Lizard Island

Lizard Island is another tourist destination. This is an island in the Great Barrier Reef where there’s a resort and a large research station (housing up to 40 scientists at a time). So it wasn’t surprising that there were fourteen boats in the bay when we arrived.

One of the things that I wanted to do on this trip was to walk up Lizard Island to Captain Cook’s look. Captain Cook landed here and named it lizard island because the only animals he saw on the island were lizards. It’s part of the Great Dividing Range that has been submerged, so walking to the top gives you an idea where there might be a passage through all the reefs. At this point, Captain Cook realised that he was in a coral reef. I find it astonishing that he had already sailed two thirds of the way up the Great Barrier Reef (which is 2300km long) before he realised that he was in it!

You can see the coast from here, as there isn’t much water between the Great Barrier Reef and the coast.

However, I decided that the walk would be too much, so I didn’t leave at 6am for the walk. Instead, I went with the remainder of the travellers, and snorkelled the coral reef on one end of Watsons Beach.

There were an enormous number of clams.

In the afternoon I could have gone snorkelling at a the other end of the beach, but I decided to take it easy, and write the blog post instead. This afternoon we went to the beach for canapés.