Coral and fishes and TURTLE, oh my

[juliet]

Am returned from my brief sojourn as desert island castaway. I spent last night camped on Lady Musgrave Island, which is right at the south end of the Great Barrier Reef. I spent most of the time either sitting on the beach admiring the sea, sitting on the beach admiring the stars, or snorkelling[0] around over the reef admiring the coral, fishes, sea slugs, etc etc.

So many fish! With many exciting colours! Neon yellow/green fish, and pinky-blue fish, and zebra fish, and an awesome black fish with light blue polkadots. Also sand-coloured fish that hide by staying very very still over the sandy sea-bed. Lots of the little fish dive in and out of the coral when they're alarmed, which is v cute. I also saw a little fish swimming along with a much bigger one and snuffling along its side, which I assume was some kind of cleaner fish.

Saw one smallish manta ray yesterday afternoon on the reef by the island (it was hiding in the sand then shot out and away when I came too close), and then today when out by the boat, a *huge* ray just pottering along in one of the gaps between patches of coral, wiggling its fins lazily. I swam along after it for a while, then turned to head back -- and saw a green turtle equally lazily coming up the same patch of sea! Turtle!

Plus there were deep purple starfish, and lots of clams (I have never seen a clam before!), and about another squillion sorts of excitingly-coloured fishes, and lots of sea-slugs. Plus of course the coral itself, which is gorgeous & comes in lots of forms.

There were also a vast number of buff-banded rails and black noddies (both of these are types of bird) on the island itself, who shat all over my tent & woke me up at 5am, which was considerate of them.

Executive summary: seriously awesome, although was v glad to get back to hot shower to wash all the salt water off. Tomorrow I have outrageously early start to head back to Brisbane, then Sydney on Sat.

[0] I knew that those snorkelling lessons in Beckenham swimming pool, which must have been over 15 yrs ago now, would pay off sometime! I even remembered now to dive underwater and not drown when you resurface; although snorkel technology seems to have improved in the last 15 yrs, as these ones had a little valve in the bottom of the pipe so that you don't have to blow the water all the way out of the top. Whilst on the subject of 'things that will only be remembered by wezpez': I have had the 'Robinson Crusoe' song from Watch ('far away on an island', that one) in my head off & on for the last 24 hrs.

Comments

[flick]

Oh MY! That really does sound fabulous!

Thanx for grat site

[(Anonymous)]

I really like your post. Does it copyright protected?

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

This sounds just ridiculously amazing. I'm so jealous!

Have you at all thought about just moving to Australia permanently? From this distance, it looks like you and the continent are getting along swimmingly.

[juliet]

I think my partners would have something to say about that :)

(Which is to say: dude, if I were footloose & fancy free, I am far from sure that I'd be returning. It is very lovely indeed here.)

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

I am not surprised to hear that. Perhaps you can lead the great South London invasion of Oz.

Any chance of my having one of these sent to your current residence for you to haul back with you? The shipping charges to the UK are outrageous!

[juliet]

Unfortunately I'm leaving Sydney in a week & parcels won't reliably get there in time - also I'm v v luggage-restricted (want to keep it to one rucksack to make the cross-US bit easier) :-/ Sorry!

[uon.livejournal.com]

At least one of them would have something to say along the lines of "Please please please can I come too please?". Dude, that all sounds awesome!

I remember Robinson Crusoe from Watch!

[juliet]

Did I already know that you knew Watch as well? I have half a memory of having this conversation. (Anyway: yay! I really want to try to track down the Watch albums sometime - when I was small, we used to have tapes taped from the library (naughty copyright-infringing Dad!) but they went missing somewhere along the line.)

Yeah y'see the problem with the whole "let's all move to Australia!" plan is that there is a lot of people to move & not all of them would want to... (Also for the avoidance of doubt my partners are not the only ppl I have been missing!)

[uon.livejournal.com]

I think we've talked about Watch before (possibly in a van on the way to Exodus), & the fact that it was awesome but it (or its presenters) went sort of scarily evangelist Christian over time, which was a bit strange from the viewpoint of a four-year-old who just liked Robinson Crusoe.

I wasn't especially serious about the move thing, it's just hard to avoid that reaction to a country full of awesomeness and giant lizards. I would miss people here tremendously.

[juliet]

Aha, yes, I remember the conversation now.

GIANT LIZARDS! Everyone should move to Australia, that would solve the problem. Also then there would be more lizards.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

Aw man! I'm so jealous. I paddled in a pink salt lake! Surprisingly, it was not exactly teeming with aquatic life :) I was absolutely COVERED in white salt afterwards when I dried off, it was kind of awesome. And I think I must have inhaled over 6billion x the recommended daily salt intake just by being there. Being in water, generally good!

[juliet]

Really really salty water is great fun though because of the floating! (Like the Dead Sea, which I liked when I was there.)

Although the ocean here is pretty salty, as well. Some people were wearing flotation jackets for snorkelling, which struck me as a bit batshit: dude, it's salt water. You float anyway. Indeed, it's rather harder to *sink* even deliberately than it is to float. (And it's not like a flotation jacket will save you if you drown, you need a lifejacket for that, because they turn you face-up. Which is no good if snorkelling. ANYWAY!)

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

Bring home some turtles and rays and sea-slugs pls! Just little ones will do fine.

[juliet]

too late dude, sorry, am off the island now :-(

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

*sulks*

[zebrallama.livejournal.com]

 

FANTASTIC!

I've seen a turtle (just once) and lots of little rays but never a big ray.

My wife claims we've got turtles in our dam here, but I've never seen them. :-(

[wezpez.livejournal.com]

Well now I have the Robinson Crusoe song in *my* head! It will now rotate with the kangaroo one, the dinosaur one and probably the one about Saul for the next week at least!

[juliet]

Saul, Saul, he was a bad man!

You could try one of the Moses ones as well? Just to vary things a bit :)

(Also I saw another kangaroo this morning! Unfortunately it was not hop-hop-hopping, but instead was just aimlessly gawping at us.)