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Kate was relatively immobile having tripped and fallen on the Sunday night while visiting with friends. She ended up on crutches with a plastic boot to support her damaged ankle. This was a serious constraint on how we experienced the island as we could not get around readily and hobbling across sandy beaches to get into the water was very difficult. Nevertheless, we went and did get into the water several times. Kate was fine once she got into the water but getting there was tough. With her ankle injuries flippers would not have been possible but she has never used them anyways. We had our own diving masks (mine has prescription lenses), snorkels and body suits. Some people come to do scuba diving, we just snorkel.
You can snorkel on the reef right off the shore of the island as you can see in the picture at top left. This really appealed to us. We have snorkeled on the Great Barrier Reef before, a couple of times (from Cairns and from Townsville/Magnetic Island), but that's always a long boat ride out to the reef for a short swim and on the way someone, often me, will be throwing up with sea sickness. We have also snorkelled with the Whale Sharks on the Ningaloo (on the west coast) and swam on the reef fringing Magnetic Island, QLD. There's also some really great snorkelling with some coral growing on the wrecks at Tangalooma on Moreton Island just off Brisbane. Of all of these places it's hard to say which is best. Were we younger and more able this might have been the best place. There is some very good reef to explore off the lighthouse where you can ride the current from one end to the other and then walk back along the shore. That's like our experience on the Ningaloo at Coral Bay. Great way to see things ... if you can walk.
Lady Elliot Island is about 50 miles from shore, the primary access is via small turbo prop aircraft. Apparently, it is the only coral cay island with an airstrip on the Great Barrier Reef. It's quite small, about 100 acres (45 hectares), and if you count a city block as around 2.5 acres then you could pace it off as 40 city blocks (say 6 by 7). It's small enough to be walkable (for those who can walk). The grass landing strip bisects the island. In the picture above you can see the landing strip down the centre, the resort area at the top right, the lighthouse at the bottom right, and the reef all around the island.
We caught our flight shortly after 7:00am early on the Wednesday morning from the Redcliffe Aerodome (it's a single paved runway with no control tower or "regular" flights). This is the closest departure site to Brisbane and is only 45minutes away from our place in New Farm. We drove out from our long stay in New Farm and left our car with excess luggage at the airport. On the flight with us were some staff on rotation and a family visiting from Texas — they were on a whirl wind tour and were staying over only one night. Our flight stopped at Hervey Bay to pick up more passengers, on the way back we were direct to Redcliffe.
The landing was interesting as the pilot, a young woman who acted as steward and ground crew, came in low to first judge the wind direction then seemed to abort the landing and went around to land on a second pass. It seemed rather scary but apparently that's the way they do it. That also gave you a second chance to get a good view of the island.
Our guide showed us around the small resort, pointed out the dive shop, gift store, dining hall, lecture hall and orientated us to where most things are. Kate hobbled along on crutches doing her best to keep up. Our well appointed room was in a modern building a short walk from most things at the resort and right against what they call "The Lagoon". We did most of our swimming in the lagoon; however, the lagoon is very shallow and you really cannot swim there except at high tide.
The dining hall serves three meals a day in a buffet style. Everything, of course, has to be brought in. Water at the resort is saved rainwater and desalination — a precious commodity. The resort manager offered to take us around some time if we wanted to see the mechanics behind the scenes. There's a bar serving drinks, including espresso, and a snack bar that's open most hours. Everything you purchase at the resort, including drinks, gift shop purchases, etc., is just added to your bill. The staff did get to know your name, but usually it's just "Put it on Room L37, Graham & Quinton". The meals were all very good, ample with lots of choices for your mains as well as desserts. After a few days I did discover that instant coffee was free and available at a hot/cold water bar at one end — however, I much prefer a "flat white" although Kate balks at the $8 charge for each.
One of the really interesting things is the lack of security. There are no room keys! Doors do not lock on any of the guest rooms or cabins. Of course if someone were to rob you there's only one way they're going to get off the island.
We had a number of glorious sunrise, sunset events. We got a ride on a golf cart to see the sunset from Lighthouse beach on our first night. It wasn't very dramatic as there were no clouds in the sky. We did have a couple of beautiful sunrise mornings — 6:30am when it's actually a bit chilly.
Swimming in the Lagoon was very convenient to our cottage/room when the tide was high. When the tide is out you can see the tops of the coral. Even at high tide, the water is only about 3 foot deep which makes swimming a bit of a challenge — you don't want to touch the coral. The coral is fragile and very rough. Kate had swim gloves, I did not. There were lots of sea turtles in the Lagoon which were a delight to see. There was lots of interesting and different corals, huge sea clams, brightly colored star fish, schools of fishes and a ton of sea slugs. At the outer edge of the lagoon there's a coral wall that drops down quite deep. There are scuba diving trips out to that area but neither of us have tried that. You can see the waves crashing against the outer coral wall of the lagoon and tour boats bouncing around. Going out there looks like a good way to get very sea sick!
Our reservation included an adventure off the lighthouse beach in a glass bottom boat. The coral on that side of the island is quite impressive and in deeper water. Some people saw manta rays in this area, we did not. Some of the people would have been on a day trip where they've come out to do swim in that area and return at end of day. They would be at the mercy of the weather. Several days the wind was up and you could see boats bouncing around wildly off the lagoon. Those were days we didn't take advantage of the tour to Lighthouse Beach. I did a guided walk one day to the Lighthouse Beach, every day fit souls would walk from the resort, across the landing strip, and follow the path down to the beach. It's not very far at all.
There are some interesting birds on the island. Gulls of course, but also little "Rails" you had to look out for. We were having breakfast a couple of times where, when you turned your back, a rail came up and stole some of Reg's bacon rashers. He didn't get too far as the gulls stole the goods from him! This happened about 3 times to us, it also happened to others. There's also a very tame bird called a "Black Noddy" that has webbed feet but rests in the branches. We understand a lot of the native birds have returned to the island since mining stopped and the eco-resort was established.
The birds are an important historical part of the island. When the island was discovered back in the early 1800's it was forested and home to many many birds. The birds, as birds do, left great layers of guano (i.e. bird shit) and that was strip mined for fertilizer by Chinese and Malay workers (slaves?) with British/Australian bosses. This left the island a barren treeless dry desert. In 1969 the island was taken over as an eco-resort and a serious revegetation project began. The forest which exists now is a result of that project. It's been so successful that the original lighthouse (built when the island was strip mined) is now obscured by these trees planted since 1969. The original 17 meter lighthouse of 1873 is no longer tall enough and a second much taller modern lighthouse was installed (1996) that requires minimal tending. There are no longer lighthouse keepers on the island, the buildings are now used by the resort.
Near the lighthouse there are two tended graves for a lighthouse keeper's daughter and another's wife who passed away on the island. I asked the guide about the Chinese and Malay miners/slaves who worked the guano, no doubt many of them died here as well. Their graves, if there were any, are not known or marked.
We flew back to Redcliffe on Saturday afternoon, drove to the Brisbane airport where we dropped of the rental car and stayed overnight at the Pullman hotel. On Sunday we returned home.
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