Australia - Part 3

Snorkeling

We began our last day in tropical northeastern Australia with a drive westward over mountains into a dry, drought affected landscape. Gone were green rainforests. Instead, we passed brown open fields and thousands of termite mounds like the one below.

At one location where our tour guide was willing to stop we could see many similar mounds along a dirt road in the distance. Some fields had hundreds of mounds scattered about.

Eventually, after miles of desiccated country, we left the paved road and followed a rugged dirt road to the ranch/farm of a wildlife expert who invited us into his traditional Queensland home. There we were served tea and treats on a beautiful porch outside his open air house.

He told us about many birds he could see from his porch, but, at least during the time of our visit, most of them were not easy to see. An epiphytic plant grew on one of the trees near his house.

I was quite surprised when he showed us a bower bird's bower complete with several odd "gifts" arranged in front of the bower to attract a mate. One of the gifts was a syringe!

Next, we stopped by a pond, or billabong, where enormous numbers of birds congregated along with some cattle.

While looking at the birds I heard strange moaning sounds behind me. I wondered what unfamiliar Australian animal was making the sounds until I turned around and saw the source, a creaking windmill! Good thing I didn't ask the wildlife expert to identify what animal made the sound. He would, quite accurately, have classified me as an idiot.

As we drove along the bumpy dirt road away from the ranch we saw a big, one meter long goanna lizard near the roadside. Before I could take a picture the huge lizard darted into high grass and disappeared.

Soon we were back on paved roads driving to Port Douglas for our trip to the Great Barrier Reef. There we boarded a catamaran and took about an hour long sail to a small island with a horseshoe-shaped protected shallow bay. Thank goodness the sea was relatively calm. I felt no motion sickness.

Here's our catamaran anchored off shore at the island.

It was a beautiful spot and a sunny day.

  We were issued snorkel face masks, fins, and wet suits.

C had been eagerly anticipating this adventure for months. She prepared well by regularly practicing snorkel technique during her swim workouts. I, on the other hand, haven't been swimming for years, but I was willing to give it a try.

The water was warm and shallow. Our wonderfully kind tour guide, Marnie, helped C get started and soon they were off to join other novice snorkelers exploring the underwater reef. I was so happy that C had a successful snorkel. She was thrilled to see a small ray, colorful fish, and coral formations.

I flunked snorkeling badly! It was embarrassing to flounder around awkwardly in the unfamiliar fins. I finally got horizontal in the water only to find my face mask immediately filling with water. Even with Marnie's expert help I couldn't get the face mask to seal properly and keep water out. The minute I began moving forward a gush of water would cascade over my forehead into my eyes. Then I would inhale water. If the mask had worked, I'm convinced I would have been able to handle the breathing and swimming. Instead, after a few aborted attempts, I urged Marnie and C to go on without me. It just didn't work for me. I went back to the beach and watched from there.

Even though I didn't snorkel I did see some interesting things. The tide was going out. Receding water uncovered giant clams near the shore. Small reef sharks were swimming in water so shallow their backs were visible as they hunted small fish. I returned from the beach to the catamaran on a glass bottom boat whose pilot made some effort to sail over reefs the snorkelers had explored. I could see some coral formations, but the view through glass was disappointing. Everything looked green and bubbles from the moving boat blocked the view. Pictures I took were initially awful until I tried processing with Photoshop. Processing revealed some hint of beautiful colors I would have seen if I snorkeled. The first image below is an unprocessed view through the glass bottom. The second image is cropped and color corrected to remove the overwhelming green tint.

Notice the unavoidable reflections on the glass and the waxy streaks near the top. In spite of these imperfections, I got some hint of how nice the snorkel view would have been. Here's another part of the reef, unprocessed, and processed.

Finally, one more image pair with a small fish visible.

The sail back to the mainland happened at sunset. We could see the crescent Moon and Venus in twilight.

During our drive back from the Port Douglas we stopped on the roadside somewhere north of Palm Cove. The sky had temporarily cleared and the Moon had set. Aside from occasional passing headlights the sky was incredibly dark. The Milky Way was almost directly overhead and astoundingly bright - so bright I gasped when I first saw it! Unfortunately, good conditions didn't last long. Clouds kept hiding parts of the sky so I had difficulty getting oriented. Even so, I began to understand the constellation placement and see some spectacular views through my small binoculars. Then clouds increased and it was time to leave. As we drove on I was excited about future prospects for observing new things in dark skies. Little did I know that this brief 10-minute stop would be the best naked eye Milky Way view of the entire trip.