Enid at Wooyung Beach
This morning was beautiful with bright sun. The temperature was near 28 °C by mid afternoon. The wind however was strong from the north east, and got stronger during the day. We drove north and travel was quite slow until after lunch. This was because of the number of towns to go through, and because there was a lot of road construction so that we waited for flagmen several times. However this afternoon the road was better and so we made much better progress. Along the way we travelled through a lot of Eucalyptus forest, and some agricultural land. Two of the main crops in this area are bananas and sugar cane. We passed a sugar cane processing plant at one point, and it had a very strong sweet odor.
We came in to a small campsite at Wooyung Beach about an hour and a half south of Brisbane. To get here we drove a few kilometers off the main highway down a narrow twisting paved road towards the ocean. I missed the turn into the site and we had to go down the road another few hundred metres to where we could turn around. When we registered the desk clerk (actually the owner I believe) wanted to make certain we knew there was no drinking water here. That would be an issue, but we knew that from our research last night on the Internet, so we made sure both our water tanks were filled before we left this morning.
After parking the motorhome we walked to the beach which is just a hundred metres across the road (you can hear the surf crashing on the sand tonight). The beach is mile after mile of clean white sand extending north and south as far as we could see. The strong wind from the northeast was blowing up sea spray into the air, so that it was very hazy. We waded in the water and walked on the sand for a few kilometers.
Fisherman collecting sand worms on Wooyung Beach
We saw two men who appeared to be dragging something along with them, and stopping every few feet. When we got close we could see that they were each dragging a net bag of dead fish in the water. I stopped and asked one of them what they were doing, and he explained, “we’re catching sand worms” and showed me what they were getting. They put a piece of rotting or decaying flesh on the sand, and the worms attach their head to it. Then they would grab the worm in their fingers and pull it out of the sand. The worms moved quickly, so they had to be fast and accurate to catch them, and the worms often got away. The worms are used for fish bait, and the one fisherman explained to us how they put the worms, which were at least 30 cm long, onto the hook, and where they fished with them in the surf.
We also saw our first Australian wildlife (other than birds) today. Enid saw a small snake about 18 inches long and about the thickness of her thumb. When we came back from the beach we saw a lizard, about the same length. We think it was a bearded dragon. There also are Australian Brush Turkeys here. They have dark black feathers with a very bright red head and yellow wattles.