Yes folks, you guessed it…by coming to Town of 1770 we had reached the most southerly point on the Great Barrier Reef. We were nearest to a collection of islands that make up the Bunker Group, and the island that we were going to visit today was the beautiful Lady Musgrave Island, just 32 nautical miles from the mainland coast.
Our journey began on the ‘Spirit of 1770’ a high speed catamaran which departed Town of 1770 at 8am. We were warned that the journey would be bumpy and that most of us would get severe sea sickness – well us being the people we are, did not get off, but thought they were merely exaggerating. Were they heck…no more than 10 minutes into the journey across the high seas and several of the Chinese tour group that were on board started getting reunited with their breakfasts! Another 20 minutes and it felt like the two of us were the only people not being sick…the sounds and smells were not to be desired…we didn’t know whether to hold our nose to stop the smell or put our fingers in our ears to stop the noise!
Finally after 1:40 minutes on the very rough seas we made it to the calm sanctuary of the blue lagoon that surrounds Lady Musgrave Island. As we moored up to the floating pontoon we helped ourselves to morning tea and biccies!
Our first activity of the day was to go out on a glass bottom boat across to the island; the journey across was pleasant and we saw our first green turtles. The guided walk through the small coral island was very informative; we walked through the pisonia forest, where during the migratory season there are thousands of birds making their nests and having chicks. Sadly, that ended in March though.
Back on the pontoon we had a buffet lunch and tried to avoid the occasional shower. Then we hopped on the semi submarine for a ride around the reef, viewing the coral, fish and turtles from a different angle.
Once we finished our last tour of the day we got kitted up with snorkel and flippers and jumped into the warm waters, for our self guided tour around the lagoon.
We saw thousands of fish, of many different varieties…we only wish we had a book down there to look up which type they were! We also were very lucky and got to swim with some green turtles…Ben actually took off with one and at one point showed no signs of coming back!! We took SO many pictures, just a shame they can’t all fit on the blog!!
Saying goodbye to the crew we left the boat and drove back to the camp ground were we have one last night before leaving to head further north.
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