Day 97

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So yesterday I went to Lady Musgrave Island on a day cruise. It’s an island made entirely of dead bits of coral, which then had seeds plant themselves on it. There is soil in the middle of the island but it’s made of dead birds, dead leaves and dead trees. How lovely. It’s the lowest point on the Great Barrier Reef, and given that my whole Australia trip has been mainly to see the reef, you can imagine my excitement yesterday morning (even though it was a VERY early start, and I’m not a morning person…)

A bus picked me up from the hostel, bright and early and the sun was shining. I didn’t want to jinx it by saying to ANYONE that it was going to be a lovely day. You’ve got to understand that the past week or so has been filled to the brim with heavy rain - it was even raining very hard the night before the Lady Musgrave day. I faffed around doing tickets and stuff, then got on the boat. As I was getting on the boat, the lady checking my ticket asked me if I had taken sea sickness medication “Pah,” I said, “I have never been seasick in my entire life”. She said, “Everyone says that” and let me get on board. It did worry me slightly when they included what to do when you throw up (notice the use of “when” instead of “if”) during their safety briefing. It was only when the boat hit open sea that I realised where they were coming from. It was a pretty big boat, and the swell was apparently 1m, which was enormous. The boat pitched and rolled like nothing I’ve ever been on before. I was fine though, for the first 20 minutes or so. The thing that made me feel sick was the smell of 40 odd people throwing up behind me. And there was no air in the cabin, so I felt sweaty, clammy and nauseous. When I was on the verge of saying hello to my breakfast, I asked to be moved to the outside platform at the very back of the boat. I was fine from then onwards (even though the guy next to me was throwing up repeatedly). It was a HELLISH journey over.

When we arrived, finally, we had tea and cakes/biscuits. I’ve discovered this Australian thing called a Lamington. These are my new favourite things EVER - they are squares of Victoria sponge dipped in chocolate and covered in coconut. They don’t sound as good as they taste. Apparently you can get them with cream too. I ate my body weight in Lamingtons, then was taken on a walk around the island. The second we got on the smaller boat to go to the island, the skies opened up (in such a familiar way) and we all got drenched, and cold. The rain did stop fairly soon after our arrival on the island, only reappearing every now and then to tease you and drum that fear of getting cold into your heart… On the way over to the island, I was sitting next to this guy (Rhys) on the boat who was a genuine Australian (haven’t met many of them at all) and we kept each other company for the rest of the day. I’m 99% sure that he and I were the only two people on the boat who were doing it on their own. He was doing a day trip from where he’s currently working (about an hour and a half away) but is originally from Perth. He lived in London for a bit, and has travelled a lot too, so we had a fair bit of common ground. It would have been a very lonely day had he not been there. We were given a tour around the island, learning about the birds who live in the trees, and the specific trees that grow on the island. The island was named after Lady Musgrave who apparently gave excellent tea parties, and that’s how come she merited such an honour. She never visited the island either.

We headed back to the pontoon and had lunch (yay, another all-you-can-eat event). I was very keen to get snorkelling straight away though. The coral reef forms a sort of wall around some of the sea by Lady Musgrave when the tide is low. This forms a calm lagoon, which is perfect for snorkelling in. Rhys and I headed off underwater. I managed to control my excitement more than in previous snorkelling trips, which definitely helped to reduce the amount of salt water swallowed. The coral was beautiful and multicoloured, just like in the books and brochures. I managed to find Nemo too, which was definitely a highlight of the day. Rhys and I took turns with the camera which means that I have loads more photos of me doing something than I usually do - when I upload this blog post I’m going to upload the best photos. We took around 260 photos, in probably about 2 hours. The waterproof case is fantastic, but it’s hard to tell sometimes which ones are good and which aren’t until you see them on the computer. There was a cleaning hole kind of thing where the turtles sat and had a turtle-wash, but when we arrived they had all disappeared.

An hour of snorkelling wears you out, so we went back to the pontoon after about that amount of time, faffed around. I discovered I had lost two of the rings I was wearing earlier through the gaps between the planks. One of the divers, a Swedish guy called Alex, REALLY kindly went and scuba dived down to get them for me. After that, we went back in the sea. Originally I was in a wetsuit because it was raining a bit, but the second time round I went just in my bikini, which was much nicer. It’s getting out of stinger season now, so it was pretty safe (as the ocean off Australia goes). There was a small boy who got stung, but it’s hard to tell how bad it was when they are that young. I can only assume it wasn’t that bad because he didn’t die, which is a fairly common side effect of many bitey/stingy things you can find in Australia (including a certain kind of shell you might pick up on the beach!!!).

When we went back in the water we found a stingray, and two turtles. That was very exciting. My snorkelling skills have improved enormously, and I now feel very comfortable free diving down to take a closer look at things. The first time I went snorkelling was probably two months ago - since then, I’ve also snorkelled with dolphins and in Byron Bay. And now I’m a very proficient snorkeler, you’ll be glad to know… The trip home was much better, and I grabbed some dinner with Rhys afterwards (snorkelling makes you HUNGRY).

One of the most exciting things I’ve learnt since I’ve been out here is the variety of different things you can do with a microwave. I grew up in a microwave-less home, and the other day someone showed me how to do a BAKED POTATO in a microwave!!! AMAZING!!! That will be my lunch today, and what a lovely lunch it will be indeed.

Today has been spent sunbathing and reading my book. What a hard life.

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Comments

[Mummy]

photos
Fantastic underwater photos!