We left on Thursday afternoon to hop on board the 5pm Resort ferry. I had argued against getting this ferry as the Resort is a good kilometre or two from the campsite which basically meant we had to trudge down the beach with all our stuff. But the lads went ahead and booked it anyway. To be fair to them (because I've given them grief about this for the last week and I'm getting over it now) they had intended on hanging round at the resort to watch Mindi record the dolphin's vocalisations and behaviour during the provision feeding that the resort does at 6.30pm every day. That didn't happen but on disembarking the ferry we were lucky enough to see a mother and calf who had arrived early and who were playing around the jetty. The calf was very excited and was swimming really quickly, flipping his tail up and cruising on his back. It was amazing to get so close and see them so clearly.
The Resort ferry is expensive but quick. The walk down the beach was exhausting (well, actually I was already exhausted as I hadn't slept well the past few nights - must be that Ross River fever. I obviously need to eat more miracle toothpaste) and seemed to take a long time. Guy kept trying to persuade us all to get a room in the resort but thankfully we ignored him. We eventually arrived and set up camp (in the dark). We pooled culinary resources and had a yummy meal of Vegetable Stuff with Salt and Rice. Yum! Mindi and Nobina wandered down from the resort and had a couple of drinks with us. Just after they left, around 10.30pm, it started to rain. Then it began to chuck it down until there was nothing to do but retreat to our tents for shelter. By this time my feet were all sandy and I HATE having sand in my bed so I spent the first 20 minutes with my feet sticking out of the tent until Toby let me wipe them with his towel.
We had a fantastic night's sleep on our inflatable mattress. I could have slept for longer but had to get up to go to the toilet. On my return to our site Toby insisted that he'd found a better camping spot - not surprising given that we'd arrived in the dark - and that we should move. So we picked up the tents (literally - with everything still inside them) and everything else and moved to a spot further up the beach. This camping spot was much better - we had a massive communal area and two separate bedrooms!
Mark headed off to spend the morning on the boat with Mindi and Nobina, observing dolpin behaviour, recording their vocalisations and photographing their dorsal fins for identification. Mark was photographer and Mindi tried to get most of us out on the boat but unfortunately the day I went (Saturday afternoon) the resort was so busy with tourists that they couldn't spare us a driver. Very disappointing, especially as I'd trudged all the way up the beach and then hung around in the heat of the day waiting to find this out when I could have been off snorkelling the wrecks. Oh well!
After Mark left we jumped into the bay to cool off. We didn't quite realise it at the time but we were really lucky to have the area of the bay out the front of our campsite to ourselves. We threw a frisbee around for a bit and then another mother and calf dolphin pair came past. They seemed to check us out for a while and it looked like the baby wanted to hang around and play but Mum was obviously busy and they headed on up the beach. It was amazing to be so close to them.
By this time Guy had recovered from his shock of awaking to find the campsite being removed from around him and he joined us for frisbee. Soon we were joined by another dolphin, a young one who was obviously quite interested in us. He toyed with us for a while, swimming away when we followed him and then coming back when we gave up. Then he started a slow journey up the beach so we grabbed our snorkels and masks and ran after him. We must have swum around with this one dolphin for a good half hour. Mark and Mindi came past on the boat and I think they got some photographs of us though I haven't seen them yet. The boys were faster than me in the water and got close enough to see the dolphin underwater. Each time I caught up the dolphin had swum away. On the way back down the beach the boys walked and I swam. I don't know if it was my indifference or lack of agression but the dolphin seemed to grow more curious when I was in the water alone and it came within a few metres of me. I still couldn't quite see it underwater but it was very special anyway. This was without a doubt the highlight of the trip and a morning I will remember for ever.
The rest of the trip was the usual Moreton stuff only we didn't have cars so there was none of the stress of organising trips to the other side of the island for a surf. We just hung out at the campsite and snorkelled. Jim arrived on Friday morning and Scooby and Denise on Saturday. The snorkelling was fantastic, as always. There is so much to see at Moreton. The sheer numbers of fish never cease to amaze me and I love just settling myself on the surface of the water to be surrounded by butter bream in seconds. I saw moon wrasse, parrot fish, humbug damsels, scores of cute little blue and yellow damsel fish flitting in and out of the coral, flathead, goby, boxfish (or was it a toadfish?), many different butterfly fish and angel fish, pairs of moorish idols, a fish with strange sucker-type things along its caudal peduncle (that's the bit just before the tail but I used its official name because peduncle is such a cool word) which I think may have been a sawtail, lots of very long thin fish hanging about just below the surface which I have been unable to identify but could be a crocodile longtom (or a garfish) and that's all I'm going to tell you about because this list is getting long and boring.
Hanging with the butter bream and humbugs
By Saturday afternoon the 50-100 metre swim to and from the wrecks was becoming quite perilous as more and more weekenders arrived with their boats and their jetskis, mooring their craft to the wrecks (can't imagine this is a particularly safe thing to do) and generally drifting around all over the place. The beautiful bay we'd played frisbee in the previous day was unrecognisable as it was now full of boats, and our "cricket pitch" between our camp and the water had been taken over by a bunch of 15 year old rugby players full of clever comments such as "alright luv?". No chance of swimming with dolphins now. That evening we went to watch the provision feeding of the dolphins up at the resort. The place was packed and so many tourists queued up to pay to feed the dolphins that I was wondering whether the dolphins would feel bloated and yucky afterwards. I spent some time listening to Mindi's hydrophone but could only hear shrimp snapping their claws as the dolphins had calmed down now that they were being fed. Another dolphin came to check out what was going on but didn't hang around and I heard that one echo-locating which was cool. I have been lucky enough to hear that before. One morning last year Toby and I were doing yoga on the beach when we saw dolphins swim past. We jumped in the water and stuck our heads below the surface where we could hear them clicking and whistling. Very special.
There is so much more I could write, about the boys' night snorkel whilst Denise and I got chatted up by the coach of the 15 year olds' rugby team, getting refused beer service after 6pm in the resort and being treated like the filthy camping scum that we were by the manager, and the wonderful camp meals we had of chicken burritos one night followed by a curry buffet the next. But I will stop there as this post is long enough and has taken me about 5 days to write.
There are lots of pictures of the Moreton weekend on Flickr at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/79031873@N00/sets/1303386/
I've also added a link to Jim's photos (hope you don't mind, Jim) because he has some great underwater shots (including the one above of me with the butter bream) - I haven't quite sorted out my underwater casing yet.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/55338186@N00/sets/1319109/
No comments:
Post a Comment