Day 98 - Bundaberg & Mon Repos Turtles - Sunday 22nd January 2012

Our bus was due to leave Hervey Bay at 1pm so we chilled in the morning with the guys and watched cruel intentions in the hostels TV room until it was time to leave, say our goodbyes and get on the bus.

Once on the bus it only took us a few hours to get to Bundaberg. We were staying in an posh lodge as we'd got a deal on wotif.com and it had worked out as the same price as staying in a hostel - the only downside is that lodge's don't pick you up from the bus station and so we wondered around for a bit trying to work out where it was. We at last gave up and asked a lady if she knew the way; she was so lovely and told us to get in and she'd take us as it was still a bit of a walk. So we loaded our bags in her trunk and she drove us over to our new pad for the night all whilst her pizza's in the front that she'd just bought were getting cold. We arrived at the lodge and thanked the lady for all her help to which she replied "no drama's, enjoy Bundy!" What a lovely lady!

We carried our bags into the lodge and read our message on the directions to get to our room (the reception is based somewhere else for some reason); Adam went to room 4, as directed, only to find a French women in there. When he explained that it was our room she invited him in to sit on the bed with her!! He returned to me looking very scared! We called the reception and they explained there had been a mix up, apologised and said they would upgrade us to the suite - result! So we ended up in a double room with our own sitting room, free Wi-Fi and en suite with toiletries for $80!

We chilled in the room for a bit before heading out for our 6pm meet to get the shuttle bus to Mon Repos beach for the turtle watching.

Mon Repos beach is home to the largest concentration of nesting marine turtles on the eastern Australian mainland and supports the most significant nesting population of the endangered loggerhead turtle in the South Pacific Ocean. So as you can probably tell I'd read quite a bit about Mon Repos beach and the turtle hatching but it seemed that no one really made the stop there out of all the travellers we'd met. As a result it seemed that the transport to get to the beach from Bundaberg wasn't very well set up - it basically consisted of a man who charged $30 each to get in a minibus with several other people (yes $60 for us both to go 12 km there and then back - that's £40 for a total of 15 miles and a 15 minute drive there and then back in a mini bus!! That's rivalling the black cabbies in London - Australia is not cheap!). To add insult the guy was a bit all over the place and didn't seem to talk much sense. Anyway we made it to Mon Repos successfully and were told by the most expensive cabbie in the world that he would be waiting by the tree in the car park - seemed simple enough. We made our way into the Mon Repos visitors centre and waited with a cup of coffee and a hotdog, for the doors to open. There were quite a lot of people waiting - it seemed they all had their own transport. Once we were in we made our way through the centre and read up on all the info on turtles before sitting down in the outdoor auditorium to watch a video on turtles. 5 minutes into the video and our group was called up for a sighting on the beach - we were very impressed, especially as we'd been told we could be waiting all night.

We all gathered in our group and made our way down to the beach in the pitch black; after walking for about 5 minutes our ranger stopped, gathered us in a circle and explained that we were going to see a group of hatchlings make their way down to the water. Everyone gave an ohhhhhhh noise like at a firework display! The hatchlings had emerged the day before and had been taken to the research centre to be measured and so tonight they planned to let them go on the beach but not before letting us have a stroke!

The ranger made her way round the circle but before she could get to us there was a commotion to our left which stopped her in her tracks; we all went off to see what was happening only to see a natural set of hatchlings emerge from the sand and start their journey down to the sea. It was unbelievable to see it happening and we all watched with open mouths as the little turtles (no bigger than half my hand) scurried down the sand to the sea by the light of the ranger's torch. Apparently we were very lucky to have witnessed the natural hatchlings especially as this was mainly nesting season and it was not in full blown hatchling season as it takes 8 weeks for the young turtles to emerge from their eggs once they are laid by the mummy turtle!

Once all the hatchlings had made their way to the sea we all gathered again in our circle to touch and look at the baby turtles. They are soooooooooooooooooo cute and constantly wave their flippers about. We took loads of pictures and the ranger gave us lots of information on the turtles - apparently the sex of the baby turtles is determined by the temperature of their nests. So the warmer sands of Mon Repos beach produces mainly females whilst the nearby Lady Elliot Island with white coral cooler sand produces mostly men! The rangers have a little saying "the girls are hot………….the boys are cool" - I quite like that saying! She also told us that only 1 in 1000 baby turtles survive to maturity (30 years - s*** that's me this year and Ad supposedly reached his maturity 2 years ago!) even though each mum turtle lays about 120 eggs. When the baby turtles are born they automatically program in the magnetic fields of the earth and so when they are ready to breed and nest they make their way back to where they were born - so back to Mon Repos beach 30 years later! It's amazing stuff and I quite seriously expected David Attenborough to be lurking about in the background somewhere……………

With the next set of hatchings set free to the water our tour was finished and we made our way back to the visitor centre. On the way we watched the stars and saw a couple more satellites and 5 shooting stars but still no moon so I asked the guide and apparently for certain months of the year the moon is not visible from this part of the Queensland coast!

We got back to the car park and surprise, surprise the minibus and insane bus driver was nowhere to be seen. Ad got out his phone and called him; he was 20 minutes away. Whilst we stood waiting a ranger from the centre came out and asked if we wanted to go back out on another tour - a mum turtle had been spotted making her way up the beach to start nesting and apparently it was only a small group of 10 going to see if. We jumped at the chance and completely forgot about our ride - oopps, I'll come back to that one…….

So back on the beach and a 15 minute walk in the pitch black and we arrived at our mummy turtle. She had already dragged herself up the beach and was in the process of scraping away the surface sand to form a body pit in which to put her eggs in. It was a long process but absolutely fascinating especially when she was digging her egg chamber with her hind limbs - she used each one in turn and they actually act like a hand by cupping out the sand and putting it on the surround beach. Once she'd finished this she started to lay her eggs and once this was done (about an hour later) she started the process of covering up the nest. During all of this we stood around, measured her, touched her shell and took photos and she didn't even blink! She was massive - measuring 101 cm in length and weighing 140 kgs, that's about 23 stone! With everything done she started her long descent back to the sea and poor love, she looked exhausted! She had positioned her nest in the right area and so the rangers were happy to let nature do the work and so off we went to another nest which needed relocating due to it not being in a good spot. When we arrived the rangers were already digging the eggs back out and digging another nest further up the beach to relocate the eggs in. This meant that we got the opportunity to touch the eggs - they were like little ping pongs and slightly spongy to the touch.

Exhausted and a bit cold, we headed back to the visitor centre - it was 1.30am! It was only when we got back to the car park that we realised we hadn't phoned the mini bus guy to say we were going back in and wouldn't be in the car park. Oh dear. I called him and he wasn't happy and when he turned up 20 minutes later he proceeded to rant at us for the whole journey home about how it wasn't worth his while. We apologised for not calling him back but explained that he had told us when he dropped us off that he would be waiting in the car park all night (he didn't seem to remember that part - convenient some might say) - we also added that $60 to drop and pick 2 people up is not bad money but left it at that as couldn't be bothered to ruin our amazing evening by arguing with him. Back at our lodge we looked through our photos and fell into a lovely sleep and dreamt of baby turtles!