Waiting for Wind - Second Beach, Great Keppel Island, Queensland, Australia

Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Thu 6 May 2010 12:11
23:09.560S  150:57.188E
 
April 29th we escaped the rolly Hummocky Island bay and motorsailed (again with the light wind!) twenty miles northwest to Great Keppel Island.  Tired of watching dollars wash overboard with our engine exhaust (diesel fuel is a hefty $1.35/liter in Australia - over $5/gallon!), we elected to stay at Great Keppel for two nights until sufficient wind blowing from the proper direction was predicted to arrive.  Storyteller, on the other hand, opted for the no wind situation (who needs wind on a trawler with a 275 hp John Deere engine?) and moved on ahead of us to Island Head Creek on the mainland 65 miles to the northwest. 
 
Picture 1 - Leeke's Beach.  Correction - huge Leeke's Beach.  Huge because it's very long, and huge because the tidal range is over twelve feet, so a walk at low tide means a beach that stretches on forever before it reaches the water's edge.  The little sand clumps in the foreground are created by sand crabs when they dig their holes.  From a distance, the piles of sand clumps look like giant, lacey snow flakes stretching down the beach on the mid-tide line.
 
Pictures 2 and 3 - The enchanted eucalyptus forest.  Great Keppel Island has very few inhabitants, but quite a few walking tracks and a couple of past-their-prime one-lane roads.  We went for a walk twice, both times through the same stretch of eucalyptus forest, and both times were completely surrounded by hundreds of butterflies.  As we walked through the forest, groups of butterflies would lift off from their perches on tree limbs and flutter across our path a few feet in front of us.  It was like our arrival was being announced to the rest of forest by the waves of butterflies floating just in front of our eyes.  There were two varieties, one with wings like blue stained-glass windows (picture 3), the other less lovely with large white spots on each black wing.  Given that the average life span of a butterfly is only two weeks, we figure we were pretty lucky to see the show.
 
Picture 4 - Our first tropical island sunset of the season.
 
Anne

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