Walking on poo!

Saturday 3rd December 2016

Quiet day today.  We are trying to chill out as much as possible, it's probably a good thing in this heat. The only thing of note we did was walk along the beachand saw two kookaburras in the wild.

This one was in the trees along the beach and it swooped down and caught a little crab.  Apparently the kookaburra is a relative of the kingfishers but a bit bigger.

You may remember that yesterday we were informed that the beach was made up of Parrot fish droppings.  As we were walking on the 'poo' we immediately noticed that the beach waters edge was covered with little balls of sand....

Each ball of sand is made by a certain variety of crab that ingests the sand and spits out (not poo) the sand after taking the nutrients from it.  I suppose it is cleaning the sand in a way.  We watched a David Attenborough programme that included the crabs and he said they had the best back heel in the world, as they spat out the sand ball and pushed it behind them with their feet.  The whole length of the beach (about 4 miles) was covered in the sand balls.  It was an amazing sight, although we didn't actually see them doing it.

Janice is showing off the local produce......a lovely pair of coconuts!

I know I haven't previously mentioned it but we have actually seen kangaroos too but they were under some trees next to the road as we drove past on the way to Port Douglas.  It was only a fleeting glance so I would like to see them more closely if possible.  The closest we have been to a kangaroo is when we have eaten them.  Tonight I cut the remaining kangaroo steak (left over from the meal a couple of nights ago) into strips and stir fried them with pak choi, peppers, mushrooms, chilli, garlic and ginger.  I'm calling it a 'Thai me kangaroo down sport'.