Champagne Pools

What an incredible trip! So much has happened in the past 24 hours. Here's a quick recap:

While driving up, I kept seeing fuzzy, spongy, oblong things on the beach and, once we got to our camp site, discovered they were the flowers from Banksia trees.

After our lunch we took a 5 km walk to Lake Wabby, which was formed by a sand blow blocking a freshwater stream. The water was cold but beautiful. The sand was loose, warm, and a pain in the calves.

We saw a white bellied sea eagle, which is so large it will eat dingo pups if given the opportunity.

We had dinner in camp and watched sunset in the beach. Afterwards, two Butchulla (indigenous tribe) park rangers, Navo and Deb, took me and Deb's little cousin Hope down to the pub for a few games if pool and a couple of beers. Wonderful people and a great time. Then it was back to camp and stargazing.

We greeted the dawn by learning how to throw boomerangs on the beach. Fortunately, no one was decapitated.

After a fast and hot breakfast, we were back in the trucks and heading north again. We soon came to a part of the beach that appeared rocky. But these were Coffee Rocks, the remains of an ancient forest that had petrified. You could see some of tree stumps. The "rocks" will crumble with some pressure, so I was surprised we were allowed to drive on them.

Soon after that, we saw our first humpback whales, several of which were slapping the water's surface with their pectoral fins. This is their migration time here.

Just as we urned away from the humpbacks, we passed The Pinnacles, a rough, sandy pair of cliff faces that, just like those at Rainbow Beach, gave us a magnificent view of the multicolored striations in the sand.

Next we came across a lone female dingo on the beach. She had a radio collar on, which we learned from a ranger a little later that it was necessary to track he because she was being aggressive towards people, mainly kids, at Eli Creek. These collars are "smart"; they automatically release if they sense the animal gets hung by it or once the battery life runs out. Pretty cool.

Just a little further north was Eli Creek, which pumps out 3 to 4 million liters of freshwater every day. We took the boardwalk upstream then walked down to the vehicles. In the stream there were small jungle perch.

Still making our way north, we passed two Whistling Kites on the beach and reached Champagne Pools. I didn't go all the way down to the water since I wasn't swimming. Instead, a Dutch lady Jannie (pronounced like the pianist Yanny) and I stayed on the cliffs and watched dozens of humpbacks breaching, waving fins, and slamming their flukes (tails). We also spotted three turtles, but two could've been the same one.

On the walk down from the Pools, Troy taught us about Pigs Face, a succulent that produces a fruit both sweet and salty. It tastes similar to a salty strawberry.

We're just walking back to the cars now to have some lunch on the beach. What a day...and it's only half over!

So long [for now] and thanks for all the fish. ✌️Read more