28. October

What came first – the chicken or the egg?

We have our little own story to this long discussed issue!

We had a look at the Jurabi Turtle Centre just 20km north of Exmouth. This centre is dedicated to educate people about turtles. There are some species which come to these beaches to mate and nest – the green turtle, loggerhead. It was a nice information centre oh actually it was more an information hut – just some signs, pictures and display boxes under sunshade sails. Unfortunately we didn’t see any turtles at that beach nor in the water but there were more beaches to explore. Next we had a look at Jansz Beach and we saw many turtles swimming.  Actually it took us a while to recognise the turtles as they looked like big stones but they were going from one side to the other and sometimes something popped out of the water. K-Leun thought there are other submarines looking  through their periscope. But it was a turtle breathing and orientating. The turtles were really curious, they came really close while we were swimming as well (I guess she came close as one meter).

After our swim we stayed at the beach – it’s calming just to watch them. Sometimes we just saw one, other times three at the same spot and several times two on top of each other. Of course it was mating time. It looked like a real pain and struggle to get onto a turtle and stay on it. But they didn’t give up – after  falling down they tried again and again and again. The water movement dragged them onto the beach and back into  the water. The even tried to climb onto each other in the ocean. We could see the light coloured tummy when they were pushed off each other. As there were so many turtles swimming close to shore trying to get onto the beach we decided to come back in the evening and keep watching.

So we arrived at 6.00pm again, had our dinner at the beach and were  waiting for the night to fall. Unfortunately nothing happened that night or to be precise not on the western end of the beach. We waited and after two or three hours we decided to leave and head back to the caravan park (and to warm up again). But walking back to the car we saw some  sand flowing in the air so of course we had to have a better look and walked to the eastern end of the beach. There was a turtle in the dunes digging a hole or maybe closing it. We don’t know as she was slowly moving back into the water. Maybe she was already done, maybe something was not right (I don’t know if the like full moon, or not). But this meant we would come back another night and fingers crossed might have more luck.

Another night another chance… We arrived early to check if the turtles are still at the beach trying to come ashore and there were plenty around so we got our hopes up. Actually it’s said that the adult turtles live in that area- no wonder we saw so many. That night we were not the only couple to watch, there were two others hiding in the dunes hoping for something special to happen. And after a long waiting time one turtle managed to get ashore and started to dig a hole. As long as she was  digging we kept our distance to not disturb her. After a while she stopped digging and we crawled closed. Unfortunately she didn’t lay eggs she moved out of that hole. Maybe she decided it was too close to the water as she moved further up into the dunes and started to dig again. But she abandoned that hole as well and moved back into the water.

At that time we could come close and take pictures (at least it was written at the information centre). The turtle was big (probably around 120cm) and she looked devastated – really as if it was hard labour and sad that it was not successful. We imagined to actually see some tears in hear eyes. So we decided to check if any other turtle was digging somewhere but we only found some tracks.

Next morning we came back to the beach and had a look at the holes and  tracks. There were three different tracks leading into the dunes but only two had some diggings in between the tracks. One hole was halfway up the beach and we could lay comfortably in it. The other two holes were directly in front of the entrance to the beach where the sand was quite rocky.  We can really appreciate what effort it must be to dig these holes. Just imagine to dig a hole with your flippers! I tried to use my arms as flippers and gave up after 5 minutes but no hole was to be seen.

Now to answer the big question “what came first…” we must say it’s the hatchling (or the chicken)! When we were in Bundaberg we went to the turtle rockery in Mon Repos and saw several hatchling coming out and reaching the sea. But we didn’t see any adult turtle coming ashore. We just had to wait 10 month and travel to the other side of Australia to witness an adult turtle (or two, three, four or even more) on the beach digging a hole.

Happy digging!

Cheers, Tom and Anja