Tuesday 13th Life on the Ocean Wave

This morning travelled about 130 km to Gladstone, a town about as picturesque as Methil, where we caught the ferry to Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef. The weather was more typical of Queens park than Queensland, with steady rain and a high of 19C. The ferry is a modern catamaran, air conditioned and quite ritzy. Rosena even got her own sick bag but didn't need it. Dave went up on top to take photos and got soaked in the process and because the cat was bouncing up and down the pics were no good so have a view of the island taken as we left.

After landing we got settled into our cabins and had our picnic lunch while watching the rain, and then spent a bit of time finding out about what was going on. We discovered that the phone lines and internet to the island were down and no one knew when they would be fixed. We hired the equipment to do a bit of beach snorkelling, the girl in the shop was very helpful and Rosena the novice felt cheered. We also were able to spend a bit of time birdwatching from our verandah - there is no shortage of our feathered friends here.

On our way to dinner with John and Anne we thought we would try and find the turle hatching area but were distracted by the sight of huge manta and sting rays clearly visble in the water from the boardwalk. The mantas attracted the reef sharks which were also sizable and numerous. One of the group of watchers then noticed that there were some turtles swimming in towards us too, it was a truely wonderful interlude, Rosena was especially excited by all of the sightings.

After an enormous buffet supper we headed back to the cabin for the night, accompanied by the most tremendous banshee howling made by mutton birds (aka wedge tail shearwaters). No wonder the resort supplies earplugs in the rooms! The day's biggest downside was that we discovered that the island had lost its internet connection and that there was no mobile phone signal this far out from the mainland.