Day 9: Wednesday, February 13, 2002
Last day on Heron Island

Noddy tern couple in their nest

Today is our last day on Heron Island, how sad. The boat leaves at 2pm, but we packed in a bunch of activities before that. First we packed up all our stuff and grabbed breakfast. They ask you to put your bags outside your room by 10am and they come pick them up and put them on the boat for you. We did that and then went to settle our bill. (We had spent about AU$400 (US$200) over the 4 days, which isn't bad.) They have some cubbies in the reception area where you can keep your stuff for the day, and a public shower so you can still go out in the water before you leave, which is nice.

Gray Egret

We then joined the Bird Walk at 9am. That's a 1.5 hour walk around the island where they tell you about the birds. This time we had Leah, who was also quite good. She told us about the various birds we'd been seeing all week. I was pleased that I'd noticed most of them by that time. She told us the same story about the noddy terns and how the nest in the Pisonia trees, which trap about 20% of them in their sticky branches so they can feed off the nourishment in the soil when the bird drops to the ground and dies. She explained that when they mate, the males fly in an intricate pattern and the females have to copy it exactly and then he decides it if was good enough to be his mate. The nerve! But if he accepts her, then she gets him back. He goes and collects leaves for the nest, bringing them to her. She checks it out (size, water content, whatever), and rejects it if she doesn't like it, so he has to get more. She takes only 1 in about 100. So there. One guy in the group said, "Typical!" which made us laugh. She explained that there are no Herons on the island. They have egrets, which are very similar and had been mistaken for Herons when it was named. Some of the birds are residents and some migrate to the island. A couple of the birds she showed us migrate from as far as Siberia and Alaska. Wow, what a journey. (It would be cool to be a bird and check out the whole globe!) She also showed us a seagull's egg (it was pretty big!) and a brown booby sitting out on a sign in the water out beyond the pier. The talk was pretty good. I think others in the group were more into birding than we were, but we enjoyed it.

Noddy tern spreading wings to heat them

During the time there, we'd occasionally seen the terns sitting on the ground and spreading their wings out, as if sunbathing. I asked about that, and she said they were in fact heating their wings to release some natural oils, which they then spread around on their wings to protect them from the sun.

Noddy tern spreading wings to heat them

After that was over, it was time to check in for snorkeling. I put on my wetsuit and we headed over to the pier. After a short wait, we got on the boat. Andrew and Susan got on after us and sat next to us. That was nice cuz he and Walendo ended up having a good techy conversation about Samba and TiVo and such. Andrew also offered to take a picture of us snorkeling together with his waterproof camera, which was really nice. (He has a waterproof housing to his digital Canon, which is pretty cool. They make one for our camera, but it's almost as expensive as the camera, so it isn't worth it.) And sure enough, shortly after we started snorkeling, Andrew took a couple of shots of us.

Ellen & Walendo snorkeling (The picture Andrew took)

He said they'd be up on his photos website, so we'll grab them when they're available. So cool! We snorkled at Gorgonia Hole again, but this time the current was much stronger so we drifted a lot further. At first we saw lots of stuff, but after a while we had trouble finding lots of fish. Seems like we were in the wrong place cuz other people said they saw turtles and sharks. (I'd been keeping an eye out for turtles, but no luck.) We also saw the scuba divers, who were doing a shallow dive in the same area, so it was interesting to see what they do. Walendo and I hung out pretty closely together, so that was fun to show each other what we saw. After about 50 minutes we'd had enough so we headed back to the boat. Everyone came in pretty quickly this time, so we were back fairly early.

That was good because we had just about an hour to grab a shower and get lunch before the boat. We got to the shower and there were already other people in line. Sigh. So while I waited in line, Walendo returned our gear. There were other people behind us and we all agreed that they should provide more than one shower so we can all be sure to make it.

Dessert spread, Heron Island

We took a quick shower together (not a great idea, since I like the water nice and hot and Walendo likes it frigid cold, but we managed) and then went over to lunch. Adrianna joined us again, our last meal together. Walendo was concerned about getting sick on the boat, especialy since it was much choppier than it had been on the way out. He ate a little less than usual but couldn't completely resist. I wasn't as worried cuz we'd decided to take the seasickness pills, and they had that yummy quiche again so I didn't skimp. :-) After a quick meal we said goodbye to Adrianna, picked up the pills and headed to the jetty. The boat was just arriving. The new crew ambled off the boat and then we all piled on. We got another one of the roomy seats at the top, which was nice.

Ellen writing in journal at Gladstone airport

I had neglected this journal for the last few days, so I wrote as long as I could before I started to feel the waves and then rested the rest of the way. The boat arrived just over 2 hours later and the bus was waiting for us to take us to the airport. Everyone else seemed to have booked themsevles on the flights that left right away, but I guess I had been worried about cutting it too close, so we have a two hour wait. That's working out okay because it's giving me time to catch up on this journal and Walendo says he's happy to get a little time to rest. He wouldn't have wanted to be anxious about the connection (which is probably what I was thinking). So our flight to Brisbane leaves in about 45 mins and then we take a quick flight to Sydney, where we'll be staying at the airport hotel. Should be just a regular travel day from her on.

...

Qantas prop plane Gladstone to Brisbane

The two flights back from Gladstone to Brisbane and then Brisbane to Sydney went fine. We started to look at the guide books to figure out where we would go next. We had booked a rental car in Sydney and planned to drive slowly down to Melbourne, checking out southern New South Wales and much of Victoria, especially the national parks and nice little towns along the way. But during the trip we kept hearing about Tasmania and how beautiful it is, so we thought we might adjust things and include Tasmania in the trip instead of other things. We realized it would have been a lot smarter to fly down to Melbourne and then drive around from there rather than renting a car in Sydney and then driving it down to Melbourne. We thought about trying to book a last-minute flight to Melbourne, but everything was closed when we arrived at Sydney airport around 10:30pm, so we didn't. The only ferry to Tasmania that would work for us, while still giving us time to see other places, was the Friday night ferry, so now we have to see if we can get on. (We could also fly, but since we've already booked the car rental on the mainland, it seemed even more complicated to arrange.)

Dinner at Hotel Ibis

Once we got our luggage we went outside and there was a courtesy bus to the various airport hotels. It was packed, but we got on and they dropped us off at our hotel, the Ibis Airport Hotel. We hadn't really eaten dinner (except some marginal snack they'd given us on the plane), but everything was closed, so Walendo got some food from the vending machines, and that was dinner. The room looked like a replacable modular unit, and the bathroom was one hermetically sealed unit inside it. It looked like you could just swap one unit out and put in another. Kind of odd, but perfectly functional. Walendo tried dialing up to the internet and once again, we couldn't make the connection. Something is odd. So we went downstairs to the lobby where they had an interent kiosk. So far they've mostly been dialup kiosks, which is painfully slow, especially since you pay by the minute. We tried to find out about availability of the Tasmania ferry but they didn't have that information on the website. We also couldn't tell if there were any flights to Tasmania on the Qantas website, so instead, I just did a quick email check and then went back up to the room. We'd just have to call them tomorrow morning. By the time we got to sleep it was about 1am.

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