Bundaberg

We quickly moved on from Agnes Waters and made our way to Bundy, where the weather wasn't much better. More time in Bertha resulted in a REALLY good day for Angus when he completed his last Grade 3 workbook and graduated! Yippee! Lexie had finished Grade 5 a few weeks earlier, and Angus had been doing Grade 4 Spelling and Grammar for a while now. We had a little party to celebrate and ate more salt, sugar and processed foods than we have in months. We were overjoyed to find an ALDI in town and were able to buy their MSG-free snacks - yay! I gave the children the very welcome news that they would not have to do any more bookwork. They are still doing their hour a day, but it can be apps on the iPad, their journal or project work.

Our second night was spent with turtles on the beach! By far the highlight of our time in Bundy was going out to the Mon Repos Turtle Rookery. You get to go out with a guide and watch sea turtles lay their eggs and/or baby turtles hatching. The turtles lay their eggs from November to January, and they hatch from January to March. There are no guarantees of seeing any turtles, and the rangers are very well set up with exhibits and videos and junior ranger games for children while you wait for a turtle. Luckily on our night, the ranger was halfway through explaining all of this when the first turtle appeared! You get there at 7pm and it goes until 2am, and in the end there were 4 turtles in the time we were there. Having only bought our tickets that day, we were in the second group to go out.

They have volunteers watching the beach to see when a turtle appears. Then a ranger takes a group out, and it was quite a walk from the information centre to the beach and along to where our loggerhead turtle was digging her hole. We had to wait until she was deep into her duties, as they can be frightened off before a certain stage.

We go to see the way her flippers curve into huge ladles and scoop out the sand. I had no idea they were so flexible! Quite unexpectedly she started laying eggs and all the children reacted with disgust, which quickly turned into curiosity. It rather did look like she was pooping out eggs at first.

She laid 132 eggs in the end, which we discovered when the researches dug them up to relocate. She had laid them at the bottom of a dune cliff, instead of up the top. This meant that the eggs would be washed away if a cyclone or even a really bad storm came through. They dug a new hole 3m away in a safer position and we all got to help relocate the eggs. This gives the turtles more chance at survival. Usually only 1% make it to maturity, fingers crossed a few more of our 132 make it!

Then we checked out the sights of Bundy. We had a few days to explore, and checked out the famous ginger beer factory and the rum distillery. The children enjoyed the ginger beer enormously, even Lexie who does NOT like ginger beer. They have all sorts of carbonated drinks now and we thoroughly enjoyed taste testing all 17 flavours. Blood orange was the winner amongst the family.

Duncan, of course, enjoyed the rum distillery more. Thank goodness they have ice creams for those too young to drink rum!

We also popped past the local zoo, which is completely free and alongside a cool little playground. Its only little, but we still got to see lots of birds, wallabies, quolls and dingoes. There were also heaps of local lizards laying about – so much bigger than the teeny tiny skinks from Melbourne.

Being in a 'big town', we took advantage of the many shops and malls and finished off our Christmas shopping. We had to get all the gifts into the mail to arrive in Melbourne in time, and I took the opportunity to get a replacement Christmas tree. Our little live tree did not take too well to being shoved in the bathroom every time we had to move. It's needles were turning grey, and the Reject Shop had little fake ones for all of $15 so now we have another tree: