Thursday September 12, 2019

I had planned two different ways of seeing the Great barrier Reef (GBR) today. The preferred option, for good weather, was to fly to the reef on a seaplane. I have never done a water takeoff or landing so that would have been a new experience and it would save me 80 km/50 mi of driving as well as five hours of travel time to the reef and back. Well, that didn’t happen. All week the winds were too high for the seaplane to land and dock with the reef pontoon so I had to resort to booking a cruise to the reef from Airlie Beach.

This did not affect the reef experience which would have been much the same either way and was very enjoyable. I visited Hardy Reef, about 60 miles from Airlie Beach, where the boat docks alongside a large pontoon that is permanently moored there.

There are several ways to view the reef from the pontoon and I’ll go through them in the order I did them.

Helicopter: This replaced the seaplane views. We were taken from the pontoon to a floating helicopter pad using a small platform with an outboard motor. You can see how windy it was from the water.
The helicopter flight was short but offered great views of the reef.

Underwater observation deck: On the lower level of the pontoon they had an underwater observation deck. Since the pontoon was about 50 feet from the reek you could only see fish from here.

Semi-Submersible: A better way to see the reef was on this smaller boat with an underwater viewing deck that could sail very close to the reef and it was from here that I got the best photos.I asked why the colours are nowhere near as vivid as I saw on the promotional material and the guide admitted that the very colourful images and video that you see of the reef are taken at night using artificial lighting. During the day the red light is absorbed by the first few metres of water leaving everything looking very blue.

Snorkeling: I am not afraid of many things but one thing that has made me very anxious ever since I was a kid is being out of my depth in water. Since this was the GBR, and I had purchased swimming trunks just for this, I had to try. I am sorry to say it was an utter fail. After donning my wet-suit, mask and flippers (supplied as part of the trip) I carefully entered the water and started looking around beneath me but I hated every second and could not bring myself to swim over to the reef itself. Hence all my underwater footage looked like this.

But I had fun and the four hours at the reef went by quickly, helped by a great buffet lunch.

When we left the reef it was low tide and the water flows into the ocean from the reef at just a couple of places where the  rim is broken.

On the way back we passed The Whitsundays, a group of forested islands just off the coast. Click for a bigger image.

Friday September 13, 2019

Road video and map – Airlie Beach to Gladstone, QLD

The change from seaplane to boat affected today more than yesterday because the GBR trip was much longer and I was unable to start driving south yesterday. This required two hours of extra driving today and I decided to replace a planned detour to the coast with a much shorter one to Mount Archer National Park as I headed to Gladstone for the night. I also made a brief photo stop in the town of Sarina which has adopted the Cane Toad as its symbol.

The Cane Toad is considered a pest but Sarina advertises it proudly with a giant model in the town center. You can also see the smoke from the sugar processing plant in the background.

The Mount Archer lookout has a great view of Rockhampton and the Fitzroy River but a bush fire in the park had only been extinguished yesterday and some smoke was still in the air today.
There was also a very pleasant forest walk that had good views of the hills in the opposite direction.