11th January - tiger snake - Bicheno - Heard Island

Monday 11^th January 2016

Waub's Bay

Another chance of scene.  A spectacular change!  We are now at Bicheno, on the East Coast.  It is still hot and fabulous.  Yesterday was WINDY; today is calm.  Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Street snake

We had an Attenborough Experience when we walked up the street yesterday.  A medium-sized tiger snake, sauntering up the footpath…A local hero was guarding it from the public, and guarding the public from it. 

He had called Reptile Rescue, and quite soon a cheery young woman arrived, in a police car, to wrangle it into a container

while the crowd watched in respectful silence.

Pete and I had a brief visit to Half Moon Bay, down Harvey’s Farm Road. 

In 2013 this whole area was burnt out in a fearsome bush fire. 

A melted dinghy

Dom, from the next door shack, let us through the gates and showed us around this beautiful windswept bay. 

It is all very beautiful but not really very inviting for a swim…Lots of rips and dumping waves crashing in to shore.

This morning we had a very beautiful swim in Waub’s Bay.  Even Michael went in – he is famously terrified of the sea.  This was very brave of him.  There have been lots of recent reports of great white sharks around Bicheno…And Dom told us he had seen an orca the day before.  The sea here is positively heaving with large wildlife!  And sea horses, leafy dragons, flathead.

Watch this space!

In a very different part of the sea, my brother Pete is making his way down to Heard Island in the Southern Ocean, on the CSIRO ship, the Investigator.  They have left Fremantle, where it was over 30 degrees, and soon they will be in the wildest ocean in the world.  He takes fabulous photos; I am looking forward to seeing them!  And I hope he doesn’t get cabin fever…