Witnessing the start of life, first hand…
Location: Brisbane, Queensland
Weather: Not a cloud in the sky, hot and sunny. 32ºc
We’re up bright and early to take part in the famous Brisbane bridge climb that I’ve been looking forward to for ages!
After we’ve had a quick safety briefing the grey jumpsuits are issued, our jewellery removed and instructions given on how to attach ourselves to the safety wire that runs the length of the bridge.
James leads us out onto the first level and we slowly make our way up the stairs to the platform that runs along the underside of the road section of the bridge. It’s only around 25 metres up and already one of our fellow climbers is getting twitchy. I thought it was me who didn’t like heights!
As we climb through the doorway that takes us up onto the first section for real, the stairs seem to climb on forever into infinity towards the top of the first tower section. As we gain height the city spills out below us with the CBD towering large away to the west, once we reach the top the view is awesome, it’s a perfect morning with clear blue skies and sunshine as far as the eye can see. We have some quick photos taken and after walking across the top of the super structure to the centre of the bridge, turn and return on the opposite side to where we have come from.
I really loved it and after being so bad with heights a year ago really feel that this sort of thing has helped me to overcome the slight ‘issue’ I had…not that I’d want to work up here everyday you understand!
Leaving Brisbane for Bundaberg and Mon Repos turtle rookery
After a morning of productive meetings at Tourism Queensland’s offices Bre and I made our way to the airport to catch the Qantas flight that would take us north to Bundaberg. James, General Manager of the Bundaberg Region Tourism, met us from the airport and whisked us to the sumptuous surroundings of the Grand Mercure apartments, Bargara. No time for relaxing though – this was the time of the night when the work really started…it’s turtle nesting season and that’s what we’re here to witness!
It’s a short drive to Mon Repos beach (made famous by Bert Hinkler as the landing beach for his early aviation endeavours in the 1920’s ) and once the sun goes down this long sandy beach becomes the favoured spot for Loggerhead turtles to leave the water of the South Pacific, clamber ashore and lay their eggs in the temperate sands found here.
The visitor centre tells you everything there is to know about the lives of these incredible creatures who spend many months at sea, whilst they’re juveniles, before returning to the beach they were born on to lay their eggs.
Between November and January the female turtle can visit the beach up to four times, laying around 120 eggs on each trip. It takes six weeks for the eggs to hatch and during January the mad race across the sand commences with the famous pictures we’ve all seen of those tiny defenceless little baby turtles scrambling to get to the water’s edge and its relative safety. And that’s just the start of their lifelong adventure…
Another very interesting fact relates to the temperature of the sand in which the eggs are laid; the tipping point at which the sex of the turtle is determined is 26.6ºc – any cooler than that and the clutch will become male, any hotter and it’s female! Hot headed girls and cool guys…that sounds about right!
Jae is one of the rangers who work here at the centre, she’s spent the summer period of the last four years imparting her wealth of knowledge to visitors to the centre and tonight would be no different “Last night there were 19 separate turtles who visited the beach, not all laid eggs but you should be in for a real treat tonight” she said confidently.
The turtles have chosen this beach for many years due to its perfectly remote location. Bright streetlights and the glow of a residential area aren’t much help to a turtle trying top navigate its way ashore. The centre and the boardwalk down to the beach are all dimly lit with just a few flashing LED’s to mark the way down to the water’s edge – where it was all about to happen!
It took a fair while for my eyes to adjust to their night-vision (especially difficult when the National Geographic cameras are rolling and their bright lights are turned on in my face every so often!) and we’d arrived on the beach before moonrise meaning we really couldn’t see much of the surroundings.
We started a slow walk along the shoreline until Jae said “hey guys – there’s a Loggerhead right up in front of us”. I couldn’t see anything…hang on there’s a slightly darker track about 20 metres ahead…oh yes now I can just about make out the outline of something.
As we slowly approached the dark mass making its way up the beach I could hear the crunching of the sand under the female’s flippers (flippers for turtles, fins for humans), she made her way to the top of the beach, just below the high-water mark and stopped. This would be where the next generation of little turtles would be laid.
With her head facing up the beach we could approach from her rear, stopping a couple of metres behind her. Jae told us that as female turtles enter the laying stage they actually enter a trance-like state, which means they’re pretty oblivious to what’s going on around them – hence how close we were getting.
The next part of the operation was pretty special to witness, once she’d found her chosen location (we’ll call our turtle Tessa from now on) she lowered her rear end down onto the sand and in one of the most methodical operations I’ve ever witnessed, used both rear flippers in turn to carefully dig a 20cms wide hole by slowly reaching down and carefully extracting a flipper’s worth of sand from it each time. Each flipper appeared as a perfectly cupped hand containing the sand that as it touched the ground expertly flicked the previous load away.
Twenty minutes later a 60cm deep hole had been excavated ready to receive the eggs. Tessa’s egg laying tube then hung down into the hole and slowly, one by one, the eggs were dropped into the hole until 118 had been laid.
In order to be properly incubated the sand had to be replaced to provide warmth and security for the little hatchlings in their very early days whilst still inside the eggs, so Tessa scooped back into the hole all of the sand she’d removed only an hour ago. To disguise the hole even further she then spent a further twenty minutes flicking sand all around…literally everywhere covering all traces of her work from prying predators. That is except us…
Her route down the beach retraced her steps up it and after a five minute crawl she was once more hitting the safe waters of the ocean, each step taking her closer to the watery world which she’d appeared from a couple of hours previously. Once she’d swum away our job had to start.
Turtle numbers have been rising for the past couple of years but only after a decade of decline so all eggs are vital to the management and preservation of these rare creatures. Tessa had chosen to lay her eggs below the high water mark, with an incoming tide due in only a few hours time it was essential that we relocate the nest to avoid the waters swamping the eggs rendering them useless.
Jae selected a site further up the dune and we cleared the grass and roots out of the way before digging our own hole exactly as Tessa had done, 20cms wide and 60cms deep. Every little root has to be removed as each could pose a potential threat to the newly hatched turtles as they struggle to get to the surface of the nest at the start of their life long mission.
We have to move quickly as the eggs need to be moved within two hours of being laid or they’ll not develop so Bre and I carry four at a time up the beach to the new nest where Jae carefully lays them into the ground. It takes six weeks for the eggs to hatch and when they do so starts the mad scramble to the water for the little creatures avoiding all manner of predators enroute.
It’s been an incredible experience and one which Bre and I adored being part of, it’s one of those things you see on television but don’t ever think you’ll be lucky enough to do for yourself. It’s not just me that can do it either, there’s probably around 120 people here tonight, as with every night during the nesting and hatching season which runs from November through to March, all of who are lucky enough to be able to witness this incredible natural event.
Long may it continue…
End of day location: Bargara, Bundaberg
Distance travelled: 380kms for us, many thousands of km’s for Tessa the Turtle
