Where the wild things are
A famous bird sanctuary and breeding ground for turtles, remote Heron Island is a laidback escape for nature lovers, as Liam Phelan discovers.
THE PLACE is packed. Absolutely chocka.
Heron Island, a tiny coral cay 90km from Gladstone in central Queensland, is billed as an isolated tropical retreat where you can escape from the rest of the world and enjoy the Great Barrier Reef.
But when our family of five lurch off the 34-metre catamaran that gets you there, we have barely taken a step ashore before being hit by the crowds. It’s standing room only, and these overseas guests are noisy and, well, they smell.
In fact, the ‘‘crowds’’ are part of the reason we’re here. This tiny piece of paradise is packed with wildlife: up to 100,000 black noddy terns are in residence, nesting in the ancient pisonia trees that you walk past within seconds of coming ashore.
The birds are, literally, in your face, complete with fluffy chicks that are being sat on by their mums for protection.
Dashing crazily along sandy pathways are buff-banded rails, looking like some kind of demented chickens, chasing each other to and fro.
And then, at night, in come the wedge-tailed shearwaters (muttonbirds), which nest at ground level, and whose eerie cries caused sailors to believe the island was haunted. Then, of course, there’s the eponymous eastern reef egrets, which were first spotted on the island in 1843.
Ironically, given its past as a turtle cannery in the 1920s, the biggest tourist drawcard today is not the prolific birdlife – it’s turtles.
Between December and March, Heron is home to one of nature’s greatest – and, it has to be said, clumsiest – miracles.
The white coral sands act like a homing beacon for hundreds of green turtles (and the occasional loggerhead). The reptiles, so graceful in the water, drag themselves up the beaches at night to lay scores of ping-pong ball-sized white eggs.
This is a ritual hundreds of thousands of years old and is a living link to primitive life forms emerging from the sea. There’s something oddly comical about it, as turtles, which have travelled up to 3000km to get here, move with all the grace of a sack of potatoes as they lumber up the sand dunes.
Queensland Environment & Heritage Protection volunteer researcher Janine Ferguson has spent more than four decades working on the conservation of turtles.
During that time she has become close to her charges, often referring to her ‘‘girls’’.
‘‘You do get to know some of them. They come back year after year and you do get a bit of a sense of them and their personality,’’ she says.
The greens lay from midDecember through to midJanuary, with hatchlings emerging about eight to 10 weeks later.
The odds are stacked against them. From the moment the credit card-sized hatchlings emerge from their nest, the battle for life begins.
Squadrons of birds hover overhead, waiting to pick them off before they’ve even made it to the water. Their first journey is an epic one, as they often emerge high in the sand dunes and have to instantly orient themselves, using their sight to head for the brightest object – which should be the sand and the water.
Even if they safely make the run through the dunes, once they finally hit the water, tiny heads bobbing as they come up for air, reef sharks are waiting to scoop them up. No wonder it’s estimated that only one in 1000 makes it to maturity.
Unless you’re conducting turtle research, access to the island comes exclusively via Heron Island Resort, the only accommodation on this small piece of land, which is not open to daytrippers. The resort has 109 rooms and can accommodate up to 300 people, although even in peak season it feels half empty.
It’s run by US firm Delaware North, which also operates El Questro station and Lizard Island in Australia.
It’s about as laidback as you can get, with no mobile reception, extremely limited wi-fi and no locks on the doors. ‘‘With no daytrippers, security isn’t really an