Sunday March 6 - To Lady Elliot Island

Today was a bit of a travel day.  We left Agnes Waters and traveled about an hour and a half to Bundaberg to catch a flight to Lady Elliot Island.  We set out before 6 as to get a good start to be at the Bundaberg airport before 8 am.  Our early start gave us a great Aussie experience.  Getting on the rode that early in the area where we were puts us in prime time for Roo encounters.  Janice told us to be on the watch for them.  No sooner had she said it then a pretty good size Roo darted from the side of the road right into our path.  Janice slammed on the brakes and we luckily avoided a Roo contact that would have put a dent into our day, so to speak.  As she said, when you see one Roo you know there are others.  Just on the side were a couple of more.  A bit down the road we came upon one small baby Roo who was just standing in the road.  Once we came upon him he took off running down the road.  He finally exited the roadway and joined a couple of others who were in the grass.  They ran along as if trying to race us down the way.  Quite a nice wildlife show to start the day.

We traveled through rolling countryside of wide open grazing land and mixed forests.  We came into Bundaberg and got to experience another uniqueness of Australia.  It was Sunday and everything was closed.  Not just a bit of businesses, not a majority of but virtually every single business was closed.  McDonalds and all!  Our host says that is the way of Australia...

At the Bundaberg airport we caught our little twin engine flight and headed due east out into the Pacific Ocean.  We flew for a bit less than an hour and out of the vast blue water suddenly appeared a spec of land.

It was Lady Elliot Island!  It is about the size of a postage stamp with a runway carved across the middle of it.  And the runway was literally carved out of the island.  It was not paved but just a bit of grass and crushed corral.  My first thought was...  No way we are going to land on that!  Then my next thought was... the runway was too short.  I believe they intended that runway for helicopter landings.  But land we did!

The runway as seen from the back seat of the plane.  Short but sweet I guess...

When we touched down it was a bumpy experience as we felt all of the variations of the grass and corrals surface.

Lady Elliot Island is an Eco Tourist spot that is part of a nature preserve.  The island is the farthest south point of the Great Barrier Reef.  It is a bird sanctuary with a massive amount of varieties of birds.  More on that later...

Once we landed we had to get a start on our adventures.  So we quickly signed up for the adventure snorkel cruise.  And off we went to see the sea.  The cruise took us to the outer part of the reef.  We saw a great deal of fish including a number of reef sharks swimming down along the bottom.  An excellent way to get our Lady Elliot Island experience into full bloom.