cute!!

Once we’d all had a good look, it was time to get them safely to the ocean. The ranger asked for volunteers with a torch, and much to Hel’s delight, she was the first one picked. There were six people picked, and they had to stand in a line from the turtles to the ocean, shining their torches so that the turtles headed for the lights and safely into the water. Hel was first in the queue, and was grinning like a Cheshire Cat when the little things started waddling their way towards her, and positively ecstatic when they crawled all over her sandaled feet! The whole thing took about fifteen minutes, and was just the most incredible sight!! Hel of course had to stay absolutely still while the turtles were passing underneath her, but once they were all passed her we were both able to go down to the water’s edge and watch them head off into the ocean for their long journey who knows where!! Another amazing turtle fact is that by the time they

have gone from the top of the beach to the ocean, they have calibrated them selves to the Earth’s magnetic field, and are able to use it to navigate!! Extraordinary!! After all the excitement, we watched while the ranger dug the rest of the egg shells out to see how many of the eggs originally laid had survived, and in our case only six had not made it, which is apparently an amazingly high success rate!! Then all that was left to do was to wander back, looking out for any more hatchlings, to make sure we didn’t squash any!! We bought a certificate of our hatching experience, and then headed off back to our campsite in a cab which came with no trouble at all!!

The next morning we were up pretty early to get our bus to the station and the train to Brisbane. We’d been quite hopeful about this train journey, as it was supposed to be one of Queensland’s “Tilt Trains”, which supposedly go