Bucket list adventures

Sometimes I have to pinch myself as a reminder that I live in a part of the world that other people mark on their bucket list.  On my doorstep is one of the world’s seven wonders; the Great Barrier Reef.   And at certain times of the year, one can witness sea turtles hatching and turning to the sea.

A couple of months earlier their mother, a huge lumbering green turtle would have dragged herself up the beach, dug a hole for her eggs, before lumbering back down again.  After incubation, the nest of around 100 infant turtles or hatchlings, bubble up from under the sand and with almost magical sensitivity scramble to the waters of the ocean.

My first experience of turtle hatchlings was ten years ago when our family camped on North West Island.  This coral atoll of the Great Barrier Reef is populated mainly by seabirds and visited by no more than one hundred and fifty camping tourists at any one time.  Our first visit was in April when the camping season had just opened.  This amazing island, less than seventy kilometres off the coast of the Queensland city of Gladstone, was an overnight ferry trip for us and our camping gear.     

I remember relaxing for the evening in a camp chair, with a nightcap cuppa under the shadow of the island’s undergrowth.  I was contemplating bed when something bumped into my foot. The small creature, only about 5cm in length, was attracted to our camp’s light instead of the moonlight and was heading inland and not to sea.  One calls out and everyone in the campsite is up; out of beds and chairs to get up close and see these delightful leathery little reptiles scrambling in confusion.  With buckets and torches, we collected dozens of hatchlings before releasing them into the waters of the lagoon surrounding the island. 

Of course, not all baby turtles are so fortunate with tides and the advantage of darkness.  Nothing prepared me for the despair I felt as I watched swooping gulls grabbing at another batch of hatchlings emerging in the daylight from the dunes.  For those that made it to the water’s edge, it is then a long paddle across the shallows to the ocean beyond. 

One little boy in our camping party, was not going to give up on one little hatchling. He followed it down the beach, across the shallow lagoon and to the reef’s edge.  He was determined no gull would eat ‘his’ hatchling and willed the little fellow to survive.  Of course, once in the ocean, any number of predatory fish could have been waiting to eat this little leathery chap for lunch. The odds of any hatchling making it to maturity are one thousand to one. 

Last camping trip to the island (my fifth time) I didn’t even bother to get up from my chair when someone yelled ‘turtles’!  As I look at this picture, taken on our third trip there, I want to pinch myself for forgetting what a privilege it is to have witnessed multiple sea turtles hatching on the Great Barrier Reef.   If I had a bucket list filled with exotic adventures around the world, I could have marked off two that happened at my back door! 

Do you have a bucket list?  I first heard of a bucket list from watching the 2007 movie of the same name, starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson.  Freeman’s and Nicholson’s characters are terminally ill, aging men who set out to mark adventures off a list before they ‘kicked the bucket’.  Facing death, these men decide to live life fully until they died. 

Death is indeed a sobering thought and one that causes lots of us anxiety.  One thing is for sure, we are all going to die- one day. Worrying about it is not living. 

I have witnessed people giving up on life, years before their death and then others seem to defy the natural barriers that come with age and are still living a life filled with adventures. 

What will it be for you in 2018?  What adventures on a bucket list will you mark off?  What will you add on?  Remember: “Life is for living; not worrying about dying.” (Author Unknown).