Mum and Kate waiting to see the turtle

At 6.45pm we drove to Mon Repos beach, which is where the turtle rookery is. Mon Repos Turtle Rookery is the largest and most accessible Loggerhead Turtle Rookery on the Australian Mainland. Each year from November to March, turtles come ashore and nest, followed six to eight weeks later by the emergence of baby 'hatchling' from their sandy nests. During these periods nobody is allowed on the beach between 6pm and 6am, however guided tours operate nightly to allow close up experiences with the turtles. Mon Repos supports the largest concentration of nesting marine turtles on the Eastern Australian mainland and is one of the two largest Loggerhead turtle rookeries in the South Pacific Ocean, which is impressive. Successful breeding here is critical for the survival of this endangered species.
We didn’t really know what to expect here, it was so remote and Bargara such a tiny place, that I half-expected it to be just us there to that evening, or maybe another couple of people. When we got to the car park however, this was clearly not the case. I don’t know where all the people had come from, but there were about 100 queuing up outside when we got there! My heart sank a little as I thought we didn’t really stand much of a chance of seeing anything with all these people there. We all got a sticker and were allocated to one of two groups. We were in group one, which meant that we were up first if any turtles were hatching. I didn’t realize either that we just had to sit and wait at the visitor centre (watching a few presentations) until one of the rangers saw something – this can be until 1AM!!! I think we had decided that we’d wait until about 10pm and then we were off! Nesting turtles are best viewed after dark one hour before to two hours after high tide from mid November to February. Turtle hatchlings are best viewed from January to the end of March between 7.00 p.m. and midnight - so at the time we were there we would hopefully see some hatchlings. However, we were constantly reminded that ‘Turtles are wild marine animals - sightings are never guaranteed and on occasional evenings, turtles do not arrive’. After listening to one of the most irritating sounding rangers for an hour, (I think dad counted 163 times she said ‘basically’ and her voice had a very high rising inflection at the end of every single sentence) we got a cup of tea and were starting to think that tonight would be the night where the naughty little wild animals would decide they were staying in their nest!
Typically, just as we were drinking our cuppas, a frantic sounding ranger was bellowing ‘GROUP 1 TO ASSEMBLY POINT A, GROUP 1 TO ASSEMBLY POINT A’, well we got all panicky as though it were a fire drill and scrambled to the assembly ramp clutching our teas! About 50 of us then filed along a very windy and dark beach (no lights allowed as it can disturb the turtles). The ranger who was our guide was talking away but we couldn’t hear a thing and we were stumbling on the beach trying to keep up as he marched along at quite a pace like we were in a military drill. He then stopped, talked on his radio and said something to us – which we couldn’t hear, and then turned and walked back where we had come from! I just couldn’t stop laughing by now, seeing all these people of all shapes, sizes and ages almost running along a dark beach to keep up was quite amusing.