Tin Can Bay, Hervey Bay, Bundaberg and Burnett Heads

28/6/2015

Half Century! This is the 50^th post on my blog – my journey to the next level ;-)

I found and took a photo of this quote a long time ago, but never had the right tangent to include it in my blog. But finally, here it is:

Amen.

The day started early in order to be on time at Tin Can Bay Dolphin feeding. According to the sign that I saw yesterday they usually show up between 7 and 7.30am in the morning. I grabbed a coffee, added some Brain Octane and set up my camera equipment. After a while two dolphins, Mystique and Patch showed up. Both of them are middle aged (24 respectively 28 years) humpback dolphins, heavily scratched and scarred by some shark attacks years ago. This dolphin pack, consisting of 9 animals, is living mainly in the river mouth/estuary and the species is a lot smaller than the off shore dolphins, only about 2m in length and about 150kg.

Cormorant, waiting to steal some fish

Pelican looking me in the lens

Dolphin playing with a leaf

Leaf taking revenge and playing with the dolphin

Playing

Waiting for a feed

Dragon boat rowing in Australia?

Pelican being scarred away by splashing water - obviously it doesn't like it

They have quite a bit of a swim to get to Tin Can Bay (apparently 18 km) and are already the third generation of dolphins that get some treats there. It all started some time in the 1950s.

Was quite a lovely morning there, the pelicans and cormorants were cheeky and tried everything to steal some fish from the big crowd that came for the feeding. From my perspective it was a lot nicer than the feeding at the prestigious Monkey Mia resort, as we could stand in the water and observe the dolphins from 7.30 to 8am which were only 1-2 m away from us. After getting my feet wet I made a few photos before the feeding started shortly past 8am. The dolphins were very skilled to get the fish out of your hands.

I drove to Hervey Bay – whale watching capital and access point to Fraser Island. As I've already been to Fraser Island twice, and you need a 4WD or a tour group, I skipped it this time. The walk onto the 1100 meter long Urangan Pier that was used until 1985 for exporting coal, timer and sugar. It was a very pleasant, scenic walk and I enjoyed some sunlight.

From the Jetty

Watching over us

Kite surfer in the air

Urangan Pier

Had a long chat to the fellows in the tourist information center and learned that the whales are still further up north (where I'm going!) at this time of the year. Usually they start arriving back in Hervey Bay mid July where they rest, hang out and feed the young ones to prepare for the migration to Antarctica. Hence I changed my plan and continued my drive to Bundaberg to visit the Bundaberg Rum Distillery. According to the Internet it is open until 4pm on Sunday, but that was only the shop. The tours stop at 2pm on Sundays. Need to postpone that till tomorrow.

The Bundaberg logo

Bundaberg Distilling Company

The top end stuff, about $100 for the Blenders Edition

The Road to Recovery. Seriously?

I really like the artwork on the wickedcampers

As I didn't want to stay in Bundaberg, I continued on to Burnett Heads, a small village at beach, about 15km from Bundaberg. Found a great campsite and went for a run. I read somewhere that, in order to run faster, you need to run faster. I put that to the test today and found that whoever said that, was right.

A sign I saw during my run

Queensland has got so much more wildlife ;-)

The old lighthouse, next to my campsite

Afterwards I treated myself to some grilled Red Emperor (with some extra butter!), a delicious fish from up here and a large bowl of salad with avocado. Time to get back to being bulletproof.

Distance traveled: 262km