 7 AM). After lunch, we went for our first snorkel in Shark Bay.
We didn't see any sharks in Shark Bay (but they usually hang out there), but we did see heaps of rays and our first corals and tropical fish. Some of the highlights: giant cowtail rays (which are massive, a wing span of about 5 feet), a school of about 50-75 whiptailed rays (which were like a wall of rays in the water--fantastically beautiful to watch them all swim together), a sea hare (nudibranch, or sea slug; these ones aren't colorful but to make a lovely magenta ink when you pick them up and bother them, which we did. ^__^), heaps of beautiful fish and colorful corals, cleanerfish doing their job on some large snappers, and a huge coneshell (yikes! coneshells are highly posionous snails, and a bite will do quite a job on you).
We got back for dinner, watched a slideshow that included some of the animals we had/would see around Heron, and then I proceeded to go to bed and collapse. It had been quite some day!
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