Our pilot was 23 years old

 But what a beautiful flight.  We flew up the middle of the Great Barrier Reef looking down on an ocean route that would have been taken by Captain James Cook in 1770 as he sailed north looking for a way to escape from the treacherous sailing within the Great Barrier Reef.  Since the time of Captain Cook there has been 600 shipwrecks on this reef system.

Views from the plane to the reef 8000 feet below

Amazingly clear water with coral and sand seen from the plane

The Runway

Our first view of Lizard Island.  The freighter brings supplies every two weeks.

Barb on the plane

The airport at Lizard Island

Captain Cook named Lizard Island in 1770.  He had sailed from England and spent 23 months on the ocean before landing on mainland Australia close to modern day Sydney.  He named the area Botany Bay because he found so many plants that were not known in his world.  He rested 9 days and then sailed north up the coast and struck a coral outcrop of the Great Barrier Reef.  It ripped a clean hole in the side of his ship and he had to throw cannons and ballast overboard in order to float the ship free of the reef with the aid of a high tide.  The crew wrapped a sail over the hole and limped into a safe harbor now named Cooktown.  For 48 days the crew repaired the boat and foraged for food and managed not to be killed by the native Aborigine tribes.  [Cook was later killed in Hawaii by the native Hawaiians when he was speared as a test to see whether he was a God.]  Cook thought he could escape the reef by sailing to the north.  When they set sail again it became increasingly difficult to navigate through a narrowing channel through the Great Barrier Reef.  When Cook was caught between shallow reef on the mainland side and waves crashing on the ribbon outer reef he decided to climb the highest island to see if he could see an escape out to sea.

Map of the great barrier reef.  Lizard Island is the orange island on the top right.

Close up of Lizard Island

As he climbed he noticed that large lizards (one to two meters tip to tail) were “pretty plenty” so he named the island Lizard Island.  When he reached the top (now named “Cook’s Look”) he could see for 20 miles and he found a deep water break in the outer reef where waves crash on coral on either side of the deep water.  Today this is called Cook’s Passage and it is still used today as the safe exit to the north out of the Great Barrier Reef.  Captain Cook’s charts with distances and depths are amazingly accurate.

Dining area

Having lunch

Lobby

Pool area that we never used.  The ocean is the best pool.

Our bedroom

Scott on the deck

 That afternoon we have them throw some drinks and lunch into a cooler on our boat and we go to Turtle Beach.  We snorkel, lounge, and goof off.  This is a little bit of heaven.  Giant Clams are everywhere.  Each one has different coloring since florescent microorganisms attach themselves to the clams.

Scott, the skipper of the dinghy

Lots of private beaches

Gourmet lunch box

Our dinghy parked at our personal beach

Barb Snorkeling

Giant clam shell with a starfish

 Our room has a nice view of the sunsets over the Coral Sea.

Our room is on the hill with sunset views

Sunset the first night taken from our room

Take me to my beach

Self portrait

We took these photos with an underwater camera

Beautiful coral

Colorful fish and coral

Lots of varieties of fish

More of Barb’s beach artwork

On Saturday we have arranged to go to the outer ribbon reefs to make a couple of deep water dives on the Great Barrier Reef.  Our first dive is at Cod Hole where we will dive with the Giant Potato Cod.  This is one of the most famous dive sites on the Great Barrier Reef and is only accessible on a day trip from our Lizard Island Resort.  Any other diver who makes his way out this far must spend multiple nights on a boat to get there and back.

Looking back at Anchor Bay and the fishing boat available to Lizard Island guests

 On the way out we spot a group of dolphins jumping in and out of the water.  Our Skipper steers over toward the dolphins and the dolphins turn and begin to ride and jump in the swell pushed forward by the bow of our boat.  The dolphins are having so much fun jumping, darting, and flying on the wave.  It is no wonder that sailors love the dolphins.   What a beautiful sight.

The middle one wins by a nose

Barb is having as much fun as the dolphins

Scott

 Our Skipper told us that there are only 3 or 4 days per year that are this nice for weather, water visibility, and flat water.  It is a beautiful day.  I guess we are just lucky.

Barb with all the gear

Scott in the dinghy

The coral and fish are amazing.  This is the Great Barrier Reef!!!!  Yahoo!!!  Right away we spot a Bump Headed Parrot Fish.  These guys create about 5 tons of sand per year by chewing up the reef.    They say the top of their heads is filled with oil to offset the heavy bones in their jaws and skull.

Barb is on the left

 
We saw two white tipped sharks resting under a ledge.  We are happy that they seem to be sleeping.

White tipped sharks

Barb chasing a potato cod

Why the sad face?

 Here is a beautiful school of Sweet Lips fish.

Huge school

Beautiful colors

After a gourmet lunch we head over to our next dive site.  We are going to do a wall dive on Reef Number 10.  The ocean floor falls away to a depth of 2000 meters on the outside of the wall.  We only dive to a depth of about 60 feet.  Colors begin to disappear when you go deeper than 20 feet in the water.

Reef wall

Scott

Barb

Parrot fish

This one looks florescent

Barb getting out after her dive

Some of the fish we saw

More fish

As we were pulling into Lizard Island Anchor Bay after a beautiful day of diving the first mate got onto the dive platform and began dipping a dead fish in the water.  He said he was chumming for a 700 lb Grouper that lives here.  Instead of getting the Grouper we soon had about 5 Black Tipped Sharks chasing the dead fish. 

                                                                  Video of the sharks
On Sunday we take our boat at 9:00 am and explore the west side of Lizard Island.  We motor through the Blue Lagoon past the Great Barrier Reef Research Station.  

The blue lagoon

Coconut bowling

We motor back to the east side of the island and go snorkeling in Mermaid Cove.

A bit rocky

We watched a plane come in for a landing

View of Watson’s Beach

 We came across this lizard.  He is about 1 ½ meters long.  They say these lizards are related to the Komodo Dragon Lizard found in Indonesia.  This lizard has a long forked tongue.  We are glad this guy is not aggressive.

He had a forked tongue

Scott along the trail

Time for a little rest

The views just keep getting better

Scott on top

 At the top there is a dial that indicates where Cooks Passage is located.  The deep water passage is clearly visible today.  

Barb is pointing to Cooks Passage

 From this vantage point high on an island mountain you can see the safe passage out of the reef.  You can see the whitewater breaking on the ribbon reef on either side of the safe passage. 

Barb is having fun

Monday is our last day.  We want to snorkel in a new spot so we load up our boat with our snorkel gear and some drinks and head toward the Blue Lagoon.  The water is a little rough but we get the anchor on the dinghy to hold so we suit up and jump in to see what there is to see.  We fought the current to get 50 yards offshore to get on top of the reef.  The coral is nice but there are not many fish.  The current is strong and we have to swim parallel to the beach to make it back to shore.

There was a marlin fishing contest while we were there.  They were catching (and releasing) marlins this big.  They were 1200 pounds and about 3 meters long.

It is time to fly back to Cairns on a Cessna Caravan.  We will spend the night in Cairns and catch a 7:30 am flight for our 2.5 hour flight to Ayres Rock.