Sea Turtles

Wednesday 5^th Nov

A great night’s sleep in our little cabin in Byron Bay, nice and cool.  Coffee in town at the Wicked Sisters Café.

We drive up to the Byron lighthouse.  It is a winding, narrow road but the sight is spectacular.  To the south are white cap waves splashing onto a beautiful, km’s long sand beach and walk around the lighthouse, then spend the afternoon completing the walks up and down the hill around the lighthouse.  We spy many sea turtles feeding in the ocean, a small rock wallaby on the side of the path not more than a metre from us, and on a rock ledge a beautiful monitor lizard.

We spend a long time watching the turtles feed then by 4 pm we decide to head to Tallow beach, the beautiful beach to the south.  We leave the top of the lighthouse parking and wind our way down the hill. 

The beach is warm, soft and the wind is blowing fiercely almost taking our hats away.  There are few people on the beach and we feel like it is ours and ours alone. 

As we head south walking in the sand we meet a fellow with a pail and a bag of heads fish.  We are wondering if it is bait and he says he is catching beach worms. He shows us one and it is four feet long.  We don’t know what beach worms are but he explains……he uses the fish heads in the bag to put a scent on the beach by dragging the bag of fish heads back and forth over the beach just as the water recedes. This brings out the worm head which he then teases with a pippi clam.  In the meantime the other hand is digging in the sand to catch the worm……quite a bit of work effort for fishing worms.  He then uses these worms for hook fishing in the local river.

As the tide turns we head back and Alan sees a very interesting fish.…….the elusive sandfish sitting there looking at us.  We check him out and then find another.  Very interesting, we later ask the locals and they confirm their existence! Photos to come!!!