We arrived into Cairns, Australia and docked for a few days at the Marlin Marina while we got our bearings in what seemed like quite a big city after so long in the islands of the Pacific. We moved further up the Trinity River to anchor close to mangroves and the shipyards. Heraclitus was in Cairns more than twenty years ago and it was amazing how many people remembered the ship, including the Harbour Master who still monitors the traffic in and out of the port.

Heraclitus on the dock just after arrival into Cairns

May is the transition between the wet season and the dry season and we sat through long bouts of wind, gusting up to 35 knots. It’s a month of turbulent weather but despite the rough conditions, tour boats headed out to the Great Barrier Reef every day. There was an extraordinary gathering of bats over the city one evening at dusk. Most passersby were oblivious but we found ourselves transfixed by the spectacle

bats fly over the crow's nest in Cairns

We took a brief trip to Low Isles for a weekend to get our feet wet on the largest coral reef system in the world. The wind was still blowing strong and on our dives we could see no more than a metre so found it hard to gauge the state of the reef. But there were plenty of turtle sightings. We sat beneath the beam of the lighthouse for a few nights and then motored our way back against the trades into Cairns.

Low Isles

This time, many of us took some time off the ship to explore a little further into Australia’s interior – the Atherton Tablelands, the outback and even as far as the Gulf of Carpentaria.

the Granite Gorge

the Atherton Tablelands, wallabies

On 31st May we departed Cairns for Low Isles, this time to conduct our study on its reef. Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg at the University of Queensland had suggested this as one of our study sites on the Great Barrier Reef and we were very attracted to it because of the work carried out here by an expedition in 1929, led by Sir Maurice Yonge of the Royal Society in London. We read some of their expedition log, including descriptions of the researchers’ diving helmet, linked by an airline to a tender with a hard-working pumper providing the air.

Steve and Louise Sharpe are the volunteer caretakers of the island who live there with their young son Thomas. The lighthouse itself is now completely automated and runs from solar panels. A 35 Watt lightbulb provides a beam (through lenses) that was strong enough to light up our mainsail while we were still two miles off the island. At times it felt like we were in a turtle sanctuary. We encountered them every time we were in the water and would frequently see them surfacing from either the small boat or the ship.

The views from our anchorage of the mainland of Australia were stunning – the Great Dividing Range bathed in colour from sunrise to sunset. Lights from shrimping boats scattered the horizon at night, while they anchored close to us during the day. Several boats from Port Douglas bring daily loads of tourists to snorkel and lounge on the white sand beach, including an original Chinese junk from Hong Kong called Shaolin.

the Shaolin which visited Low Isles almost daily