One of the things I wanted most to accomplish in Australia was to visit the barrier reef.  I visited two of the coral cays that anchor the southern end of the reef, and took one diving trip out to the reef from Airlie Beach.  A planned sleepover out on the reef was cancelled because of poor weather.  The visit to the two islands was quite possibly the highlight of my trip - much better, from my perspective, than the time we spent in the Airlie Beach area.  Partly that is because we're not very good tourists, I think.  I learned to dive specifically for this trip, and I was very glad I did.

We visited two coral cays, Lady Elliot Island and Heron Island.  They are as different as night and day, but both offer outstanding diving and snorkelling.  I hope I'll be able to return to both of them.

Lady Elliot Island

Lady Elliot is the southernmost end of the great barrier reef, a coral cay, formed of a perfectly round coral ring with an odd shaped island near one side, fronted by a half-moon lagoon, quite shallow (barely fit for snorkeling at high tide).  The island is named after the ship of its discoverer, in turn named after the wife of the Governor-General of India at the time.  The island is a main stop for migratory sea birds, so shortly after its discovery all vegetation was stripped off to get at the large guano (phosphate) deposits.  In the late ‘60s an entrepreneur realized it would make a good diving holiday resort and obtained permission to set about its rehabilitation. He began by planting some very hardy trees (with long, hanging string-like needles); more recently they have begun planning palms and the native broad-leaf species, with the plan of slowly working the island back toward its native state. The island is lovely from the air; on the ground it is a little less attractive, but still quite nice.  As the revegetation proceeds it should become more and more attractive. An airstrip (grass on broken coral) bisects the island; all the resort accommodations are located on the southeast quadrant, and much of the remainder is turtle and bird sanctuary, off limits.

 The accommodations are surprisingly Spartan, given the price of a stay here.  Our room (top of the line) was cabin-like; supposedly a view through the trees to the lagoon and sea, but over half is obstructed by a large bush. On the other hand, a red-tailed tropicbird nests under the bush outside our cabin, and she afforded us considerable entertainment.  Meals are in the main lodge; other than the excellent cantelope (of which there was never enough to go around) food is so-so. The dining area is a large outdoor pavilion (indoor seating is available should the weather turn sour) overlooking the lagoon; picnic tables with heavy awkward benches.  If the food were only slightly better I’d like it quite a bit; I really enjoyed the relaxed, laid-back atmosphere, and the diving and snorkeling are excellent.  LaJean says:  The food was actually mixed.  You’d have a really good meal then a not so good meal.  Overall, it wasn’t that bad but you did need to get in for meals promptly. Late arrivals had to take whatever was left."

 The main activity is diving or snorkeling, but the snorkeling requires some swimming ability, since you have to swim out through a narrow channel in the shallow coral, so it had little appeal to LaJean.  She has enjoyed the glass bottom boat tours and nature walks, otherwise there isn’t as much here for her as for me.  I would recommend the place strongly to a diver or enthusiastic snorkeler but not at all to anyone else.  In four days’ diving I pretty well exhausted the dive spots; the reef is not very large around this island.

 We were blessed with weather.  I know the extended drought is a curse for Queensland generally but it was a blessing for us.  Days get quite hot – up to maybe 30-35 C (high 80s, low 90s F) in the middle of the day, but it cools off nicely by about 4:30 or 5 in the evening, with a light, pleasant sea breeze.  Mornings are lovely until about 11.  We were warned of the ever-present smell of the birds.  I didn't think it was too bad (for LaJean's dissenting opinion, see below), and I tend more to notice the sea and vegetation smells.  After a rain the bird smell would no doubt be worse.  The evening of our last day the wind changed and a pretty good wind blew up; forecast was for up to 35 knots for a couple of days – a good day for traveling to a different island.  I gather that is normal for this time of year.  (What I didn't realize at the time was that it was the beginning of a windy spell that would last the entire remaining part of our trip.)  Apparently earlier would actually have been better – Ian, one of my diving buddies from Australia, says the daily rains are usually (barring a cyclone) only a half hour or an hour of very heavy warm rain.  However, one would not want to be in northern Queensland much before February because of the heat and humidity.

 Water temperature is a few degrees warmer than Hawaii – most important in that regard is the lack of cold fresh-water springs and the relative shallowness of the continental shelf; there is no thermocline.  I mostly dived with no wet suit, and felt slightly chilled only once, near the end of a 48 minute dive.  We were also blessed with unusual clarity of water – at least 15 meters, probably more – and the relative calm of the ocean.  With winds in the 10-12 range, there was little chop, and only maybe a 3 or 4 foot swell in the afternoons.  A bit exciting for returning from a dive but no real problem.  The lee side of the island had virtually no chop and very little swell.

 The trip into the island was great for me:  By promptly volunteering I managed to sit in the jump seat, with a beautiful view out the front as well as the side.  Nothing particularly exciting, but it was a lot of fun.  I really enjoyed getting to know the pilot, who also went snorkelling with the day-trippers they brought over.

The island birds are interesting, although the nightlong squawking is a nuisance.  Onshore are terns, noddies (brown, white patch on their head, nod continuously to each other for reasons no-one quite knows), rails (a small ground bird that looks and acts for all like a chicken or hen pheasant), and the red-tailed tropicbird that nests in the sand under a bush directly in front of our front porch.  Her mate is gone all day, brings back food in the evening; another male occasionally tries to move in on the nest, resulting in 45 minutes of hissing and stylized threats.  There are also cranes and a grey-blue bird we think are herons, especially at low tide, wading over the coral looking for edible fish.  Finally, two magnificent sea eagles nest in the iron structure of the new lighthouse; they are brown with white bellies, look like they would have a wingspan of as much as six feet.

 As I noted, what the island is really about is diving.  I averaged two per day, in water ranging from as little as 5 or 6 meters, to 15 meters (more typical) and up to one dive down to about 25 meters, although we worked our way back up into about 15 meter water fairly quickly.  I also took my first night dive, the evening of our second day here.  It was slightly terrifying at first, while we were wading out from the shore over broken dead coral and I kept stumbling, but once we were in the deeper water and I got my fins on, I felt much calmer.  Everyone wears a little green light-stick and carries an underwater “torch” (light); the whole string of divers with their lights is itself a remarkable sight.  Even after 7 dives here, I still breathed too much & not evenly enough; I rarely got more than 2/3 the bottom time off a tank that the more experienced divers get.  I tried to control my breathing better, but that may actually make it worse; experience and confidence is probably the only thing for it.

 On the night dive we saw notably a white-tip shark, swimming away from us over a reef (probably 4-6 feet in length, but still impressive), a huge green turtle asleep on a coral ledge, some crabs and lobsters, and a handful of eels, hiding in coral holes.  On other dives I saw a number of other really beautiful things, including, I think (he swam away too quickly to be sure) a small wobegong shark (they are very effectively camoflaged, pale red-brown against a grey-tan base).  I also saw a small, well-camoflaged 8 inch reef fish catch and swallow a little, two-inch, colorful reef fish.  At the end of my morning dive I ran out of air and had to surface before everyone else (a common event!)  Fortunately, after I had surfaced and attracted the boat pilot’s attention, I put in my snorkel and looked back into the water.  There below me, silhouetted against the white sand of the bottom, was a magnificent reef shark, probably five feet long.

 Snorkelling, one of the most lovely sights I encountered was a school of 50 or more small squid, blue with a white-spotted purple back and huge, shiny silver eyes.  They swim with their tentacles tightly bunched and use them as a fish uses its tail, only occasionally opening them out.  Swimming, they are remarkably graceful, almost lyrical.  Just after that I spotted a turtle swimming away and followed it for a while; I was distracted by the sight of a magnificent manta ray, also known as a devilfish (named for the horn-like finss on the head; they are used to funnel plankton into its mouth).  On the dive that afternoon, we saw three Mantas, two quite close up – in fact one was so close that one of the divers swam after it, hoping to touch it.  One of the two had a remora fish, about a foot long and possibly as much as ten pounds in weight, hitching a ride.  The remora, which attaches itself like Velcro with its tiny barbs to the rough, sand papery skin of the ray, looked like nothing so much as a pilot of some experimental aircraft.  Then the last ray we saw had about a half dozen remoras hitch-hiking on it.  The last ray had a span of about six or seven feet, almost black on top, pure white belly.  They are a marvel to see; they swim like a bird flying.  They and the squid have to be among the loveliest sights in the ocean.  I regretted not having a diving camera, but it would take a really good movie camera to do them justice.

 Did I mention the turtles – loggerheads and greens mostly; I see at least one on half my snorkeling trips and most of my dives.  There are turtles, squid, sharks, manta rays, the occasional eel, and scores of varieties of tropical fish, ranging from the size of my thumbnail up to the size of a football or bigger.  Our fish book only carries a small share of them.  The coral here is quite different from Hawaii, I think partly because of the difference between a fringe reef and a continental shelf reef (the bottom drops off, here, to no more than 30 or 40 meters, so there are none of the coral reefs extending as far down as you can see like in Hawaii.)  There are many more blues and purples, fewer bright yellows and pinks here, and more of the flat plate coral if I remember correctly.  The turtles are still hatching out, although it is late in the season.  Unfortunately they are attracted by the resort lights and come this way instead of heading for the ocean; people gather them up by the bucketful to carry down to the surf where they belong.  About the size of the palm of my hand, they are really quite cute; they move their flippers incessantly, like a child’s wind-up toy. 

 The people I’ve dived with (and the staff) were all very nice.  My diving companions included people from Belgium, Holland, Ireland, Australia, Canada.  I most often partnered with Ian, Rick, or Marcus.  Everyone was tolerant and helpful toward me in my beginnerhood.  On most of the dives the numbers were fairly small, 6-8 people, but on the final dive of the second day there were over a dozen, and I did not enjoy that nearly as much.  The dive master usually keeps everyone in a group so he can keep track of them; some of the more experienced divers resent it, and I suppose I’d enjoy my own dives better if he’d let the really experienced guys go off wherever. With as many as a dozen divers all in the same place, I found that either I was in someone’s way or someone was in my way about a third of the time.  I think whenever I have an option I will try to go on a smaller boat, even if it costs more, although Ian tells me that a dozen or even two dozen is pretty typical.

 I found I enjoyed this island more and more as I became more accustomed to it.  Compensating for the Spartan facilities, the atmosphere is very laid-back and casual, which I really liked.  We didn't sleep very well because of the incessant squawking of the birds, but otherwise the place is quite restful.  I quickly got into the habit of bringing my laptop and a patio chair down to the edge of the beach in the morning; I finished up these notes while gazing out toward the sunrise. The stars at night are spectacular – as bright as I remember them being in Idaho before all the desert-entry farming filled the skies with dust.  The air is probably about 75 degrees, the wind carries the scent of the ocean; it is really quite refreshing.  I would be happy to come here again, but I don’t know about LaJean.  As I said before, I would recommend it, but only to people who areprimarily interested in diving or snorkeling.  It would be a wonderful place to get a diving certification – diving is quite inexpensive, and there is little to challenge a beginner.  The diving staff is a little casual, but they would do a very good job on lessons.  I would recommend doing the knowledge part by an interactive CD, like I did, and coming here for all the in-water part.  The lessons are priced about the same as in the U.S., but in Australian dollars – a great bargain at the time we were there.

 I found that a kind of camaraderie quickly built up among the half dozen or so people who dived every day, twice a day (many people did not care to get up in time for the 8:00 dive); I came to feel quite close to several of the divers.  That doesn't always happen on the islands where diving groups are larger and the atmosphere less casual.  In any event, that is a large part of what I really found charming about this island – the bond of friendship and brotherhood that arose among a group of us.
 
 
 

Heron Island

 On the helicopter trip over, after a long train ride through Queensland farmland, I got to sit in the jump seat again.  It wasn't quite the treat, since the visibility was pretty limited, but it was still very neat.  We had a full circle rainbow part of the way (formed by the sun refracting around the 'copter).  As we descended to about 1000 feet, passing over one of the outer reefs, I saw a manta ray silhouetted against the reef, dark triangle against light blue.  Then, coming into Heron Island, I saw another kind of ray; not sure what kind, in the shallows.  It was oval in shape, with a long tail, a brownish color.  From the shark book, it looks like maybe some kind of stingray.

 The accommodations here are nicer than at Lady Elliot, but the view of the sea is even more disappointing than on Lady Elliot.  There is decidedly more for LaJean to do.  Quality of food at dinner is much, much better – lavish seafood buffet the first night.  But it is so formal as to be stiff:  They assign each group a table, alone, and you sit at that one table the whole time.  It is much more difficult to get to know other people than it was on Lady Elliot.

 The weather was supposed to blow over, but we had two fierce tropical showers during the night, and the wind blew almost the entire time we were on the island.  I walked down to the pier at daybreak to see what the conditions look like.  As I walked to the end of the pier I saw a turtle surface for air about 50 meters away, then I saw the outline of a ray a little further away.  That was pretty exciting, but as I walked back toward shore, I saw another group of rays in the surf; one swam out away from me but four drifted toward the pier, as they swam slowly out toward deeper water. They passed directly alongside the pier; I followed them out for 20 meters or more before they submerged and moved far enough away that I could not see them any more.  They were eagle rays, one about 1.5 meters across, the smallest about .5 meters across, the other two in between.  They were a light grey-tan in color, flap the ends of their “wings” gently as they move along, apparently feeding off the bottom.  According to the shark book, they eat crabs and invertebrates off the bottom; it is possible the storm has stirred up more of their food, thus making them easier to spot.  I walked down to the pier every morning we were there, and never failed to see rays and sharks.

I went on the nine o’clock dive; on the way out to the dive site we saw two more mantas near the surface.  As soon as we got into the water we saw another ray – the dive master said it was a bull ray.  During that dive we saw several more rays, including one manta that swam directly overhead, circling a complete circle or two, very close to us; I could watch its head fins sweeping food into its mouth.  We also swam right over a sleeping turtle and about ten feet from a five foot long white-tipped reef shark, lying in the sand between two coral bommies.  The coral joined together behind the shark to form a kind of tunnel; inside the tunnel their lurked a huge potato cod, probably 100 pounds or more.  Later on that same swim we saw a school of barracuda and another shark – they were on the other side of the group from me so my view was partially blocked by all the exhaust bubbles – and some tuna.  When we got to Heron Bommies, we saw lots of really neat fish, including four more eagle rays, ranging from maybe a meter to one and a half meters across, doing acrobatics in the water.

 The swell wasn’t as bad as I’d been warned; getting out of the water was no really big deal, so I decided to go ahead and do the second morning dive.  I was glad I did:  I didn’t see many more rays, but I swam right over the top of two reef sharks and a big turtle, and another turtle and another reef shark swam right by me, maybe five feet away.  I also saw a huge round, flat fish, about a foot in diameter, being cleaned by a wrasse and looking like he was in absolute ecstasy.  Not long after that I noticed all the fish pointing the opposite way, a sign I understood but didn’t really process.  Then I noticed we were being swept sideways, and my buddy signaled time to go back.  We both turned around, and discovered that we had waited too long.  A current had come up, much earlier than the dive master expected; we had to swim fairly hard to make way against it.  We started using a lot of air and became quite tired before we'd covered more than ¼ of the distance back to the boat, so we surfaced (no need for the three minute stop; we’d been swimming at and above five meters for at least that long) and called for the boat.  From now on I’ll pay more attention to the direction the fish are pointing (and other indicators)!

 It was not a bad morning’s diving:  more rays and sharks than I can distinctly remember, two or three cod, tuna, barracudas, a tiny baby eel hiding in a thumb-sized hole in the coral, scads of soft coral, schools of tiny silvery-blue fish, and a tremendous feeling of being in and almost part of the ocean.  Swimming right past a reef shark is a thrill hard to describe.  The visibility and light was probably inadequate for picture taking, but I decided it was time to buy a cheap dive camera for the remaining dives anyway.  Even a dim picture would probably be better than none!

LaJean says:  Turtles and surfing sharks.   Sunday afternoon I went to the turtle class and learned how to distinguish between green, loggerhead, leatherback, and other turtles.  Later we walked down along the beach looking for nests and hatchlings.  We saw a gull with one baby turtle in her beak.  We made the gull drop the hatchling and the little fellow dashed for the water as fast as he could go!  We looked and looked but didn’t see any more.  It was getting too windy so I turned back but Dave kept on around the island.  A group of people were clustered together staring at the sand.  Sure enough it was a nest of hatchlings.

Each hatchling has an egg tooth on the end of its snout.  This is used to break through the shell.  Within the nest the eggs hatch within a few hours of each other.  Hatchlings are at first soft and curled and it takes 24 hours for the hatchlings to uncurl.  During this time each internalizes its yolk which is stored energy for the next week.  Hatchlings move as a group to climb through the sand.  As individuals they do not have the strength to climb through 50-60cm of sand.  Over the next 2-5 days the hatchlings climb out of the nest.  They settle just below the surface and wait for the sand to cool which signals nightfall.  The hatchlings then emerge in a rush.

While I watched the hatchlings started pouring out of the nest.  They seemed to be very disoriented but managed to get all headed for the ocean.  Their little flippers were paddling through the sand as fast as they could go.  One would fall in a depression left by a shoe or stumble into a little pile of weeds.  It might tip over backwards but would frantically right itself and charge to the sea.  The gulls tried to nab the hatchlings but we wouldn’t let them have any.  Once the hatchlings made it in the water and started swimming, however, the gulls caught as many as they could.

The hatchlings have a large iron deposit in their heads.  They apparently need to make their own way to the ocean using the earth’s magnetic field and celestial orientation to imprint properly.  If the hatchling doesn’t make her own way, then 35 years later, at sexual maturity, she won’t be able to find her way back to the appropriate breeding/nesting area.  Females will mate with as many males as possible storing all the sperm in a pouch.  She’ll produce 50-100 eggs fertilizing them with a glob of sperm.  After she’s laid one batch of eggs she’ll produce another 50-100 repeating the process until she’s laid about 1000 eggs and the sperm is used up.

The female digs a separate nest for each batch of eggs.  If she’s not totally happy with the nest she won’t lay eggs.  The most important thing is the temperature of the sand.  She digs with her hind flippers, makes a nice smooth deep hole, settles back on her tail, and lays eggs.  The slightest disturbance will stop her.  She may make half a dozen nests before one suits her.  Once she starts laying, however, little will distract her until the eggs are laid.  Then she covers them up and paddles back to the ocean for a brief rest before producing the next batch.  No one knows a whole lot about turtles including how long they live although we suspect they live in the range of 80-100 years.  Something like only 1 in 1000 of the hatchlings will survive.  Consequently, most turtles are rapidly becoming scarce if not endangered or extinct.

After the baby turtles all made it into the ocean (a mere five minutes or so of action), I started walking back to the resort.  Suddenly schools of about 100 small silvery fish made flying leaps through the air.  A shark was actively pursuing his dinner.  He was within 25 feet of the shoreline and gave quite a performance.  Soon fish and shark went away and I went on for my own dinner.

Unfortunately, between the sharks and sea birds, very few of the baby turtles even make it past the reef and into the deep sea, to begin the process of feeding and growing.  Their need for air (the babies cannot hold their breaths nearly as long as adults) makes them all too easy prey for the sharks and birds.

Dave:  More about the birds.  There are as many birds here as on Lady Elliot.  It is very hard to sleep for their night-long racket.  Some just caw like crows.  One sounds like a maniac laughing, like out of an old Vincent Price movie or something.  Another, that awoke me at a quarter to five this morning, sounds like a cross between Alaskan wolf howls, crying babies, and a prayer meeting.  One bird will howl, like the preacher, then all the others will repeat the howl, all in a chorus.  That goes on sometimes for a half hour or longer.  A few of the bird calls are almost musical but most are very raucous – I suppose musical calls would be hard for them to hear against the backdrop of surf.

The island itself is prettier than Lady Eliot, mainly because the vegetation was never stripped off, so the original broadleaf forest is intact.  There are very pretty light yellow coral sand beaches all around; the island is surrounded with a coral lagoon, deep enough for snorkeling only for a couple of hours either side of high tide.  I tried it once, but the visibility was quite poor, due both to sand and nutrients in the water and to air bubbles in the water.  On a calmer day it would probably be much better.

It is very hard to keep from overeating.  The food is wonderful, and it is provided in abundance.  The first night here we had a lavish seafood buffet, with lobster, several kinds of prawns including one huge variety, bone fish of various sorts, and a very wonderful small oyster, on the half shell.  There are usually oysters for antipasto, in fact; I always have a half dozen.  Monday night was “dining al fresco” on the patio by the swimming pool, overlooking the lagoon.  We sat at a table with a view of the half moon; as it grew dark, the moon shone increasingly brilliantly on the water of the lagoon. With air temperature somewhere in the mid to high 70s and a light breeze, it was the very archetype of a tropical evening. 

I have begun to settle into diving; it no longer seems slightly terrifying, but it is still very exciting.  On Monday the visibility was pretty poor – as little as five meters in places – mainly because of the stuff swept over the reef from the lagoon by the tides and winds.  I bought a cheap underwater camera because I decided a blurry picture of a shark is better than no picture at all, and in spite of the poor visibility I think I managed to get several shark and turtle pics. Even when you don’t see gobs of stuff, it is wonderful to be down there among the coral and fish.  Monday we went to a part of the reef filled with plate coral and bommies of various sizes; it was probably good the visibility was limited, because in better visibility it would probably be so spectacular one would forget to breathe.  As it was it was pretty spectacular.  However, it was a drift dive, drifting with a fairly strong current, and four of us missed the rope, so when we came up we had to swim about a hundred meters against the current to the boat.  They were recovering other divers and couldn’t come for us right away.  Had we tired, we could have waited and eventually they would have come for us, but we all made it on our own power.  I bought a new splash-resistant snorkel before we came here, in Gladstone, and it worked perfectly; even in high swell and choppy waves I didn’t get a single mouthful of water, and it drew easily. On another trip I did get a bit of water in it; the water expelled very easily.

 On Tuesday I dived again twice with the cheap underwater cameras I bought in the dive shop; first dive was mediocre, although we did see a couple of shots.  I was diving with this Austrian guy.  The second dive we did together, I ran out of air first but only by a few bar. I filled up about 30 shots, beginning with the two black-tip sharks we saw hiding under a coral bommie, a couple of spectacularly beautiful coral formations, a yellow trumpet fish being cleaned by a small wrasse…  The first manta ray I saw was near the edge of the visibility and looked almost ghostly.  Later I got two more chances, with the rays much closer.  The neatest experience was when a huge ray (my companion estimated 2 ½ meters – 8 feet) swam right over us, being cleaned by two larger wrasses.  I think I got a picture of the wrasses.  The manta rays are such elegant creatures; having one pass over and circle around like that is an almost religious experience!

The visibility was still poor, and we were swimming along the reef edge, often in 8-12 meter water, and managed to swim right by the mooring buoy without seeing it (probably while we were going ga-ga over the manta ray).  We surfaced halfway back to the harbor mouth, again nearly a hundred yard swim back to the boat, against the current.  But this time the current was light and the swells were slight, almost non-existent; it wasn’t that bad a swim at all.  Apparently we weren’t the only ones – in fact, only a handful of the divers actually found the buoy.  Twenty three divers surfaced all over about a hundred meter square!  The boat captain looked like he was having a heart attack.  When he had us all aboard and finished counting noses the second time, he said as soon as he reached shore he was buying a lottery ticket!  It wasn’t quite the same situation as that boat that lost two divers, though; we were an easy swim from the island, and the current was actually running toward the harbor mouth.  Still, one can see why the dive masters at Lady Elliot insist on the entire group (usually much smaller) go together.

All of this may sound slightly scary, but it really isn’t.  I never felt the conditions were at all bad; the worst time was when we had to swim back to the boat against a current.  One can always swim along with the dive master and, for that matter, if one gets to the dive site and decides the current is too strong or visibility too poor, simply pass on that dive.  Based on my experience so far, diving with at least 200 people, whose experience level ranges from equivalent to mine all the way to 40 years and thousands of dives, divers are very considerate and tolerant of each others’ limits, etc.  Divers readily share their knowledge, and never complain at all about a dive being cut short because a buddy runs out of air or has any other difficulty.  There are probably macho divers just like in any other sport, but Ian and other experienced divers tell me they are rare, and I get the feeling that kind of attitude is not tolerated by other divers.

On the positive side, diving is to snorkeling as three is to two dimensions.  For the first few dives, one tends to focus so much on technique, but from then on, there is simply nothing like the experience of drifting slowly past the magnificent coral, tiny reef fish, larger animals like turtles and sharks.  I have tended to write more about the big animals, partly because there is such an abundance of them here, but the small fish are also fascinating, and to be able to observe them closely in their own environment is truly awe-inspiring.  I also need to mention the sight of air bubbles rising through the water, only their top sides illuminated so they look like disks or half spheres, inverted silver-crystal bowls of light, rising toward the shimmering blue-silver of the surface.  Even if I never have the opportunity to dive again, these twenty-odd dives will have well repaid the investment in scuba lessons.

Wednesday we went on the picnic to Wilson Island; they take only about a dozen people, and they prepare a barbeque lunch for us.  Wilson Island has a wonderful snorkeling lagoon, well protected from the swells, where the water goes gradually out to about 15-20 meters, with several well-formed coral bommies.  I managed to get LaJean out past the broken dead coral detritus on the shore and towed her around the harbor twice; the first time for a short trip and the second time clear out over a couple of the bommies, with their multitude of coral varieties and forms.  Just getting out was interesting; a shoal of “bait fish,” small silvery sardine-like fish about 4-6 inches long, was hovering in about 4-5 foot deep water.  They pack themselves so tightly that from shore all you see is a dark cloud in the water.  As you snorkel through them, they seem almost fin-to-fin, constantly moving back and forth in front and around you, literally millions of fish, so many it is hard to focus on the features of any one fish.  Miraculously, they somehow avoided bumping into either of us as we swam slowly through them.

Equally awe-inspiring are the schools of blue neons, brilliant blue fish not much over an inch long that feed off the surface of the water in large schools.  There are several other species that feed off the surface, including a yellow-silver fish that also gets blue stripes when they are close to the surface, from the refracted sunlight, and a long silvery fish, about a foot long but only a  bit more than an inch high, with long, slender snouts, and a small tuna-shaped fish, about four or five inches long.  Sometimes the schools intermingle, sometimes you swim through one, then another.  We could have just floated there forever, with these small specks of light and color swarming around us, now descending to a few feet below the surface, now rising up to nip floating plankton off the surface.

On this first trip, partly because there was a bit of a current and partly because I wanted to show several varieties of coral to LaJean, I towed her over and around two of the three bommies in the lagoon.  But I also really like just hovering – find a patch of interesting coral, with several different varieties in one place, and hover quietly over it until the fish start ignoring you.  In a space of about 10 minutes, doing this, I probably saw 40 or 50 distinct species of reef fish; it seems like everything in the ocean will swim past you eventually.  We’ve totally given up on identification – Australia has far too many species, and the fish books and cards cover only a few – instead, when we’re not simply enjoying the light, color, and shape spectacle, we like to observe their behavior, watch how they seem to go about protecting their own few square inches of reef, getting food, etc.

Wilson Island is a tremendous treat; with only a dozen or so people, some of whom don’t snorkel at all, it was impossible to feel at all crowded.  The boat ride over and back was also a lot of fun – and, like boat rides everywhere, it was an opportunity to meet and get to know several interesting people.  Somewhat surprisingly, we noticed that most were Americans – the first time on this trip we encountered more than one or two.  It took me a while to notice the date, and realize that this is spring break back in the states!  It’s not quite as easy to get to know people on Heron as it was on Lady Eliot, one of the few things we didn’t like as well about Heron.  But as usual, everyone we met was really nice, regardless of nationality.

To round out the wildlife viewing, boobies started showing up on our second day (the size of a seagull, black with a square white patch on the belly), we saw two jumping spiders (which LaJean did not care for) and just before we went to bed, we saw our first small skink actually inside a building, clinging to the wall above our bed.  We’ve always loved those tiny little lizards, and considered that a good omen.

On the Wilson Island trip we met a very nice young couple from Los Angeles, Joel and Janice.  I offered to team up with Joel on my final two dives.  Janice had already decided to take the introductory dive and see how she likes it.  Thursday morning I packed most of my stuff right after breakfast and got my diving gear together. 

Both dives were pretty wonderful, although the visibility was still somewhat limited (well under 10 meters).  On the first of the two dives, we saw a very small shark and three mantas, the first an almost ghostly shape, near the edge of my visibility and the second a good sized animal that swam fairly near.  Then, near the end of the dive, a huge manta swam around us, not once but 2 ½ times. The final circle, he came within less than three feet of my finger tips – I could easily have reached out and touched his wing tips.  He was the largest I’ve seen, possibly as big as 12 feet across (it’s hard to judge size underwater, but he appeared at least twice the size of the other divers). I could see his wide, thin mouth very clearly.  It was an almost religious experience!  I became so engrossed I forgot to control my breathing, and sank down onto a big round coral bommie.  I have tried hard to avoid touching the coral, and felt bad about it, but it really was a highlight of the trip.  However, the excitement was not over; no sooner had the manta ray swum off into the murk than we swam around another small bommie and saw five sharks, including both black-tips and white-tips, one at least eight feet long and quite massive.  I have never seen that many in one place before, nor the two species mixed together like that. 

On the second dive, we drifted from Pam Bommie to Heron Bommie, a dive that I’ve done several times and always seen lots of stuff. This time was no exception; a small, 3 or 4 foot shark, three turtles, two on the bottom, one swimming by (one was quite large, about 6 feet long, a loggerhead I’m pretty sure), a school of barracuda, and more mantas.  The current was quite strong; this is the place where I missed the buoy rope the other day and got swept by, so I made a point of staying in 12 meter water, where the buoy rope is anchored.  I was glad, because it came up quite rapidly.  We swam around into the lee of Heron Bommie but had a hard time finding shelter from the current; at first I tried digging my heels into the sand  but that stirred too much stuff up, so I rose up again, accidentally kicking a bit of coral on the way up, which again made me feel pretty bad.  I managed to find a spot behind the largest bommie sheltered from the heavy current, and hovered there long enough to see the third turtle, resting with his head under a coral ledge, as well as several smaller reef fish.  Struggling against the current used up my air pretty fast though, and eventually I signaled “low air” to Joel and we went up.  It was a relatively short dive, just 36 minutes, but we both felt it successful.  On the surface, we found Janice, feeling pretty good about her introductory dive.  She saw mantas and turtles as well as lots of reef fish, which, for a short first dive, is wonderful.

Just to cap the dive off, on the way back into the harbor we saw over a half dozen eagle rays jumping near the breakwater.  I’ve seen a few in the past, but I’ve always been looking the wrong way and seen them just as they entered the water.  They jump quite high and far.  It is a lovely sight.

Surprisingly, Heron Island has only one shower for people who dive or snorkel before catching the catamaran back to the mainland, so I had to wait in line for a shower after cleaning up my gear and turning it in, and meeting LaJean, Joel, and Janice for pictures.  As a consequence, I had to eat the picnic lunch we had ordered fairly fast – too fast for real enjoyment.  We ate it on a patio overlooking the lagoon.  There was a very cheeky rail begging for food.  His first ploy was to peck my toes, but I just shooed him away.  Then, when LaJean opened the fruit container, he suddenly jumped up on the table and grabbed a piece of watermelon off her plate.  I grabbed him and threw him across the patio, but he came right back!  The reason for “do not feed the birds” is obvious – but with all the kids who visit the island, it is also probably futile.

Overall assessment:  I enjoyed both islands tremendously, for somewhat different reasons.  For diving, visibility was better off Lady Elliot, but there seems to be more large animal life off Heron.  There is a lot more for a non-diver to do on Heron; all the educational talks LaJean attended were first-rate, and she really enjoyed the fishing.  There are also movies under the night sky (we were always too tired, and in bed by that time), sit-on sea kayaks when the weather is sufficiently calm, and the beaches are nicer for just sitting than they are on Lady Elliot.  The social atmosphere is more relaxed and casual on Lady Elliot, but the food is pretty ordinary.  I would gladly visit both islands again.

I was glad I had the laptop for keeping this journal; several times I had the feeling that I am seeing and experiencing so much that there is a genuine risk of it all just mooshing together into one big lump.  Even now, I found myself wondering, was it the third day of diving or the fifth when I saw the five sharks all in one spot?  And as Joel and I were telling LaJean about the mantas and turtles we almost forgot to mention the barracudas – which are quite elegant and impressive in their own right!

LaJean says:  I’m glad we visited both islands but I probably wouldn’t go back to Lady Elliott.  With all those sea birds the entire island smelled like a rank chicken house in July!  Heron had a slight smell, but being larger it wasn’t nearly so bad.  Also, Heron had more to do and the educational aspects were excellent!  I wish I’d gone to even more little classes than I did.  I went on a couple of half-day fishing trips.  They don’t use poles, just heavy line.  I caught lots but unfortunately, they were all either too small (have to be over 40 cm) or the wrong kind.  The first trip was really great – just me and a captain and a crew member.  The second trip we had a half dozen others including several kids.  They’re talking about adding some day-long fishing trips.  With fewer people, I think that would be great.
 
 

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Last updated September 15, 2002
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