The Okuda Family

We spent another night in Caloundra after a long day at the zoo so that we could head out toward Mon Repos in the morning.

Our first stop was the Eumundi Market, one of the largest markets in Queensland and significantly larger than Eumundi itself.  We had lunch at Kadek’s Kitchen, though she was nowhere to be found.  There was some Indonesian dude behind the counter who answered to the name.  Imposter!

We then headed north to Bargara to see the nesting turtles at Mon Repos.  When we arrived we drove around for a while looking for any sort of vacancy but everything was full.  We eventually found a two bedroom condo, but the manager was only willing to rent it to us for one night as long as we agreed to not use the second washroom.  Fair enough.

Mon Repos, as you may remember from past adventures, is a turtle conservation park and, more specifically, a turtle rookery with the largest concentration of marine nesting turtles on the east coast of Australia. 

There is also other wildlife to be found.

In the evenings Mon Repos has controlled access to the beach where small groups of people are taken out to watch turtles either nesting or hatching.  This is to keep the disturbance to a minimum and is particularly important when the turtles are nesting as they are easily scared.  During our last visit we witnessed turtles emerging from their nests, as we were there later in the season.  This time we arrived early in the season and witnessed one nesting.

We didn’t have to wait as long this time for action and were quickly shuttled out to the beach when a turtle made its way up the beach.  Turtles have poor peripheral vision as, I guess, they can’t move their heads around too much, so while she was digging the nest we could sneak up behind her and wait without spooking her.  Once they start laying the eggs there is apparently nothing that will distract them from their task.

Very cool.

After she finished laying her eggs she covered in the hole, took forever spreading the sand around, and returned to the ocean to possibly come back in a few weeks to lay more.  The conservation workers then start their work and dig up the nest to count the eggs for their records.  I understand that they would normally return them to the same hole, but they felt that it was a bit too low down the beach and would be safer further up, so they dug a new hole of the same depth and width and we moved the eggs.

Yes, that’s right, I said that we moved the eggs.  I guess the fastest way to move 100+ eggs up the beach is to give a few to each person

We all took some of the eggs from the original nest and delivered them to the new nest.

This is the new nest just before being filed in.  We left once the nest was all filled in and we were escorted back to the visitor centre.  Awesome.

While we were in Australia the Brisbane area was hit with a major storm that caused major flooding and damage.  It was declared a “Natural Disaster Zone” and the weather bureau compared it to a category 2 cyclone.  Ouch.  Fortunately for us the worst of it was about three days before we arrived in Brisbane.

When we arrived we had only a rental car and some plans to visit the Australia Zoo and Mon Repo beach for the turtles.  We headed north and ended up in Caloundra the first night, a convenient distance from Brisbane and close to the Australia Zoo.  We stumbled upon a room in a nice hotel, and they gave us two huge adjoining rooms (apartments really).

There was a major lightning storm just off shore and we requested a room with a view so we could watch it.

The entire sky was lit up with a constant glow from the lighting in the clouds.  It was far enough away that there wasn’t much noise, but it was bright.

I have video that I will try to post at some point that gives a much better idea of the volume of lightning.  It was a consistent and constant light coming from the clouds.  Crazy.

The next day we went to the Australia Zoo.  It is one of our favourite zoos and here is the post of our previous visit.  It, of course, includes the standard feeding of the kangaroos.

“Feeding kangaroos feeding kangaroos feeding.”

Work it out.

Not a kangaroo.

Most definitely not a kangaroo.

That’s more like it.

Going back through these photos I see how blind I’ve been.  We paid good money to go in and feed their animals.  It’s just a big scam.  They should be paying us!  I want my money back… or the food… no, the money.