Lady Elliot Island

One of the first things Clarke and I did on our trip after the media madness was to visit Lady Elliot island. It is beautiful! We boarded a tiny plane and WAY out in the middle of nowhere all of a sudden our pilot flew through a cloud and upon emerging from the other side we could see a little island sitting along in a vast sea of... well... ocean. It was pretty cool. He circled once and landed on the grass runway.

We were treated to a lovely day of relaxing on the beach - that's made up entirely of old, broken-down coral. In fact, the entire island is a coral cay. It exists only due to old dead coral piling up on itself. Eventually birds carried seeds and plant life started. Birds are the only animals living on the island. And some of them are a little cheeky, sneaking into the simple restaurant and stealing bits and pieces when they get a chance.











It only took about 45 minutes to walk all the way around the island and then it was almost time to go snorkeling, but I'll save the snorkeling bit for another update. In the afternoon we had lunch, played some ping pong (very badly) and just relaxed on the beach again. It was perfect. Just what we needed being that we were so shattered after the intense interview process.















Lady Elliot is the southernmost of the islands of the Great Barrier Reef and they have some simple accommodation there so you can arrange some dives. It's one of the best places to see the giant manta rays with seven-meter wingspans! You can even see them snorkeling, but I wasn't lucky enough this time.