Lady Elliott Island – WOW! – Berlin Travel Blog

Imagine going to a teeny tiny airport in Hervey Bay (on the Sunshine Coast of Australia) and being the ONLY ones in the airport:

Then imagine getting on the tiniest airplane EVER

So small in fact that the seats are like fluffy couches

The trip over is so bumpy it terrifies me…but thrills Stella

And it’s so tiny that one of the passenger seats is shotgun with the pilot!

Then after a 30 minute flight you approach an island SO SMALL that it only takes 6 minutes to walk across and 30 minutes to walk the perimeter!

The only inhabited part of the island is what you see on this side of the airstrip. One Eco Lodge with maybe 50 rooms. No stores, no restaurants, just the lodge

And the airstrip is not really an airstrip but just a flat area of land they have cleared of trees and rocks

And you can walk up and onto it whenever you want – as long as there aren’t any planes landing (which you know because there’s a red flashing light asking you to wait

Now imagine this island can only hold 150 people at a time in small ‘camp-like’ eco cabins

Leo and I sitting on the porch, we had 1 room with a double bed and a bunk bed, and a small bathroom

Now imagine only 150 people…but 40,000 BIRDS! (and yes, of course a bird shat on me..it’s impossible for that not to happen!)

So I was worried. We were going to this ECO island…full of birds, with mainly snorkelling, and I assumed there would be no kids. I should really get used to being wrong…EVERYONE THERE HAD KIDS!!!

Leo with his new German/Austrian buddy Paul. They played soccer and pool most of the day when they weren’t snorkelling

Leo made a best friend (from Munich who spoke no English) and Stella took care of Fluffy, a baby bird who kept getting trapped in the play area so Stella needed to watch over her

This place was a DREAM. Zero wifi which meant everywhere you looked people were reading or talking, but no one had their phones because there was no point.

Because the island was so small…we barely saw our kids..Stella was either in the playground

Or reading and eating from the breakfast and dinner buffet. (While as mentioned above Leo was playing sports with Paul)

But the biggest news really was the wildlife. We went on TWO glass bottomed boat trips where we snorkelled..and…wait for it…LEO SNORKELLED. The first time he was quite scared and I had to leave him with the instructor because as I have learned many many times, leaving your children with other adults actually makes them take more risks. But the 2nd time…he snorkelled with Adam along side Green Turtles and Loggerhead turtles…

Originally Leo stayed on the platform of the boat and put his face in the water

He’s off the boat! Snorkelling with Adam

And just as awesome? Adam and I got to dive the Great Barrier Reef (we left the kids on the island with strict instructions not to go near water and to ask Paul’s parents for any help…they graciously took care of the kids (they had 9 yr old twins, a boy and a girl, and the boy (Paul) was Leo’s best friend the entire trip, while the girl (Anna) didn’t speak any English but our kids learned some phrases in German and we even met up with them again today in Noosa!!

Ok back to Lady Elliott Island. So Adam and I went on an INCREDIBLE dive on the Great Barrier Reef…we saw too many huge turtles to count (when I say huge, I mean 3/4 of the size of me), 10’s of Eagle Rays, Garden Eels, thousands of Sea Cucumbers and a reef that is so gorgeous that it makes sense that it’s one of the most famous in the world. It was really incredible.

There were so many sea cucumbers everywhere I had to take a picture

We happened to be on the island during Turtle nesting season which means that at high tide (2am when we were there), Green and Logerhead Turtles make their way up the beach…take about 2 hrs to dig a nest…then either lay eggs or abandon the nest they dig because it isn’t good enough. Leo and I got up at 5:30am to go see if we could go find any turtles making their way back to sea after making the nests

And we got LUCKY. This green turtle did decide to abandon its nest but we got pretty up close and personal for this awesome process!

He spent about 15 minutes making his way back into the water

When the turtles do lay eggs, the staff make markers that look like this:

Leo’s comments: Seeing this was one of the craziest things we saw on this trip. It was amazing seeing these animals and it’s just an awesome experience to be so close to all these animals. I was really proud of myself for overcoming my fear of going snorkelling in the ocean.

For 3 days it was really like being on Gilligan’s island. The kids all ran around unsupervised, we walked around, went snorkelling in various parts of the island and got amazing nature lessons. We even went on a night nature walk spotting hermit crabs, and nocturnal birds that wail like crying babies only at night.

Coming back into society was a real culture shock and I am so happy we got to have this experience. Similar to the Doubtful Sound Overnight cruise…it was one of those really special places that are so off the beaten track (and so basic without any typical luxuries) that only real nature enthusiasts go and the attention paid to the environment and wildlife is unlike anything we are exposed to on our side of the world.

It is one of the most stark differences I have noticed while being in Australasia (NZ and Australia). EVERYONE cares about the environment here. It doesn’t matter where we have been, all you see are signs asking people not to have disposable cups, there are stations almost everywhere you go to fill up water bottles. It’s like it’s in the DNA of the people here to be eco-conscious. It’s become very obvious how non-eco conscious N. America is as a comparison.

For the next 3 days – Noosa…a beautiful beach town 🙂

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