Heron Island, Part 1: April 1-2

We took an overnight chartered bus from Brisbane to Gladstone Harbor, as the first part of our journey to Heron Island.  We stopped twice on the way – once at a rest stop, and once at Maccas for breakfast (I had them make me an Egg McMuffin without the bacon).  The trip was about 7 hours, and I slept for nearly all of that (longer than any night in the hostel!).  I had my own set of 2 seats to myself, which probably helped.  When we got to the harbor at 7 am, the bus driver dropped us + our stuff in the parking lot, and informed us that the ferry didn’t leave until 11 a.m.  This was the first time we had heard that we were supposed to entertain ourselves in a parking lot for four hours.  I ended up taking a walk up to a lookout point with some of the other students, which was nice if hot, and finished “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” which had a sad ending.

Our group in the Gladstone Harbor parking lot

I never get seasick.  I have thoroughly enjoyed every ferry or boat trip I have ever taken, no matter how choppy the water or how small the boat.

The ferry to Heron Island proved me wrong.

It was two of the most miserable hours I have ever spent.  Our tickets were the cheapest you could get, which meant that our seating on the ferry was on the bottom deck, inside.  We weren’t supposed to go on deck or up a level.  The winds were particularly brutal on this day, and our two-hour trip across the open ocean was horrible.  The waves smacked the boat around, as if we were on a roller coaster.  People who tried to stand had nearly no hope of keeping their balance, and were lifted into the air and slammed back down again every time the boat hit a big wave.  I was incredibly nauseous, and spent the entire ride thinking that I was going to throw up like some of my fellow travelers (no one from my group).  It was awful.  Even the people who had taken seasickness medication were feeling horrible.

Our destination, however, was worth the suffering.  Heron Island is GORGEOUS!  It is very small, and sits in the middle of a coral reef (with another reef nearby).  There is a UQ research station on one part of the island, and a small resort on the other part.  The ocean is a beautiful pale, pale aqua near the shore, because it is so shallow, and deepens in color the farther out from the island you go.  We took a walk around the island as part of our class on the first day – to look at the sedimentation patterns, and other geological and biological features.  The easiest way to describe it is to picture the island as a series of concentric rings.  The outermost ring is the beach, with particles that are not well mixed (i.e. big rocks close to the water, and sand that gets finer as you go up the beach, or right down by the water).  Basically, it looks like a picture postcard of a tropical island beach.  

The next ring in from the beach consists of Australian-type vegetation – sparse, with big trees that have thin, downward-hanging leaf-like-structures.  Finally, in the center of the island is a dense, moist forest, where it is like walking through a jungle.  The trees have huge leaves, and there are birds everywhere.  One type of bird (the noddy tern) builds nests in those trees out of fallen & decaying leaves + their own excrement to stick the leaves together.

 A Noddy Tern, with the characteristic white marking on its head

We went to the harbor on the island, and saw many sea creatures in the shallows.  Huge rays (cowtail (they are kind of patchy like cows) and eagle), black reef sharks (only one or two), and several turtles.  We weren't allowed to go in the water, because they’ve been having a minor jelly problem, which meant that we needed to wait for our stinger suits to arrive.  We went back to the harbor later, on our night walk.  Saw many of the same types of creatures under red light – but there was this HUGE loggerhead turtle.  Maybe 4 feet across?  It came up to the surface several times while we were standing there, and it was amazing to watch.

We also had a great amount of luck on our night walk, and got to watch a lost baby sea turtle figure out how to climb over the rocks on the beach to get to the ocean.  It had about 30 people cheering it on (because some of the resort folks were having a party nearby).  It struggled, and got turned around or flipped over a few times, but it finally made it.  It was an awe-inspiring experience, and I felt a sense of pride and accomplishment – even though I did nothing but watch and send it good thoughts, and its likelihood of survival in the ocean is unfortunately not very good.

On our second day on the island, we went on a reef walk.  We waded and clambered all the way out to the reef edge, which was very far away!  The water was up to our upper thighs, in places.  We saw a lot of really interesting creatures – a lot of sea cucumbers, royal blue sea stars, a “pincushion” sea star, eels, a shark (which we caught and held momentarily), grazing crabs, sea hares that squirted purple ink, Christmas tree worms (orange, red), fish, many different types of coral…  When we got farther out, we had to walk on top of the dead coral, because it was so densely packed – the coral makes a shelf about a foot high off the sand.  Unfortunately, some parts of the coral were less stable than others.  I fell through the coral in a fragile place, and it scraped me up.  It was like quicksand – everything around it was fragile too, so when I tried to get back up on top, I fell through again and again (about 5 times in total).  The scrapes didn’t hurt overmuch, but I had to put this orange antibacterial substance on it when I got back, because coral scrapes can get infected easily.  We saw jellies – little ones, purple or brown.  This was not comforting at all, and was a reinforcement of the reason why we were not going snorkeling until the arrival of our stinger suits.

After dinner, we dashed for the beach.  We had seen that single baby turtle the previous night, and were hoping for more.  The walk was very nice, though better when we could convince the others to turn their bright white headlamps off (a few people had red lamps, which theoretically don’t bother the turtles as much).  We didn’t see anything for the first part, other than birds, but were rewarded later on.  We spotted 3 individual baby turtles running for the water (actually, kind of running in circles, but they eventually made it to the water).  Then, Jacob, Preston and I ended up walking ahead of the group, and Preston spotted a HUGE turtle climbing up the sand towards the buildings.  We followed her quietly, with Jacob’s red light on.  The rest of the group eventually joined us.  The turtle was about four feet across, and looked very tired.  She started munching on some grass-like substance, and then began digging a hole in the sand with her huge front flippers.  She was presumably about to lay eggs.  We wanted to stay and watch, but she seemed perturbed to have us there, so we continued down the beach.

There’s a resort on the island, with a bunch of small cabin-like buildings.  All of them seem to leave their porch lights on at night, even when there is no one home.  We found a large group of baby turtles that had just hatched, wandering around pitifully on the porches, having been attracted by the light.  We picked them up and took them back to the beach.  They need the walk down the beach to the water, to set their internal compasses, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have a nudge in the right direction.  It was awe-inspiring to watch these turtles get turned around the right way, figure out how to clamber down the beach, and rush into the surf.