Heron Island Honeymoon
Where we were going on our honeymoon was supposed to be a huge surprise, for months Casey (and everyone else..) had been teasing me about where we were going; apparently there was even a betting pool at the wedding over the location! So imagine this: Casey is tired after a very long yet fun wedding weekend and it is the night before we leave for the honeymoon. I am asking for clues, then all of a sudden out of the blue Casey comes out with “There is great snorkelling on Heron Island” to which I was all like “Where did you say?” To which the boy attempts to get back by saying and a heap of the other islands too… I looked at him squarely and said I can’t believe you, where going to Heron Island aren’t we. The rest is history lol 
So we get up early the next morning to catch some flights to Gladstone. The weather is awful, pouring with rain, not only in Sydney, but in Brisbane, Gladstone and Heron. The best part if you ask me is that this made for some interesting flights, I believe a flight with no turbulence is a flight not worth taking, Casey thinks I am nuts lol.
The best? only? good thing about rain on your honeymoon is the beautiful sunsets and the cocktails that are associated with them 
The Gantry (that wooden object) provided the most perfect location to take spectacular cloud aided sunset shots. The next thing to do on the island after drinking cocktails and watching the sun go down was of course to go and have dinner. The food on heron varied between really good to midly ok. It has to be taken into account though that the food to heron is delivered once a week by boat as it lies 70 kms off the coast of gladstone. Dinner most nights was your choice of 2 or 3 courses ($45 - 50) or a buffet ($50) per person. . Here are a few photos of the meals.
Morton Bay Bugs with Rasberry vinagrette
Barramundi Fillet with Israli cous cous and bok choy (main course)
Crab and Avocado Salad (entree)
Apart from eating, drinking, sleeping, reading and walking most of the activities on the island involve taking advantage of the natural sea life. Heron Island started off life as a fishing resort, but now it is located within a fishing ban, so the island staff run fishing trips of 3 hours out beyond the restricted zone which takes about 1/2 an hour depending on where they take you too. Mostly they aim for you to catch coral trout or red emperors. Pretty much as soon as our bait hit the reef we would have to pull our hand line back up to the boat to re-bait them. We definately felt like we were apart of some huge feeding zoo to feed the wildlife . We didn’t actually catch anything that was a legal size, but we still caught alot. But one of the friends Anthony, that we met on the island, not only caught a legal sized coral trout but also an 18 kilo Spanish Mackerel! Anthony was gracious enough to share his fishy bounty with us at dinner and boy oh boy were we happy! The coral trout was ok but the mackerel was SUPERB!
Coral Trout Teeth and yummy Mackerel flesh
Of course the main aim was to observe the wildlife, either by walking or snorkling ( I had planned on Scuba diving but due to a horrendous flu I had a few weeks before I wasn’t allowed too 
) So Whilst going for a stroll on the first beautiful on heron (and the first rain free day for 8 days) we very luckily came across a pile of newly hatched Green Sea Turtle Hatchlings. This was amazing! We were told told that all the hatchlings had hatched 2 weeks before we arrived. I couldn’t believe our luck when we happened upon them and in the middle of the day!. Man are they cute and fast! We have some very cute video footage as well I may try and figure out utube so that I can share it with you all
So as you can see we had fun! and lots of it
July 9th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
hmm…looks yummy. if only we can afford to go out and spend on it all. LOL.
but nah, as an international student with a limited budget, we spend on the food and make it ourselves…
sometimes international students make the best cooks. LOL.
November 16th, 2007 at 5:35 am
I just recently went to Heron Island and I HAVE to set the record straight about that Island. We, my husband and I, went in October to start our 4 week anaversary trip. We were to stay on the Island for 7 days. We ended up staying only 3 days because we could not wait until the time we could get off that Island. When they say that the birds are returningto nest, they mean that hundreds of thousand of birds. It was unsanataryther was bird crap and I mean CRAP EVERYWHERE. There was a white film on the top of the water in the pool and the smell EVERYWHERE(OK except the rooms where they supply you with ear plugs for the next type of bird that comes at 2:00 in the morning until 6:00am,was so over whelming I had to cover my nose the WHOLE time we were there. I can see having a bird sanctuary but It has to be kept clean. The birds were dive bombing us as well and everyone else too.Everyone I came in contact with wanted to leave that Island. The snorkling was terible as well.
February 17th, 2008 at 2:08 am
This post brought back so many great memories for me! I stayed on Heron Island for a few days a couple years ago. I was on exchange to uni in Brisbane and my marine biology class when to Heron and stayed at the research station there. I have a picture of the gantry just like yours, it’s beautiful there!
March 18th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Yes brilynn, it’s a beautiful spot. Best not to go when the migratory birds are nesting as it can get pretty smelly, especially when it’s hot. We went in June (our winter) and nearly all the migratory birds had left, with still the odd turtle hatchlings late in the season, and less people to get in the way while snorkling