Before we came travelling i wanted to try and arrange some volunteering, but this turned out impossible to do as we were not staying in 1 place for long enough. I found out about Cairns rehabilitation centre when researching sea turtles along the east coast. Whilst we were in surfers paradise i emailed Cassie, the secretary of the charity about short term volunteer opportunities.
After a week she emailed back saying we could come by the centre on Fitzroy island and help out for a few days. I booked Cj and myself in for 3 days. Cj wasn't too happy but we were planning to stay in Cairns for a week due to New years eve so it gave us something to do.
We arrived at our hostel dream time rest in the afternoon and did our food shop. Cairns is very tropical and humid so we were soon back to our Asia sweaty states. The hostel had a big projector in the court yard where they played movies in the evenings so we watched a film before our first day of work.
The alarm went off at 6:30am and we left the hostel at 7 to get to the Cairns reef terminal where we met the other turtle volunteers, Cassie and Jenny who is a vet who set up the charity and centre. She is an amazing person and has won many conservation awards with her contribution to protecting turtles. The charity is called 'save our sea turtles'.
There is two centres, 1 in Cairns which is were the turtles ate first sent when they are found. The vets are based here and operate on the turtles if needed, normally they are sent to the centre in a bad state. When they are almost recovered they are sent to the centre on Fitzroy island, here they are just being prepared for release back into the sea. Most of the time they just need fattening up and kept an eye on.
We were going to Fitzroy island. This island is actually beautiful and normally the boat to get here costs $80 return. Lucky for us we were able to come to the island for free.
When we arrived to the island we went to the turtle centre. There was 7 turtles here. 2 Hawksbills, 1 Olive Ridley and the rest were greens. The first job given to us was to prepare their food. This involved taking the spines out of about 300 squid. It was a messy job. Cj actually found it quite therapeutic and preferred this job to washing the filter tanks.
On our first day i fed Squirt and Cj fed Ella. These two are really friendly greens, they like interaction with humans and let you stroke them. In the sea, turtles use the coral to scratch their shells. They like it when we scratch them as its like the coral they are used to.
Once the turtles are fed we had our packed lunches at the island restaurant. We spent the rest of that afternoon snorkelling. The island has part of the barrier reef so the sea is full of coral, tropical fishes, sting rays and turtles (if your lucky to spot one). Cj ended up with a clinger when we were snorkelling. This means that a fish clings on to a human for protection as they see us as bigger fish. It was very cute.
After snorkelling we cleaned out the turtle tanks an got the boat back to Cairns. We arrived back at our hostel pretty late and we were knackered.
We had to work the next day too so it was another early morning. We were on filter duty the next day which is quite a wet job as it means hosing down the filter bags.
Our third day in Cairns was a day off. It was new years eve so we just went to the lagoon and chilled in the sun. For new years eve we bought a ticket to the Gillgans club which is a huge hostel full of backpackers. We pre-drinked in our hostel with our friend Holly.
New years day was a quiet day. It was raining. We weren't actually hungover so we decided to watch 'The imitation game' at the cinema as we couldn't do anything outside.
On the 2nd Jan we started off 2015 on the great barrier reef. We booked the sail boat tour to green island which moored up at the pinnacle reef. The snorkelling was amazing. Its difficult to describe how colourful and alive the reef looked so the videos need to be watched. The sea was really warm and the current wasn't too strong to swim in.
We saw Nemo, tropical fish, black tip reef sharks and in the last 10 minutes of out snorkelling time i spotted a turtle on the sand.
I could mot believe i was lucky enough to find a turtle on the reef. When it swam to the surface for air cj an myself followed behind it. Everyone else on the tour was already on the boat so it was just us.
(pics of the reef are in our gallery post)
The following day Cj and i did different things. I wanted to do another day volunteering so i went to Fitzroy island. I fed Harry who is a shy green with a bad flipper. Cj, wasn't too keen on the idea of another day volunteering so he stayed in Cairns sunbathing and chilling by the lagoon.
Our last day in Cairns was spent packing, washing our clothes and doing general admin before our flight the next day to sydney.
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I'll introduce the turtles we helped look after at the rehab centre.
Ella,
Green turtle. She came in with a cracked shell from a boat knocking into her. The pain she was in then caused her to stress and not eat, so she is being fattened up to put weight on.
Green.
Jude,
Green, she is tiny.
Green male, she is really shy. She came in with a bad flipper as someone clipped a tab on her through the bone.
Hawksbill turtle
Baby Hawksbill. From when turtles are babies until they become adults they ride the current in the sea. Unfortunetely this lil guy fell of the current and got a bit lost at shore. 
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