What an amazing weekend we
had!
Stradbrooke Island is like paradise with its wildlife, sights and small
population. We went with our friends we met at the hostel and drove to
Cleveland to catch the ferry. We were staying at North Stradbrooke part of the
Island at Amity Point; we had booked a wooden bungalow with two bedrooms for us
to stay in. There were only four bungalows altogether and we had a swimming
pool and a jetty for residents of the site to use, our bungalow was called
'Kookaburra'.
Shortly after unpacking our things from the car we saw a wild Koala in the
tree near to one of the other bungalows, a couple was staying there and the guy
said that he had only seen one wild koala in 30 years! We saw 3 in 3 days, must
have been our lucky weekend! The koalas don't do much apart from looking very
cute and just sleep in the tree for the whole day. Also learned an interesting
fact about koalas from the couple who were staying in one of the bungalows that
apparently the koalas on Straddie are more protected that the ones that live on
the main land because they main land ones are being killed off by Chlamydia
where as the Island ones don't have it. Never knew koalas could get STI's, but
we all do know, interesting little fact for you there though ;).
Anyway, we had our lunch and headed down to a beach not far from where we
staying and along the way we saw our 2nd Koala, but he was harder to see as the
tree was much taller and all we could see was its bum, charming! When we
finally got to the beach there were signs saying not to swim on this beach as
there was a danger of sharks in this area, this was pretty scary to see, we did
go in the water but not far in, were still pretty terrifying and we weren't
going to risk it! We saw a hermit crab though crawling across the sand bed, the
boys tried to pick it up but were being to girlish about it and it got away. I
also saw a stingray, which I did not see until I was right beside it and moved,
so basically I was too freaked out and ran out of the water (well I am a girl J).
But later on we saw a pod of dolphins not too far out and that time we tried to
swim out to them, at first we had to try and figure out if they were sharks or
dolphins though, but they kept going too far out for us to get to. We stayed
for the sunset and headed back to the bungalow, but on the way we saw a group
of people near the edge of the water further up and saw that they were hand
feeding the dolphins! We went up to see and the dolphins can very close, but
not close enough for us to touch them sadly.
We headed back and went up to the jetty, where there was another family who
were staying in one of the bungalows also, who were fishing for their dinner to
take back. We also got chatting to the couple who own the site who were the
most friendly and welcoming people ever, they told us to come back later to
come and see the dolphins which usually come every night, and he had fish to
feed them with. We headed back down to the jetty later to meet them and the
other family were there also to see the dolphins, the dolphins never showed us
but we got chatting to the family and the owners who were all really nice and
were giving out beers. We went back to have our BBQ dinner which was very tasty
and later that night we decided to go back to the jetty, there were fishing
rods there so the boys were having a fish and soon afterwards the dolphins came
swimming along, which was a mother and baby, we went under the jetty so we
could feed them and managed to touch them! They were really friendly and
showing off a lot too, we also had competition with the jetty further down from
us and the dolphins kept coming back and forth between us. We didn’t have
anything left to fed them apart from some old prawns left from fishing before;
the dolphins weren’t stupid and went to the other jetty where they had fresh
fishL,
so we didn’t see them again that night.
The next day we went snorkeling and kayaking at Amity Point jetty, we went
kayaking first through the mangroves which was really interesting, looked like
there should have been crocodiles living there but they don’t get any around
those parts, thankfully! They sometimes get Dugong’s around that part also, but
can be really rare to see them which was ashame. After we had been kayaking we
headed back to the beach and got our snorkeling gear and swam around the rocks
where we saw hundreds of fish, sea cucumbers, star fish, someone saw an eel but
they were further out and saw a small dead shark, the nearest we have come to
one, not in a horrible way for the shark but I’m glad it was. It was a very
good first experience for snorkelingJ.
We then drove up to the Blue Lake which is near the middle of the island, we
had to walk about half an hour after parking the car through the rainforest
part to get to the lake, we hoped to see another koala but was a lot more
difficult as they were a lot more trees there. When we finally got there the
lake was very nice and weren’t many people about either so seemed very
secluded, the lake was very dark also there were only certain parts where it
was sandy but the water was very clean, the place altogether was very peaceful.
After we had our lunch some of us went swimming again then we headed back to
the car before it got dark as we wanted to go to the other lake ‘Brown Lake’
before the end of the day. This lake was very nice too, it had beaches here
where as the Blue Lake hadn’t, this is where we also saw our third koala which
was also sleeping high up a tree. The reason the lake was brown was because it
was surrounded by tea tree trees which made the water look like tea.
Before getting back to our accommodation we went to buy some fish for the
dolphins to try and bride them to coming over to our jetty this time, but to be
honest they weren’t the best of fish for them as they were frozen. We had our 2nd
BBQ which again was very nice and we went down to our jetty to try and see if
the dolphins might be around, we waited a long while and had a go at fishing
again. The family we had been taking to before came over and we were fishing
with them, they brought some bread and throwing it in the water for the fish,
soon enough we had a swarm of fish under where we were fishing and as soon as
the hook went in the water we hooked a fish, Matt was helping us beginners
learn how to cast the line out and the basics. The boys went back to get some
beers and while they were away we caught a squid, who wasn’t the most clever of
squids around, he was a bit difficult to catch and kept coming off the hook and
spraying ink at us, but soon enough he would be back on the hook and fourth
time lucky we finally caught the squid. The guys put it back in the water after
we had a look at it, but they were keeping some of the fish they had earlier
for their dinner, I and Anais put ours back which we had caught. Well the
dolphins stood us up, they must have heard that we had frozen fish; it would
have been nice to see them again before we had to go.
On our last day we went to Point Lookout which had very nice beaches and we
went to a beach called Cylinder Beach and went for a swim and sunbathe down
there for a couple of hours. Then before it got dark and before we had to go we
went on a board walk around some cliffs nearby and saw a sea turtle and a
porcupine, you get some really nice views from there of the sea and beaches
too. Unfortunately we had to go and catch the ferry home and head back to
Brisbane, but had a fantastic weekend one we won’t forget for a very long
while.
