K‘Gari 2: Wreck, Creek and Pools

Three stops for the day were scheduled. First stop (the one I was looking forward to the most): the shipwreck. It looked magnificent! Corroded, metallic, large — waves breaking on it, and the sun illuminating the entirety of the wreck ☀️.
(The weather was on our side for the 3-day tour — the whole week prior was rubbish: rain and thunderstorms left and right — and as soon as we arrived back on the mainland, the weather turned overcast and rainy again.)
The wreck is the SS Maheno, launched in 1905 and beached on K’Gari in 1935 after a cyclone blew her off course.
I went a bit overboard (pun intended) on the amount of shipwreck pics I added to this post. I just couldn‘t decide on which to exclude (actually, there‘s many more!). 😅

Second stop: Eli Creek, also known as “The Lazy Creek”. Beautiful, pristine water, waist-to-chest-deep, flowing gently.
The confirmation email everyone got after booking the tour specifically stated: Bring a flotation device. Wanna guess how many people brought one? If your answer was “one”, I congratulate you — correct. I was the only one with an inflatable donut. While not exactly adrenaline-fuelled, it was good fun floating through the creek that pours roughly 4 million litres of fresh water into the ocean per hour.
Day 2 was not ideally planned. We only had three stops, which meant a lot of waiting at Eli Creek and the other stop. With nothing else to do, I went down the creek ten times with my ring and waded through once (when I lent it to one of the girls) — which separated me further from the group. I, however, enjoyed chilling and floating down the creek, taking in nature. Unfortunately, there were plenty of noisy people blocking the creek for an Instagram photo session. That stuff certainly got my pulse going. 😅
While large parts of Eli Creek were shaded by trees, the sun was burning. Even though I’m almost religious when it comes to applying sunscreen, I still got sunburned that day. K’Gari doesn’t provide a lot of shore-shade, so it’s easy to burn even if you remember the slip-slap-slop.

Last stop: Champagne Pools. The Pools’ appearance varies day to day; in our case, they were incredibly sandy but still offered enough of the “pools” to get into. Unfortunately, there were lots of people there — as with the Creek before (I edited them out on the pics). Standing in knee- to chest-deep water amongst around 90 people for 2.5 hours in the boiling sun without shade wasn’t exactly my ideal idea of time.

After the pasta predicament of the previous day, my group actually managed a decent dinner (steak with veggies).
Even though the main meals were somewhat healthy, the snacks of crisps, cookies and marshmallows made me cheat on my diet. No, I don’t have a problem. I can stop at any time. But the fire-roasted marshmallows were quite nice, I’m telling ya!

After dinner, we made a trip to the beach to stargaze. I purposely forgot my tripod (too heavy/large, we had VERY limited space), but given the remoteness and low light pollution on the island, I came to regret that choice. I tried building a makeshift tripod with duct tape, rope and three dingo-sticks. That was a fiasco. All that did was make my camera drop into the sand! Also: no chance of a Milky Way shot. People kept coming to the beach with their torches and cars drove by with headlights on, and you can see the beams from far away since the beach stretches many kilometres. So, less regret in that department.
But stargazing was nice nonetheless. The highlight: the moon-rise. The slightly waning orange orb rising on the ocean horizon was stunning to watch 🌙.Read more