road trip

The Abel's are on their last transfer and are doing some things on their bucket list. They invited us to go with them up to Bundaberg to the Mon Repos Conservation Park to watch the turtles hatch. It is about a five hour drive through beautiful country. We passed massive fields of sugar cane. We had a pit stop in Childers where we found this fun sign for a dentist's office.

The loggerhead turtles come on shore in November and December to lay their eggs. Some six to eight weeks later the eggs begin to hatch. The sex of the baby turtles is determined by the temperature of their nests. The golden sands of Mon Repos are a bit warmer and produce mostly females, while the white coral sands of the Lady Elliot islands produce mostly males. Only one in one thousand turtles survive to maturity and the females born at Mon Repos return some thirty years after birth to lay eggs and start the cycle again.

The baby turtles break the surface of the nest at night. This keeps them out of the hot sun and away from hungry birds. As they come out of the sand, they follow the moon light on the breaking waves to the ocean. This particular Monday night (Feb.20. 2012) was moonless, and those in the group with torches (flashlights) got to light a path from the nest to the ocean. The walk from the nest to the water will set their internal gps so they will come back to the beach where they were born in thirty years to lay their eggs.

The next morning, we stopped at Noosa Heads

to take a lovely nature walk along the ocean

cliffs. The day was a little overcast, but we

started up the trail anyway. We saw the Boiling

Pot and some lovely beaches before a huge storm

hit.

We turned around and headed for a PC we had passed on the trail. The wind was so strong that we huddled in the cubicle for a while. After

about 45 minutes, we realized we couldn't possibly be any wetter so we just headed for the car. It was a grand adventure!