not just rum you know

Mrs Loggerhead
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Our day started with avery long drive to Bundaberg, famous for its rum and ginger beer. We drove past field after field of sugar cane, and a huge sugar refinery..

We arrived at Bundaberg around 1800, we stopped to fill up and get ice and beer from a drive thru liquor store, (only in Oz)..

We arrived at Mon Repos Beach and made our way to visitors centre, where the tours left from. We joined the queue and as we approached the front realised that everyone there had booked.

Once at the front we explained that we had just arrived and didn't realise we needed to book, she was very helpful and asked us to wait until everyone had booked in, if there were spaces we would be allowed to join the last group.

Ranger and Turtle
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We were told we would be group 6, and depending on how the night went we may be called earlier, with group 5.

So began our wait...

Gradually groups 1 to 4 were called, so we were hopeful that we would get to see something..

At 22.30 we were called, very excitedly we made our way to the north boardwalk and met our ranger, she told us that we would be making our way to the very far end of the beach, we were to follow her as quickly as possible, we were not allowed to use torches or any other form of light, just follow her and her small head torch.

132 Eggs
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After a brisk 5 minute walk, we arrived at our spot and made our way up the sand dune, there she was, a huge LoggerHead Turtle laying her eggs, 132 of them to be precise. Truly amazing, another ranger was measuring her and making a note of all her tags and details, she had been back to the beach on 4 other occasions to lay this season and she was about 49 yrs old.

Using her enormous flippers she then flicked and pushed the sand around her to completely cover the eggs, she then flattened and levelled the sand, all in all the whole thing probably took about 20 mins.

During this time we were allowed to take some photos, making sure we didn't disturb her.

We then moved to side in order to clear the way for her passage back to the sea, she follows the moon light so we had to be careful not to block her light. We slowly moved in behind and watched her disappear into the ocean.

She had layed her eggs a little too low to the tide line, so the ranger dug a new nest about 2 metres higher up the beach. She then uncovered the eggs and layed them out on the sand so we could count them. They look exactly like pingpong balls.

We then helped move the eggs from one nest to the other, we carried 4 eggs at a time and they were gently placed in the new nest.

We then made our way back to the boardwalk, being careful to watch out for any more turtles making there way up to nest or back to the ocean or there hatchlings making there way to sea.

As we arrived at the boardwalk and were waiting for the others to catch up with us we were lucky enough to spot another LoggerHead, she had just arrived at her nesting spot and was preparing her nest. It is crucial at this point that she is not disturbed to we quietly made our way to another boardwalk and left her to it....

We then made our way to our campsite and to bed.....