Hello - I'm back!

Sorry it has been almost a week since I last posted here.  Kz and I had such fun together.  She loves shopping and we visited quite a few of Townsville's shopping centres.  It is really hard to find a bookshop these days and we had to resort to Kmart to get her a nice book to read on the plane trip home.

The highlight of her trip was the visit to Reef HQ. Read about it here.  Before that though we drove along The Strand to the Rock Pool and the Water Park.  The water bucket was not working at the time and as she has already been there before, we gave it a miss this time.  We saw lots of seagulls as one would expect being at the beach.

 

Reef HQ was such an amazing place.  We ltierally took hundres of photos each. Some of the fish were really tiny and others were huge.  The first thing we saw was this freshwater crocodile and we were lucky enough to watch it being fed later in the day.  They move so fast.

He looks quite small, but I would still be very wary of one this size.



See the pretty bow Kz has in her hair.  Jenny from the motel makes these and told me how to make them too. So I might try it one day - in my spare time that is!!

We were quite taken with these little fellows.  Can't remember exactly what sort of shrimp they are.

Kz nearly got swallowed by a giant fish.

And don't you like this good looking fellow.  I really dig his camouflage outfit.

And this large sawfish was another of my favourites.  Lots of the teeth scales on his/her saw were broken and bent.

We attended a lecture on the mangroves and how important they are to the ecosystem.  We handled jawbones of sharks, and then we watched the feeding of the tropical fish, the mangrove tank and last of all the predators.

This large barramundi was in the mangrove tank and we heard him make the big boof noise when he was fed.  They create a vacuum in their mouth and suck their food in. This makes a loud boof noise. At least that is what the  guide called it.

But the real highlight for both of us was the turtle hospital, where they treat the turtles found washed up on beaches.  We saw about 7 or 8, but they said they can treat up to 12 at any one time.  Usually they are floaters which means they have a blockage in their stomachs and they are covered in barnacles because they have been floating.  They are put into fresh water which helps kill the barnacles and some of the parasites.  Usually they are put on antibiotics and it can take months for them to regain their health.  This fellow named Berg was very sick. His/her shoulder had worn a hole in the shell so they put a fibreglass patch on it to keep infection out.  They might still lose this one as it is not responding very well to treatment.  Such a shame as it is quite large.

They have them in shallow water while they are still floating and each tank has a board showing the history and case notes for each turtle.

We reluctantly left Reef HQ, but not before Kz had a chance to browse in the SHOP of course.  She managed to pick up a turtle fridge magnet and a turtle soft toy, because one can never have enough soft toys!

I had better call it a day for this post.  Tomorrow and Thursday R and I will be on a two day course down the road at Holiday Inn to learn about Responsible Management of a Licensed Venue and also Responsible Service of Alcohol, because one never knows when one might need this sort of qualification.

Bye for now SF SF SF SF.