K91809

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As I am writing these words, we’re driving at 80 km/h on a secondary road to a village named 1770 in honour of the year Captain Cook accosted his ship there for the first time. Stéphanie is driving, having taken driving on the left side of the road right away. Fifteen minutes after we left, we realised in horror that we had left her hiking boots on the roof of the car. After a moment of panic, we turned around, going back sadly on our tracks, only to realize when we stopped that they were still on the roof. Needless to say, anti-skid soles of North Face boots are second to none.

A few days ago, we went to Mon Repos Conservation Park where, this time of year, you can find tens of giant turtles nesting on the beach every night. During de period of about 100 days, 350 of the 700 Loggerhead turtles remaining in the whole Pacific Ocean will come and lay 400-600 eggs each on the hot sand. Only one out of 1000 of them will reach the adult age of 35. The turtle nice enough to let us come close to her is musically named K91809 and she entertained us for a good hour and a half, even letting us hold her eggs in our hands. Strangely, I was expecting to find soft and slimy eggs, like the ones found in the rest of the aquatic world. In fact, it’s the exact same type of egg hens lay, white, rigid and fragile. The only difference is that they are perfectly round, like the ping-pong balls used to replace them in the display stand of the reception center.

The heat, these days, is almost unbearable. UV Index, for its part, hit the roof yesterday with a rating of 15. I didn’t check, but I would bet an index of 16 can only be reached on the melting surface of the Sun. No surprise here if I tell you that there are more skin cancer clinics here than tanning salons. So we took advantage of this hot day to take refuge under water and go see the first glimpse of the reefs beginning under this latitude. Because of the last days’ rains, unfortunately, the water was too cloudy to take good pictures, but I was pleased to discover about fifteen new species I had never seen before! I’ve also found a diving center willing to give me really groovy courses at a very no-nonsense price, and all this under the tropical waters surrounding the first islands of the Great Barrier Reef, just an hour from the coast by boat. This augurs VERY well.

It is also under this extreme heat that we attended our very first Christmas celebrations with a Christmas carolling concert in one of Bundaberg’s parks. Except for the uneasiness of not feeling like December AT ALL, we were pleasantly surprised to learn that here, in traditional carols, Rudolph doesn’t help Santa to control his sled in a snowy, but rather a FOGGY Christmas night. What a great local adaptation!

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