Friday 25 July 2014

Australia: the Reef

I can't do a post for every day of our holiday.  That would be a lot of posts, and my writing isn't original at the best of times.  So to spare you 21 versions of "We woke up, had breakfast, and headed out", I've been combining days here and there.  However, this day is noteworthy as it contained my highlight of the whole trip: the Great Barrier Reef.

We'd flown up to Cairns the day before, coming down through the clouds to a stereotypically tropical landscape of beaches and forested hills.  It was hot but not sunny, although we were sure that would change.

The next day, that had not changed.  It was overcast and windy.  However, we'd booked the reef trip and were sure that the reef itself didn't much mind what was going on overhead.

So here we are, pulling away from the shore, enjoying the ferry.



Then, well, it was rather rough.  Very bouncy, jouncy, flouncy, all kinds of things that boats shouldn't do.  Marisca was a superstar (she just decided to sleep).  Tom was unperturbed, although that's just because he's got a poor standard of personal hygiene anyway.  Other passengers were very perturbed, multiple times.

Anyway - this sets the scene for not a great time at the reef.  We went on a glass bottomed boat - very rocky and with wind whipping spray allover us, but it was *fun*.  Great to see the corals and the fish beneath our feet.




There was also an observatory where Risky and Tom enjoyed watching the fish shoaling around and Elspeth got a marine biology talk.  Later on we went on a semi submersible boat which was probably disappointing for most people as we couldn't get particularly close to the reef for fear of smashing into it with the choppiness.  Tom and Marisca, however, loved it.  Almost entirely because they thought it was a bubble boat and the whole point was to enjoy the bubbles whizzing past when they turned the engines on.  Just goes to show that how much you enjoy something is all about you expectations!



And then I spent the rest of the day snorkelling.  It was incredible: the sheer abundance of life and how close you get to it; swimming through shoals of fish, following individuals as they go about their daily lives, watching clownfish darting in and out of the coral and seeing little cleaner fish hoovering up after the bigger parrotfish.  Sea turtles too.  Fantastic to see the fish that I've read about and seen in tanks so much as an amateur fishkeeper earlier in my life.  So much life, and so colourful.  Brilliant.

I did take Tom into the water but it was pretty cold and he wasn't convinced.  Long enough to get a photo though...


And finally, this is about the only picture of fish and coral I have, from the observatory.  I've seen many better photos of fish, and none of them are as good as the real thing, so this is just a token really.


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