I was asked by the lovely Wendy Davis, administrator of the @WeBundaberg twitter site if I would be a guest tweeter/twitterer for this week. I agreed, and so needed a quick instructional course on how to send a tweet etc without causing havoc. Thank heavens my daughter-in-law, author Cheryse Durrant, is a big twitter fan and although I already had a twitter account and tweeted occasionally, I felt I needed more knowledge.
By the way, check out Cheryse’s website to see how to win an exquisite, one-of-a-kind necklace and heart bracelet.
Although I didn’t choose to live in Bundaberg – my husband was transferred here many years ago – I love the place, particularly the coastal areas. I’m a water baby – love the ocean in all its changing moods. Today it’s like glass and so clear and clean I’m sure I would be able to see right to the bottom if I swam out 100m. When we lived in town I would go for walks in the cemetery near where we lived and loved watching the fantastic sunsets and reading the headstones. The saddest area was the graves of the children who died in the diptheria epidemic, and the old section revealed tragedies and heartbreak like that of one woman whose five children died within two to five months of being born. In those days there was no way to find genetic problems that today would be diagnosed fairly easily. I was saddened to think of her grief as each successive child succumbed to a disease or disorder that today might be preventable.
Now we live on the coast just outside Bundy and it’s a fabulous strip of coastline from Burnett Heads in the north to Elliot Heads in the south. Mon Repos has the largest concentration of nesting marine turtles on the eastern Australian mainland and it’s wonderful to see these ancient creatures lumber ashore and laboriously dig their nests. I know the rangers will tell you that the turtles aren’t really crying, they are simply secreting water to wash the salt from their eyes, but I’ve given birth, I know what it’s like – they deserve to cry real tears 🙂
A few days after I’d taken Sydney friends and our eldest grandson to see the turtles nesting, we went to Rifle Range Beach near where we live for a swim. It was 10.30am, and an outgoing tide, and what did we find? A turtle who’d come up on the wrong side of the bay where the high parts of the beach were only rocks and she was struggling to get to higher ground to dig her nest. Unfortunately it was impossible, and then she became stuck on a fallen tree branch. Several men lifted her free and turned her around to go back into the water. During several late afternoon walks we saw turtles laying their eggs but we haven’t been lucky enough to be there when hatchlings emerged. Maybe next year.
