Lady Elliot Island: Part 1

Bucket list for Australia: The Great Barrier Reef. Check!

We got to spend three days on Lady Elliot Island, a tiny island on the southern tip of the GB Reef, a half hour's flight off the coast. We flew on the tiniest plane I'd ever been on! A 12 seater. 

Evelyn liked that the seats were soooo soft!  During the flight we hit an air pocket and Evelyn giggled, much to the delight of the old ladies on the plane.

Here it is! Lady Elliot Island! You can see the reef see the light blue all around the island.

Here we are, excited for our adventure! Check out the picture of the manta ray behind us. That's about life size. I was realllllly hoping to see one on this trip. By far one of my favorite sea creatures! (Evelyn has adopted that as her picture taking pose.)


First stop was to the pool for some snorkeling instruction. The kids took to it like fish to water! Even Evelyn!

But the water was a little chilly.

Nice hair, Isaac. (In fact, we all had crazy hair for three days. Something about sunscreen and salt water. And boy did we lather up! No sunburns here!)

By the way, I will apologize in advance for the lack of good pictures. We were too busy having an amazing time! So unfortunately there's no pictures of us actually snorkeling in the lagoon. But here we are taking a break. Note aforementioned crazy hair.

It was a very coarse beach of broken coral pieces. No sand castles here and reef shoes were a must. But you could see tons of fish and coral right there off the shore! Mike and I traded off holding Bridget while the other did a bit of snorkeling. Lydia enjoyed swimming out with mom or dad while Isaac and Evelyn were happy to stand in the shallows with their snorkeled faces in the water. We saw tons of little fish, but my favorite had to be the Picasso triggerfish. (Photo taken of the wall of the education center. There will be many of these borrowed pictures as I don't have an underwater camera.)

But the lagoon was even great fun at low tide. Here we are reef walking. Notice Mike's patriotic swim trunks!

The rippley lips of a clam cemented into the reef. These colorful guys ranged from three inches to a foot across.  And there were tons of harmless sea cucumbers, like fat black worms (lower left of the picture).

A blue sea star.



Lydia loved the brain coral.

My favorite was the branch coral.

We took a walk the first evening around the whole island.  It took only an hour.  

Isaac spotted an epaulette shark! The one we saw was about 1.5 feet long and hard to see (hence wall photo). Good eye, son!

The coooooolest thing we saw in the shallows was this massive sting ray! It was about 4 feet across and was just hanging out, trying to cover itself with sand. It eventually gave up and swam out to deeper water. Amazing!

At 3:00 every afternoon was a fish feeding by the staff. A tradition they've continued from the lighthouse owners back in the 1900's. The kids laughed to feel the fish crowd around their feet.  Nothing too exotic, meaning no brightly colored fish, but it was still fun.

Here we are having JUST missed the sunset. Oh well. It was still absolutely beautiful!
My good looking husband! Anywhere with him IS paradise, but this takes the cake.

After our evening walks we'd get dinner.  This is where we ate dinner and breakfast.  Both offered a delicious buffet.

And this was our lunch spot.  Lunch was less impressive, but you couldn't beat the view!

We had a 2 bedroom suite.

 Isaac slept on the couch in the living room, Lydia and Evelyn in one bedroom, while Bridget slept in a portacrib wedged next to our bed.  It was small, but wonderful how well they accommodated our "large" family.  Here are some views from the front porch.

 Dreamy!

Our reef shoes.