Travel Biography - Week 79.

Preparing for the First Visit to the Great Barrier Reef.

Note: Unless specified, all the photos posted here are my own, taken in 1997.

I quickly settled in Cairns soon after arriving in 1997. Furthermore, I couldn't have arrived at a better time of the year, as the monsoon season had already ended and the dry season had just begun. Although the locals refer to May/June as Winter, there are only two seasons within this particular region of the tropical belt, the wet and dry seasons, with warmth all year round. Yet, the region around Cairns has always been the area with the highest rainfall levels in the whole of Australia. Even while I was standing at Cairns Harbour and looking across Chinaman Creek at the hills of Trinity Forest Reserve, there were times when the summits of the hills plunged into thick, grey thunderclouds.

I have also found out that the issue raised when venturing out to sea was the Box Jellyfish, also known as Sea Wasps or even Stingers. Personally, I sometimes refer to this particular species as the Atheist's Sting, after one YouTuber, an ex-Jehovah's Witness turned atheist, quoted the Box Jellyfish as a classic example proving the non-existence of God, for why such a loving, caring God created a marine animal that serves no positive good to anyone, yet, with intense pain, can suffocate and kill a child, or even an adult, if severely stung and with no antidote available?

At the hostel, I did a bit of research before deciding to venture out to sea. Again, I was very fortunate. The jellyfish has a very short lifespan. It spawns at the start of Spring and lives to the end of Autumn (that is around nine months from August to April.) Therefore, I found out that my arrival at Cairns was during the "safe window of opportunity" when I could explore the Great Barrier Reef without encountering danger.

Aerial View of Green Island Coral Cay. Stock photo.

Leaving Cairns for Green Island.

Approaching Green Island on the Big Cat.

On the morning after my arrival, the hostel receptionist gave me some advice and recommended the Big Cat to Green Island, a coral cay 17 miles, or 27 km from the mainland which involved a 45-minute sailing from Cairns Harbour. Furthermore, tickets for the Big Cat day trips were on sale here at the hostel reception, and therefore no need to book at the mall. This was to be the first of three visits to the Reef. The second visit was at Low Isles, a coral cay off Port Douglas, and the third a fringe reef at Border Island of the Whitsundays, an archipelago of continental islands off the coast of Arlie Beach, all in Queensland.

I could liken these trips to school grading. Green Island suited those who were new to snorkelling. The only time I tried snorkelling was on the Spanish coast in the Tossa De Mar holiday resort, 25 years earlier in 1972. Back then, a snorkeller lent me his equipment for me to try. Instead, with my nasal passage blocked by the mask, some water entered the breathing tube into my mouth and down my throat. This caused me to panic. But I managed to climb onto a nearby rock and remove the snorkel before returning the gear to its owner. Since then, I have never been near a snorkel - until 1997.

As such, I saw Green Island as equivalent to an elementary or primary school. Next was snorkelling at Low Isles, followed by Heron Island, both equated with secondary school education due to richer coral thriving in deeper water. I would equate actual scuba diving to that of undergraduate level at university. Scuba diving was more suitable for the Outer Reef exploration.

Coral Beach is seen from the jetty.

Cay lush vegetation

The boardwalk through the forest.

Visiting Green Island, Coral Cay.

The offshore islands making up the Great Barrier Reef fall into two categories. The one I'm about to visit is a cay. That is a mound of coarse sand and broken shells swirled into a heap, breaking the surface of the shallow ocean by strong currents driven by past storms. Eventually, vegetation, whose seeds were brought in by flocks of birds and ocean currents alike, consolidated the mound into a permanent island. The beach surrounding the cay consists of coarse sand and broken shells, quite unlike the "fine golden sands" of romanticised desert islands with a single palm tree growing in its centre. Rather, I saw that the typical coral cay is capped with a forest of tropical trees and bushes.

The Reef is built on an underwater shelf that was once dry land before the melting of the Ice Age. Former hills that rose from this strip of land were isolated to form continental islands. As the islands plunged deeper into the sea, fringe reefs grew around them, and as I saw at Heron Island, these corals were richer and more diverse. In 1997, fringe reefs were attracting as many tourists as cays.

The Great Barrier Reef is classed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the natural wonders of the world, along with the Grand Canyon of Arizona. Therefore, for conservation purposes, much of the Reef was inaccessible to the public and had limited access only to scientists. But Green Island remains open to tourists and provides the ideal opportunity to gain confidence with a snorkel.

The Big Cat catamaran pulled out of Cairns Harbour, along with a larger vessel destined for the outer Reef and also for Fitzroy Island, a continental island southeast of Green Island and visible on the horizon from the cay along with the mountainous coast of the mainland.

The cafeteria on board the catamaran also sold single-use underwater film cameras, and hired out snorkels. I bought the one and paid a deposit for the other. It also served as a lecture room where we learned to fundamentals of snorkelling as well as some useful knowledge of the Reef, of which Green Island is very much part.

After the talk was given, I made my way to the upper deck of the vessel and watched as it sped along the rich blue waters of the Coral Sea region of the Pacific Ocean. Presently, Green Island began to show as a narrow strip on the horizon, and it wasn't until we drew closer that the cay became more apparent.

After the catamaran moored on the island's rather long jetty, we made our way to the beach with the instruction to return to the vessel at a certain time.

During the talk, I was advised to wear a shirt whilst snorkelling. This was to protect my back from potential sunburn, as here in the Southern Hemisphere, the sun could be particularly hot. The button-up shirt I was wearing was the only one I had on me, but being cotton, I was sure that the sun would dry it off after a short while. Therefore, I didn't mind wearing it in the water.

Coral detail.

A Damson Fish.

Coral detail. The polyps are all animals.

I chose a shallow spot and practised snorkelling until I gained enough confidence to venture into deeper water. After that, I was okay and began to glide over the corals beneath me. Unfortunately, during the nineties, the reef surrounding the cay was badly affected by the Crown-of-Thorns starfish, a voracious predator of coral. The need for culling of these starfish was necessary for the preservation of the reef, and various programmes were organised to keep the population under control. But as I swam over bare patches within the reef, these areas testified to the damage done by these starfish. However, the rise in the Crown-of-Thorns population and the damage they had caused to the Reef, was partly, if not mainly, due to human decimation of its predator, the Triton, a giant sea snail that preys on the starfish.

Unfortunately, I didn't see that many fish among the corals, but what I did see were mainly the five-striped Damsel Fish. Barely four centimetres long, they showed no fear of our presence, and neither did they dash off if we got too near. As such, the underwater tranquillity that apparently exists among the reef indeed, portrays to me at least, a submarine paradise. Although more of a carpet covering the sea floor rather than a lush garden, yet, I thoroughly enjoyed not only looking at a coral reef but swimming among the countless number of polyps making up the corals. Also, as I remembered from the on-board talk, these polyps were animals related to the jellyfish, and not plants, even if the corals resembled plants more than animals.

After spending a considerable time snorkelling over the corals, I took a stroll alone through the forest that covers the cay. Tropical trees, palms, shrubs, scramblers, and vines cover the island, and a boardwalk cuts across the middle. There was a hotel with its own swimming pool on the island. All this was rather incredible, as the whole cay was only 3.5 km squared. That is, if the island was reshaped into a square, each side would be only 1,870 metres long. Actually, it didn't take me that long to walk around the island to end where I started.

After several hours, we were all called back to the catamaran for the return sailing to Cairns Harbour. I felt exhilarated, as I believe, the others with me also were. All day the weather was beautiful, with a cloudless sky and the warm sunshine brightening the corals underwater, allowing me to take underwater photos - for the first time ever. But that wasn't all. Before the trip, I only had a mild curiosity about what the GBR was like. But after that trip, I became a fully-fledged convert! My enthusiasm for the Reef equalled that for the Grand Canyon during the first hike completed in 1978.

After arriving back in Cairns, I had to restock before settling in the hostel. But while I was in the town centre, I saw a photography shop facing the esplanade. The single-use cardboard camera I carried was enclosed in waterproof transparent plastic, thus, the exposed film was well protected. However, I was eager to see the finished result. So, unlike all the land pics I had taken with my own camera, I took the camera into the shop to have the film processed there and then. When I collected the package sometime later, I was thrilled with the prints, a few of them are posted here.  

The Big Cat Catamaran we sailed.

No! Not me - the boat!

To those who grew up in the digital age, for me, there is something so nostalgic about photographic film - that strip of cellulose acetate coated with light-sensitive chemicals that reacted instantly when exposed to light. Especially with the old-type camera which carried risks of fogging, double exposure, camera shake, out-of-focus images, or even an accidental exposure of the film should the back of the camera fly open, ruining the most precious and never-again-to-be-seen images ever taken. And then the week-long wait while the film is processed in a laboratory housed in some unknown location. Oh, the fun and tension of old-school photography! By the time I was in Australia, this new-fangled one-hour-long wait only was required before the completed product was returned.

Back at the hostel, I made my way upstairs to the members's kitchen to prepare dinner.

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Next Week is the Christmas Eve weekend. So I will take a break from blogging, and instead, post photos covering the Biography from the 1976 trip to Israel to the 1997 visit to Cairns. Week 80 will resume in the New Year as I prepare to visit Low Isles Coral Cay.