Bundaberg - 18th March

After a good lie in we sorted ourselves out and did our washing. There was sand everywhere from the island so we desperately needed it!

After lunch we headed to Bundaberg town centre. 

Bundaberg is associated with a few things –

1)      Bert Hinkler – the famous aviator

2)      Sugar production

3)      Probably most famously – Bundaberg Rum

Apart from these things, there is not much else! The town is set up for farm work and a lot of travellers stop there to satisfy their visa requirements. So it didn’t take long to walk around the historical town. We bought a few bits before heading back to the motel. On the way we walked down Gavin Street - it would have been rude not to take a photo!

Gav watched the full Grand Prix before we got ready for the main event of the day...

Our Motel owner took us 20 minutes down the road to a place called Mon Repos. The bay is named Mon Repos (meaning My Rest in French) after the beach house that was built there many years ago by a French gentleman. We arrived at 7pm and waited in a visitor centre to be called down to the beach. At 11.15pm our call came so we followed a guide through the pitch black and driving rain. When we eventually stopped we were surrounding a nest of a giant loggerhead turtle which was laid around 3 months earlier. We were going to watch baby turtles hatching from the nest and making their way to the freedom of the big ocean! However, as it had been quite cold and rained most of the day, not many nests were hatching and the nest we had surrounded had already hatched earlier in the night. Amanda was so disappointed that there may be nothing to see after all that wait! The guide explained that they would dig out the nest and show us inside, including the broken eggs. They said that if we were lucky there may be one turtle still in there.

The guide dug out one big handful of sand and to everybody’s surprise two little turtles appeared! Wow! They put them into a holding pen while they finished digging. Further into the nest was a clump of grass roots and when the guide removed that, everyone was so excited to see 25 more little turtles appear from the nest. They were so small – shells about the size of a 50p! If the conservation workers had not been there, those turtles would have suffocated in their nest as they would not have the strength to break the roots! They brought a couple of the little guys around to show everybody and allowed us to take some snaps. We could feel the strength in their arms as they tried to move forward – it felt like small nails scratching the palm of your hand.

The next step was to guide them to the water. To do this everybody had to line up from the beach to the water with their legs apart. When you shine your torch in front of you the turtles will walk towards the light. This guides them to the sea. It was beautiful to see them all scurrying down the beach towards the waves. One of them climbed up Amanda’s shoe by accident and then flipped onto its back – very cute! It got itself back on its feet and was on its way!

We left the beach very happy that we had waited around for so long and not even bothered that we were soaked to the bones from the rain! It was a magical experience that neither of us will ever forget! We learnt so much about the amazing animals too – seeing some pretty horrific photos of them being eaten by Aboriginals before they were protected, and lots of examples of plastic floating in the sea killing them. It was amazing to see how much time, effort and money has been put in to research and understand the life cycle of the Sea Turtles.