Saturday 3^rd October – Stradbroke Island

Haircut

I got up relatively early and drove down to my local haircutter, to have my hair cut. I foolishly thought it wouldn’t be busy on the weekend for some reason—I was wrong. Apparently it’s a particularly busy weekend due to kids going back to school, which I sort of guessed after the thousandth kid exited the haircuttist’s whilst I was waiting outside on the footpath. I did eventually get in, and had my hair cut.

Stradbroke Island

After my haircut I drove home, packed for Stradbroke Island, and Bronwen and I drove to the Stradbroke Flyer Gold Cats place at Cleveland, where I dropped Bronwen and went searching for parking. Fortunately, I—along with two other cars—got the last three remaining carparks in the overflow parking they’d opened up for the long weekend. This was very fortunate, because I suspect there was no other parking for a very long way, and I’d have missed the ferry.

The Shed

We caught the ferry across to One Mile at Dunwich, then caught the $5-per-person bus to Point Lookout, and walked up to The Shed, arriving just after two o’clock.

Saturday Evening

We spent the afternoon wandering around the beaches looking at things—it was very low tide.

Barnacles

Intriguing Sentinels of the Deep

Self Portraits, Island Style

Hidden Treasures

Sunset

There was a lovely sunset in the evening.

Sunday 4^th October – Stradbroke Island

Snorkelling

We had a big sleep-in, not leaving The Shed until almost 11:30. We walked to South Gorge Beach and went snorkelling. Sadly, I’d forgot to bring the SD card for the waterproof camera—but despite it being quite clear and well lit underwater, we didn’t see anything hugely exciting. After snorkelling we walked back to The Shed to have lunch.

Wallace the Drone

After lunch we took Wallace the Drone for a walk down the beach, and—unable to think of anything better to photograph with the drone—Bronwen took a series of photos of our shadows.

“The Kiss”

Sunday Evening

After a full day—if you ignore the not getting up until nearly lunchtime part—swimming and wandering the lands in search of adventure, we went for one last wander along the beach as the sun set and then walked back to The Shed, had delicious, delicious two minute noodles we bought at Bob’s Shop for dinner, and went to bed.

Monday 5^th October – Queen’s Birthday

Land Snorkelling

Unlike yesterday, today Bronwen and I got up quite early and went for a walk. As I had forgot to bring the SD card for the waterproof camera, I decided to do some above-water snorkelling using my phone camera instead. I saw many exciting fish and weird blue ball things and brightly-coloured garden-like things and disgusting ooze-like things.

Whales and Dolphins

We also saw some whales passing by quiet close, doing whale-like things such as blowing their noses and waving their arms in the air. Sadly, my phone is entirely unsuited to photographing whales—or anything that’s not really, really big or really close, so I didn’t get any good photos of them. I also tried to launch Wallace to go fly out and have a look, but by the time I got him setup, the whales had swum on (I also discovered that it’s illegal to fly within 300 metres of whales with a drone—an absolutely absurd rule designed with full-size aircraft in mind, that I shall ignore considering my drone weighs 259 grams and can’t be seen or heard once it’s more than 30 metres away). After missing the whales we went for a wander back to the gorge area, where we saw lots of dolphins.

Evening Land Snorkelling

After wandering around for hours and hours and it was still before lunch (it’s weird getting up early) we walked back to The Shed and packed up, ready for a hasty exit. Then we wandered back down to the beach and wandered about pretending to be relaxed and looking at strange sea life exposed by the low tide until it was time to rush back to The Shed, finish packing, and walk down to the bus.

Home

We got home just after 7 PM, after an uneventful Gold Cats ferry ride and a very full bus—for some inexplicable reason, even though an almost empty bus was right behind us, people kept insisting that they get on our bus even after it was full. We ended up with a full-size television and a bike on our full bus, while the one behind us only had a handful of people on it.