Bundaberg, Hervey Bay and Fraser Island

The wall of thongs (shoes, not underwear). Triona and Antonia signed one of the thongs. Ching and I found the wall amusing.

Ching worshipping the giant Bundy rum bottle.

Me worshipping the giant Bundy rum bottle. No, there's no rum in it, and yes, this may be after the free samples at the end of the tour.

The Bundaberg Rum Factory.

Antonia, Ching, Me and Triona at Mon Repos, a sea turtle rookery. The night turned a little nasty and none of us had brought raincoats.

One of the researchers measuring the length of "our" nesting leatherback turtle. Once they've started laying, the turtles are oblivious to anything going on around them, so they aren't bothered by us.

Literally a shot in the dark, but what a photo! I didn't realise I'd captured so much detail! And check out the barnacles hitching a ride. The yellow peg marks the nest site for the researchers so they can find it again once the eggs are buried.

And so begins the excessive number of photos of a nesting sea turtle. I didn't even post half of them.

Here she's burying the eggs, flinging sand a couple of metres around her, which makes it difficult for predators to find the exact location of the nest.

It's tough work being a sea turtle mom.

She dug her nest too near the ocean, so the researchers dug an artifical nest further up the dunes and moved the eggs so they wouldn't get flooded at high tides. Although the leatherback is the most common sea turtle, all sea turtles are endangered, so this is part of the conservation effort.

The best part was, we got to help move the eggs! This is Triona with her head cut off.

The beach at Hervey Bay the day before we went to Fraser Island. I took this and the next photo to show how ominous the sky looked.

This is looking in the direction of the island.

Ching was craving Chinese food that night. I had lasagna from the hostel. We were too tired to cook.