Gatakers Bay

This morning I went to Reef World, while Gadi went for a walk on the beach with Cadbury. It is a small and old aquarium, established back in 1979, however it retains a personal warmth that you don’t get in new, wow factor tourist attractions.

All the tanks are completely natural and have sand filtered sea water and natural sunlight. It made it very easy to take photos of the large fish, sharks and stingrays and the smaller fish in separate, smaller tanks. I really enjoyed to see so many different coloured fish, many of which I’d never seen before.

I timed it to be there for the turtle feeding, which was in an open air tank right on the ocean front. We were all given long pieces of lettuce and shown how to dangle it right in front of the turtles in the water so they can see and reach it. I was awkwardly holding my phone in one hand to take photos and trying to wave the lettuce in front of the turtle - and trying to watch and enjoy the experience at the same time! I also got to pat the turtles and feel their shiny, slightly slimy shells and their soft, wrinkly skin on their necks.

I picked up Gadi and Cadbury a few suburbs away and we went for a drive around the shore, checking out the wet park for littlies and several of the beaches, each with the same insanely blue-green water that surrounds all of Hervey Bay. We eventually chose a sheltered picnic table to eat a picnic lunch before heading beck to our caravan for a rest and a look through some of the maps to try to plan the next leg of our journey, which will be inland.

Gadi went for a swim in the caravan park pool and I did a load of washing in our little washing machine and chatted to some of the kids who live in the park who came to play with Cadbury, bringing their labradoodle with them!

We thought about going out for dinner but decided to stay in and watch the final of the bachelorette (despite the fact we haven’t been watching the series). So we whipped up some satay chicken with some rice and veggies and spent the next hour or two bagging out the stupid choices these people make on these stupid shows.

I’m glad I have enough data to pick something occasionally to watch on my phone on Netflix!

Night night from Hervey Bay xxRead more