Day twelve

Today was a fantastic day. We set sail on our sailboat at 8am and headed towards Michaelmas Cay which is a spit of sand about two hours from Cairns. It’s home to over 15,000 sea birds, which is quite something given that it’s quite small. There was an amazing reef just off the beach which we snorkelled on for an hour or two. It was so incredible! The corals were so many different colours and there were fish everywhere – all the different ones you see on the programmes. We saw a ray and lots of giant clams and hundreds and hundreds of tangs and schooling fish and parrot fish. We swam back to the boat and underneath the boat were massive giant trevellians that are about two – three foot. The lunch on the boat was really nice and after we’d finished eating we headed to Paradise Reef. They’re not joking when they call it that! Unlike Michaelmas Cay, there was no island; we just jumped straight off the boat into the sea. Here the coral was even more vibrant colours and there were thousands and thousands of schooling fish everywhere. We swam around and took lots of photos and realised that we had drifted to the edge of that piece of reef – there was a cliff there which was so deep it was unbelievable how far down the reef shelf goes. It was truly wonderful to see such an amazing part of the world so up close. We headed back towards Cairns at about 3.30 and we were sitting on deck sunbathing when we heard this loud “ppppffffftttt” and I looked up and saw a whale’s blowhole about fifty metres off and then it disappeared. Suddenly there it was, right next to the boat! It stayed with the boat playing in the surf for a while giving us some great photo ops and then we saw another one. It was the perfect end to a great day. We’re both very tired now!!

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