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Published: January 19th 2008
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Day 262 (14.12.07)
After our eventful journey of the previous evening we had a great night's sleep and woke in our roadside rest stop ready to make the rest of the journey to Agnes Water. We left around 6am but it turned out to be a little further then we'd calculated from our basic map and we only just arrived in time for the 10am start to our surf lesson. We met up with team Germany as planned and psyched ourselves up ready to hit the waves!
Surf lessons down the coast can be pretty expensive but we'd heard about a real bargain lesson with Reef 2 Beach Surf School in Agnes Water - just 16 dollars for a 3 hour lesson - and decided we really should give it a go. The lesson is basically open to whoever turns up and there were 30 people there for our lesson. The group is split into two and you share a board with a partner taking it in turns to surf and rest/snap pictures of the other one wiping out!
Down at the beach we were introduced to the art of surfing and given a verbal lesson which went
on rather longer then we'd hoped - we were itching to get in and have a go. Finally, after practising getting onto our boards on the sand, it was time to jump into the water and attempt to catch some waves. We had an absolutely fantastic time paddling hard, trying to work out which waves were the right ones to surf and making determined attempts to stand up. Its fair to say that Mark was rather better at this than Chrissie but she did manage to get up onto the board in her last session in the water. Both of us were extremely impressed with our efforts and could see how the sport can become addictive.
Team Germany joined us for some lunch at the tiny Town of 1770, named for the year that Captain Cook first set foot in Australia. After a brief stop we hit the raod in convoy to our next stop, Bundaberg, where the Australian Rum is made. Sadly we didn't have time to visit the distillery there and sample a little of the famous liquor as we had a date on the beach at the turtle rookery.
The beach at Mon Repos has
long been a nesting site for turtles and for a small fee you can go and watch the egg laying process guided by a ranger from the research centre. We arrived at the centre at about 7pm and spent the first part of the evening looking around the information part of the rookery. As we waited excitedly for the turtles to arrive on the beach we were given a fascinating talk and slide show by a ranger/researcher who'd worked at the centre in some capacity for about 40 years.
Before long a call came in from the rangers on the beach to say they had a turtle who'd made her way up the beach for our group to go and watch. The whole process is extremely well regulated to ensure that no stress is caused to the turtle and that she is not disturbed during the process. By the time we joined our turtle, a loggerhead over 1m long, she had already dug her body pit and was beginning to create a pit for the eggs using her back filppers. Once the pit was deep enough she began to lay her eggs into it. Turtles will lay up to
200 eggs approximately the size and texture of a soft ping pong ball. Once she has finished laying her eggs she begins to fill the hole back in with sand to disguise the position of the eggs. During this time the rangers will check for any tags, measure the turtle and tag if it is new to the beach as ours was.
She spent a long time burying her eggs and once she was happy that they were well and truly hidden she made her way slowly back to the surf and swam off into the waves. Over the next few weeks she may return to the beach another 4 or 5 times to lay more eggs at intervals of about 2 weeks. The hatchlings will find their way out of the sand they are buried in around January time and make chase straight for the sea. Only 1 in 1000 hatchlings will make it to adulthood (around 30-40 years of age) but if they do survive they will return to the area of their birth when they lay eggs in the future with a miraculous 'GPS' system that leads them back. The whole process was just incredible to
witness.
Once our turtle had left the area it was time to dig up the eggs. Our turtle had unfortunately not laid her eggs high enough on the beach and so they had to be relocated to give the hatchlings the best possible chance of survival. But first the eggs had to be found! During the egg laying the ranger will place a couple of markers next to the hole so that they can find the eggs once the turtle has hidden them but our turtle had managed to move these markers during her digging making the job very difficult indeed - especially in the dark! After some time and the eggs still proving elusive we were told that our rangers would continue digging but that there was another turtle just down the beach that had just finished and her eggs would also need relocating. We were able to watch this turtle finish covering her eggs and follow her down to the sea returning to find the rangers had dug down and found the eggs from this turtle. The eggs were counted and we were able to then carry the precious cargo up the beach to another hole that
had been dug by the rangers. The eggs were then reburied and left to do their stuff!
We left the beach at around 11pm, noting that our first turtle's eggs had eventually been found! It was an amazing and highly recommended experience.
We said goodbye to Team Germany and made our way about an hour down the road to a roadside rest stop for a much needed few hours of sleep.
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