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Published: July 23rd 2008
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Having spent the night in our campervan at Hervey Bay we woke up early to make our way to Tin Can Bay so we could go and feed the dolphins that come into the bay there every morning. Unfortunately we arrived about fifteen minutes too late and only saw the one dolphin, Harmony, who is still very young and not ready to be fed by the public. Harmony's father Mystique had been fed and had already left the bay. Feeling quite disappointed that we had come all this way and not managed to feed them, we decided we would stay the night in Rainbow Beach (where we were heading next), and as it was only 20 minutes drive from Tin Can Bay, we could come back easily the following morning for a repeat performance.
Rainbow beach is a small town and the name derives from the rainbow coloured sand dunes surrounding the area. We checked ourselves onto a nice campsite that had a pool and then went for a walk to check out the backpackers. I had read in someone elses blog that a guy called 'Matty Mudcrab' did free guided walks of the Carlo Sandblow from one of the
hostels, so we went to find out which one, and if we could join in. The first hostel we walked in 'Frasers on Rainbow' had a sign outside advertising Matty's walk! We went inside and met the man himself and told him he was famous, having discovered him online! After speaking to him for a while we left him alone to google himself and said we would return for his walk at 2pm. In the meantime we went for a walk along the beach and did some 'wave jumping' in the choppy sea which was fun. We went back to the campsite and swam in our freezing cold pool (for about 30 seconds!), had showers and had a lovely lunch before heading over to the hostel. There were only about 10 of us on the walk which was nice and on our way to the sandblow we stopped several times for Matty to tell us about the flora and fauna and enable us to sample some of the edible ones! This was great fun and I already felt like we had our very own Crocodile Dundee guiding us!!! My feelings were confirmed when we approached the edge of the national
park area and the forest and Matty told us about his skill at talking to the birds. He demonstrated this by whistling like a bird and then we would hear a response! It was extraordinary; he was certainly at one with the nature surrounding him.
Walking up to the sandblow was a tough challenge. Although it was only a 50m climb, it was very steep and walking up was nearly impossible as you'd put your foot into the sand and start sliding back down again...a case of 2 steps forward, one step back! But the view we got at the top more than made up for it! Also, Matty then allowed us to sit down for a while as he told us a bit of history and geography about the area, drawing a map in the sand to illustrate his talk which I found really interesting. Whilst we were listening to Matty's talk, an amazing thing happened....we experienced a sudden change in the weather; a small patch of drizzle followed closely by clear sunshine which produced a perfect rainbow across the Sandblow! We were witnessing a gorgeous Rainbow on Rainbow beach!!!
Carlo Sand Blow was named by Captain
Cook after one of his deck crew named Carlo. It's a huge sand dune that has been formed over many years of sand movement. After our talk with Matty we then walked down the sandblow to get the most amazing panoramic ocean view with Double Island Point in one direction and Tin Can bay and Fraser Island in the other direction, it was breathtaking. In this stunning location, Matty decided to demonstrate that there are many different coloured sands (hence Rainbow beach). He cleared an area in the sand and would run off and come back with a different coloured sand each time to make the perfect Rainbow in the sand!! It was a lovely and simple touch that we all found very interesting. Matty had been the perfect guide, he knew all about the area and the nature living and growing there. We absolutely loved the afternoon's walk and were very thankful for him to allow us to have an insight into his knowledge and experience. All this, and we had a stunning area to explore and a natural wonder to witness with the Rainbow and the sunset on our return. This was certainly one of the highlights of
the trip so I would thoroughly recommend anyone heading to Rainbow beach to take the time out to go on Matty's walk. On our return, Romana and I ate dinner at the hostel bar and stayed there for the evening, talking to Matty for a while and then enjoying the musical entertainment, including Romana's Karaoke!!!
So, our wonderful day was followed the next morning by a special visit to the dolphins at Tin Can Bay where we were able to HAND FEED(!) them for a small gold coin donation. The Indo-Pacific Humpback Dolphins have been interacting with residents and visitors of Tin Can Bay for 30 years. It all started with “Scarry” nicknamed due to the numerous rough edges along her dorsal and tail fins. Scarry was badly hurt when she came into the bay and was helped back to health by residents in Tin Can bay and then continued coming back. She later appeared with a young male dolphin, Mystique, believed to be her offspring. Scarry has not been seen since early 2003 but her son Mystique and girlfriend Patch still come in to the boat ramp to be fed and now their offspring Harmony is just starting
to come into the bay. They are only fed 10% of their daily food as they are still wild animals and need to catch their own food too. So they only get 30kg of their 300kg diet. If you are lucky and there are not many people there you can feed them more than once, which is what we did! It was truly an amazing experience putting the fish into Mystique's mouth. The Volunteers there were all really lovely and we witnessed yet another perfect Rainbow over the bay as it drizzled and the sun shone! It really doesn't get more perfect than this and Romana and I were buzzing from these couple of days for some time!
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Mum (again!)
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Back to nature
So pleased you are enjoying the natural world - you'll look at Norfolk through new eyes when you come home! Missing you loads! love you lots, Mum xx