Lady Elliot Island

Within a few weeks after arriving in Australia I boarded a small aircraft at the Bundaberg airport bound for a heap of dead, sun-baked coral 100 kilometres (~60 miles) out in the Coral Sea. To be quite honest, at that point, I had not really taken in, or rather read up on the island (cay), Lady Elliot Island. Other than knowing that it sits very near the southern end of what is bounded as the Great Barrier Marine Park and that it has an HF Radar installation, I did not know what to expect. Though I was excited! However, given the little sleep that I had gotten the previous night due to a late departure from Tannum Sands the day before, the then sketchy first-time late night drive from Tannum Sands to Childers and the early morning departure from Bundaberg. All of which now could be culminating in me confusing excitement with bewilderment. Regardless, I will go with excitement, because I do indeed remember feeling that way prior to the start of that trip. Also I recollect a conversation that Mal and I had in the parking lot the airport that morning and beyond the talk of the work on the island there was a real chance for a snorkel excursion. It would be my first opportunity to experience something that I had wondered on, read about and had hoped to one day experience – the Great Barrier Reef.

So once we had bounced along sufficiently enough at 10,000 feet the small green speck of an island appeared to us out to one side of the air plane. The inviting colour of the vast blue water, this little tropical cay, the remoteness of my family and friends in north America, and my own personal journey leading up to that point, all came together at that moment when I was peering out through the window and looking down at this perfect little tiny island at the southern end of the Coral Sea. I must say, the moment was of gratitude and gratefulness. Again it was a culmination of little sleep, my recent arrival in Australia to live and work therein under a three year contract as an HF radar technician, and my recent completion of a Masters Degree in Ocean Science, that had me feeling quite humble and grateful at that moment. Not just quite humble and grateful, but profoundly so. I can look back now and express this, and reach out and say that possibly there was some unforeseen and subtle change in the spiritual continuum of my family in this realm of existence, as it was at that very moment that I was looking down out at profound beauty, my family were learning of my beloved Aunt's sudden and very unexpected early end to her exuberant life. I am not a religious man at all but I am not an atheist either and I like to believe that she was there with me that moment. I did later learn of when precisely her death occurred and it was roughly when I was driving from Tannum Sands to Childers the night before. Nonetheless, for me the moment was profound then because she was in my thoughts of those who had helped shape me and get me to this singular point in my life, as we glided to a landing on the grassy coral airstrip at roughly 24 degrees and 7 minutes south of the Equator and 152 degrees and 43 minutes east of the Prime Meridian.

The intense tropical sun, island's staff commands, noise from the thousands of nesting noddies and our job at hand snapped me back to moment at hand. I followed Mal's lead away from the half-dozen photo happy tourist that were our click-click friendly companions on the flight. As Mal and I b-lined it for our equipment hut on the northeast part of the island I became acutely aware of the impossibility that was taking shape before me. There was no chance to come away from that island, at that time of the year, without being blessed, most unceremoniously, by the defecating matter of one of the island's 100,000 nesting seabirds.




On the island, at that time of year, you're either in the water cleaning the bird waste out of yourself or your moving to some hut to escape the random precision of their aim. Being under a enclosed veranda does not necessarily mean your guaranteed to be bird poop free as they are flying and pooping creatures and as it is this matter can torpedo unexpected individuals whilst enjoying a cool refreshing drink on the covered porch of island's café. This is as if it was an intentional act or gesture of great skill and dismissiveness by these winged masters of the island. However, after our 300 metre walk over to our station we were amazingly not covered in one drop of poop! Profound as it may sound from the picture I just painted. It is astonishing that having been on that island, 15 times now and spending countless hours/days out amongst the nesting noddies I have honestly only been pooped on twice! Rather, it is the first perception when arriving on the island that this will not be the case and hence the scurrying of tourists quickly dashing for cover. I have witnessed though, the humours affair of one getting pooped on whilst just pulling back on a cold beer overlooking the spectacular tropical scene from the island café, gently holding his lovers hand, when a nice splat in the face of warm potassium rich excretory bird matter came flying from out of nowhere. OK, enough on that!
As I say, Mal and I did make it to the hut that day unscathed, and after fingering the keyboard of our equipment like chimps with a Rubik cube we departed the uncomfortable comfort of the equipment hut to perform the obligatory check on the 16 radar antenna linked to the hut via a tight bundle of coaxial cable. The transmit antenna, which consist of four antenna in 20 x 3 metre rectangle, are a stones throw from the equipment hut at this particular station. We check antenna by testing its physical integrity and visually inspecting it for any signs of excessive wear from the elements or damage. Both of which, when severe enough, typically manifest into poor data quality and we are able to remotely discern this, but back in those days! our radar station on the island did not have communication and we were completely unaware of the station's status until we arrived and began beating on the computer keyboard and peering at the computer monitor screen in the equipment hut to tell us how things had and were going for the station. On that particular day, the data did not indicate anything out of the normal for the antenna and / or cabling and thus we were not bringing out our more nerdy equipment to diagnose anything more than the typical physical status of each antenna.

This is a particularly interesting setup with the antenna at this station (see image above), because instead of soil or some type of bedrock with which to either bury or bolt the Aluminium (not a mis-spelling!) antenna mast footing to the earth, there is instead a jumble of completely irregular and randomly shaped hard objects which comprise the substrate of the first 30 meters (100 feet) around the entire island. Without nesting noddies it still takes a fair bit of effort not to roll ones ankle and to find sturdy steps that don't give way to imperceptibly difficult geometry that ones mind has to decipher with each step. Its not treacherous in the slightest just awkward and comical. The sound too. Weird as it may be, but the coral, when walked upon, sounds like dinner plates being shuffled about just for the sake of shuffling them about. Like you've invited an elephant over to help you put away this dishes.

After Mal and I finished our antenna check and were sufficiently happy that all jobs had been complete for the day, we looked down at our watches and observed that we had exactly one hour and fifteen minutes before our next flight. Yay! Just enough time for a dip with underwater spectacles and hollow pipe to help one keep ones face submerged. As we approached the beach and our entry point, I had a thought about box jellyfish (as I had heard that they were kind of dangerous or something!) and wanted to seek Mals Superior local ocean knowledge on the matter. Knowing that Aussies refer to Cnidaria (jellyfish) as 'stingers', I asked Mal if he's considered the possibility of stingers in the waters that we were about to enter. To this he simply replied, "Jellies? There's no need to worry. Were to far out to sea." Right, of course. I thought. As I watched him finish putting his mask on, promptly fall face first into the water and began moving out away from the beach. I then too entered the water in similar fashion but was shocked to find myself completely surrounded by thousands of rainbow jellyfish. All of which were no bigger than a golf ball. So instead of panic, I floated and let the current move me out to sea with these silent psychedelic compardres busy living out there short lives. I floated over the 30 metres of coral rubble that is partially exposed twice each day and midst the myriad of creatures that use it as refuge when flooded, until I drifted right out over the fringing reef that completely encompasses the island. Now I've been diving and snorkelling off the Florida keys, the Bahamas as well as on the Hawaiian islands: O'ahu, Maui, The Big Island and Moloka'i. However, I was not prepared for what I saw that day. I would have liked to grow a pair of gills right then and there and simply hang out for a very long time. There are not words adequate enough to express the majesty that a coral reef ecosystem has. The intricate details and fabricate of webbing that is the existence of life which displays itself so vividly. I could go on at length about the details thereof, but seeing as I've already done so, I'll simply conclude this paragraph with saying: if there is one place on this planet that you get to experience a tropical reef ecosystem then Lady Elliot Island is not a bad spot to choose.
Since Mal and I are both ocean men of knowledge with a fancy device that measures the speed and direction with which the surface of the ocean is flowing at any 10 minute interval, we promptly decided to ask island staff which direction the current was going prior to our snorkel. This way we could expend less energy and become that much more fat on our short ocean journey. We let the current push us on a northerly course that was hugging the edge of the outer reef and more or less following the curve of the island. As we did so, I saw a great and many wonderful things, not the least of which was a tiger shark appear from the depths of a coral ledge. I watched as it silently fell inline right behind my boss whom I was a short 12 metres behind. The Galeocerdo cuvier (Tiger Shark) is not a benevolent vacuum of tiny animals that live in the sea and is reported as having quite possibly the most wide ranging and diverse appetite of any species of shark, and here is was looking at the business end of one. One that was fair in size too, as it was a quarter of the length of distance that separated Mal and I, and as my wife will attest to I am a good judge of distance, and as my sister Suzanne will attest to I am no teller of fibbidies. OK, don't ask them to corroborate! Anyhow, by my sound judgement I reckon that the shark was 3 to 3.5 metres (9 to 10 foot) in length, which I think is big. In fact, it struck me as so as I watched it effortlessly and stealthily follow Mal without him having the slightest notion or care of the teeth that were less than a metre behind his flippers. I thought of alerting him via noise but while sound does travel faster in water it does take a considerable more effort to produce sound in the range of a human voice which travels far. Now because I didn't bring my whale voice that day I thought it would be best to first check my six for any toothy friends that might be drafting me, which I'm happy to report there were none, and next move quickly to close the gap and between Mal and I at the same time possibly startling the shark into choosing a different course of action. So as I kicked to within a metre of the sharks tail it silently and carelessly dropped its trajectory to my left (out to sea) and moved into deeper water. I eased up but continued to follow above and behind it for several meters, confirming 1.) its length and 2.) it indeed was a Tiger shark. I'm entirely confident that my actions did not save Mal that day, and that while curious the fish may have been about Mal, it more than likely would have decided to sample my friend a lot sooner, probably right from the get-go, if that were its primary motivation. I still regard the experience as one of the most spectacular that I've had under the water and I can say that I was honoured to witness such an awesome creature. Yes, I would have liked to foolishly touch it, and I have to admit, that given a moment or two more I probably would have, which may have very well changed the course of events of that day. Regardless, Mal was as unfazed by the event as the shark was likewise by mine.
We exited the water, dried ourselves, boarded a plane and flew back to Bundaberg where I checked in with my wife on one of these archaic devices and became painfully aware of my Aunt's untimely passing. I flew to the Bonney Coast with this weighing heavy in my heart and the previous 24 hours seeming more dream-like and surreal then I knew my existence to be.

Until later … diver down.

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