Most of the turtle beaches are very hard to access because they are far from any roads or are on islands. But just outside the town of Bundaberg (mainly famous for it's Rum) you will find the beach Mon Repos. This is one of the very few turtle beaches that can be accessed easily. Every evening during turtle season they close the beach for general public access and you can go out with a ranger to try and spot turtles and hatchlings.
We were very lucky when our ranger had already found a nest where some hatchlings were about to hatch. It was fascinating to see almost one hundred baby turtles dig their way up through the sand, crawling down the beach and heading out into the ocean. The statistics are not in favor of the newborns though, only one out of one thousand will make it back as an adult turtle one day.
The baby turtles use the slope of the beach, the sound of the waves and the light over the ocean for orientation. We were not able to take any photos of them as they were making their way down to the ocean this could have upset their sense of direction.
After all the turtles had left the nest the ranger dug out the shells in order to count the number of hatchlings as well as the number of unsuccessful ones.
A growing problem for turtles today is the increasing number of high rise buildings close to the beaches. The shade from the buildings affect the temperature on the beaches. The sand temperature determines the sex of the new born hatchlings and this unnatural temperature change is upsetting the male-female balance among turtles. A second problem caused by these buildings is the light that they give off. It tricks the hatchlings to walk in the wrong direction and they never make it to the ocean.
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