Day 5 -Tin Can Bay

The fancy painted loos at Rainbow beach. The loos in Oz are very clean and tidy, so far, much better than NZ.
Fishing in the Coral Sea at Rainbow beach

More shifting sand at Rainbow beach
The lake in the gardens
If you look carefully you will see the head of a turtle in the water. We saw about 6 of them all coming towards us, for a feed I suppose.

Another early night and an early start (5am). Don’t know why we cant sleep late. Too much to do I suppose.

Breakfast of scrambled eggs and cheese and ham (trying to use up the rest of our food) and then off to see the reason we came here in the first place - the dolphins.

We waled the 1k walk down to the boat ramp and there already was a crowd and the lady was raving about the dolphins and all their history.

It started when one dolphin was attacked by a shark and found badly mauled near the boat ramp. It was patched up and fed while it stayed in shallow waters until it was better. Once it was well, it swam off but paid daily visits and brought others with it. Mystique is the only one that will accept fish from anyone. A young dolphin they call Harmony, comes in but is just learning to trust enough to take fish from one of the wardens, while its mother hangs about in the bay and waits till it’s over. The scarring on them is through dolphin fights and there are sharks in the bay that rough them up a bit.

I wasn’t so sure I liked the idea of encouraging dolphins to hand feed until she told us that it is only about 10% of what they eat during the day, and if they come back on the same day they don’t get fed again, so they never become dependent.

Standing in line with all the other tourists waiting to feed the dolphins.

It was pretty cool to get so close to them. You can swim out to meet them if you like, but after hearing about the Tiger Sharks in the bay, I don’t think I’d be a starter. I like the fact that they only charge a gold coin donation, as some of the resorts charge a fortune.

The camping ground.

Tin Can Bay is quite a pretty place. You can hire a boat or do dolphin charters, or hire a houseboat and take off for a couple of days. But I’m guessing that most people come initially for the dolphins.

We had coffee at Barnacles cafe and now we’re off to Brisbane. When we come back from Perth we have 12 hours in Brisbane before our flight home, so have decided to hire a car and be tourists that day. Today we’re making our way back and trying to take in some of the places we missed on our first day.

As we aren’t considering moving to the Sunshine coast we decided to leave it out this trip. We have to return our camper before 4pm, so just decided to skip it. It will have to wait for another trip. The Bruce highway is brilliant, mostly straight and in places you’re allowed to travel at 110kph. Makes you wonder why they bother putting Watch for kangaroo signs on it, though, as you wouldn’t have a hope of avoiding one.

We got off the m’way at North Lakes and did some leisurely shopping in their great shopping mall. Then we drove down through Murrumba Downs, then Petrie, Lawnton, Strathpine etc all of which look nice and back to drop off our camper. We had a few problems with the camper, meaning we had to stay mostly in camping grounds, but it was worth it to have the freedom to go where we wanted.

Brisbane light from the domestic terminal and all the people waiting around the departure lounge. Virgin Blue seem to do the most business because at the other end of the lounge, which goes on a long way, it is relatively empty.

Now we’re at the airport waiting to go to Perth tonight – a 5 ½ hour flight at night. Perth is 2 hours behind Brisbane, and we get there quite late, pick up a rental car and drive to our lodgings. Will let you know more tomorrow as we have internet where we are staying