One to never forget

I know it happens every year for about 3 months in many countries of the world, and no I am not talking about the Super 14, but the turtles laying eggs and hatching at Mon Repos turtle rookery near Bundaberg. It is truly amazing to have the opportunity to see this in action and to all that have not experienced it, I am about to give you a running commentary.

If you are lucky enough to have some turtles come to lay eggs on the evening you are there, they (the staff, not the turtles) call you down to the beach in groups keeping well away from the turtle which has by now started to dig the hole for its eggs. We now crept up behind it and watch it dig with its hand like rear legs trying to be careful not to scare it. When the hole is deep enough, the turtle lays up to 120 eggs which are about the size of a Titleist golf ball, but worth heaps more. Once it has laid about 20 eggs you can move around the turtle and watch it from any angle as they get so relaxed and into the whole laying thing that they'll hardly ever stop.

When it was done it covered up the hole so well that if we never marked it, we would have never known it was there. Fortunately for us we got an extra bonus that night as the turtle had layed the eggs too close to the shore line and due to the storms they were scared it would be washed away so we had to carefully excavate the hole again and move the eggs to a safer position. They asked us to all help in this moving operation, but what they never saw was that I slipped two eggs into my pocket. What a steal - real Loggerhead turtle eggs. I had them for breakfast the next morning fried on toast and they tasted okay, I still prefer chicken eggs and they aren't that big so you need more than two for a meal. It's just something I can now tick off my things to do in life list.

Really people I am joking, turtle eggs... you are meant to have them boiled, not fried on toast. No seriously - they were placed safely back in the hole with their siblings so they could be eaten by foxes and dingos.

As luck would have it, my memory card crapped out, so I don't have any pics of us with the turtles... aaaarrrrggghhhhhhh