On November 11th public voting closes to decide the New 7 Wonders of the World from 28 finalists. Australia has two of them, Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef.

There are some incredible places that we’re up against including Table Mountain, The Amazon and the Maldives. All of which are pretty special places to visit and will get masses of support from voters…but we need your help to keep the Great Barrier Reef in the top rank.

To show how important every vote is, this week I headed out to Vlasoff Cay on the Great Barrier Reef with a polling booth, seven snorkellers, Tourism Australia and a film crew…to set up what could be the most remote polling station in the world!

Andrew Ridley, the co-founder of Earth Hour was there too. His work literally plunges the planet into darkness for one hour every March as companies and individuals turn off all their lights to to take a stand against climate change. As one of the Reef’s Ambassador’s his vote is well and truly behind the reef.

We got great coverage from the Australian media with channel 7,9 and 10 all running news pieces about the stunt. This morning I had to don my indigenously-painted wetsuit for a live cross to the Channel Ten news room in Sydney…all in the name of promotion of course!

So how can you help?

In order to cast your vote visit the New 7 Wonders of the World website by clicking here, choose your top seven (making sure the GBR is one of them) or alternatively you can visit their Facebook page and cast your vote here

The Best Expedition in the World was a roaring success.

Not just from a personal point of view as I completed the 1600km challenge without breaking or busting anything on my body (all toes, fingers, arms and legs are still connected).

My Hobie Adventure Island has been donated to the very worthwhile charity, Sailability who encourage and facilitate sailing and boating throughout Australia for people with disabilities. The perfect place for my yellow machine!

Yacht Sunshine was returned to its berth back with Sunsail back on Hamilton Island after covering 2000 nautical miles on the stunning Coral Sea.

Mum & Dad managed to drive around 15,000kms in their Apollo Motorhome without so much as even a scratch to them or the vehicle, blogging about and photographing their adventure as they went. Read more here.

And the media coverage the adventure gained throughout the journey was excellent with regular stories featuring on Channel 7, 9 and 10 here in Australia, ABC Radio and the newspapers across the country picking it up very well. We wrote regular features in the Courier Mail, filmed for Channel Ten’s Totally Wild Show and blogged for The Ecologist online.

I entertained journalists from around the world, giving them all the chance to come and have their own Queensland adventure out on the Great Barrier Reef; bloggers from Korea, a group from Hong Kong, travel agents from around Europe and journalists from throughout Australia.

A big thank you has to go out to Jessica Watson who came and camped with me for a night on Whitehaven Beach (tough hey!) and then raced back Hamilton Island on-board my Hobie kayak, taking on serious lung-fulls of water along the way! Best of luck to her and the team for their latest adventure, Another Challenge, the very awesome Sydney to Hobart Race which departs on Boxing Day.

I’ll be back very soon with another movie from the incredible dives we had with Pro Dive when we visited Cairns back in August.

So here for your viewing pleasure is a short movie that hopefully summarises the expedition and the adventures we had. It’s been recorded and uploaded in full HD, so maximise your screens, sit back and enjoy

Captain Cook sailed into the same river mouth in 1770 with a whacking great hole in the side of his ship, the HMB Endeavour. I however was much better off apart from the 25 knot winds that swept me along.

From that moment on the location became known as Cooktown and the stretch of water, the Endeavour River. It’s significance to me as an Englishman was huge, and to any Australian a famous part of the country’s history.

With yacht Sunshine following closely behind I landed at the boat ramp to a welcoming committee including the town’s mayor Peter Scott, Steve McRoberts (the man from TQ who believed in the project from day one), and two film crews from Channel 7 and 10.

It’s been a truly epic project to have conceived and achieved and the last eighteen months have been damn busy for all concerned.

I have to thank an entire list of people but for now a huge slap on the back must go out to Kayleen Allen (Project Manager), Sophee McPhee (Best Girlfriend in the World and epic Media Editor), Mum & Dad (Silver Surfers extraordinaire) and the entire chain of sponsors who made this adventure possible.

For now I have to take the support boat, yacht Sunshine, back down the coast to the Whitsundays where she lives and then head back to Brisbane. There are lots of jobs still do do before I can put this adventure to bed – at least a couple of huge movies from the expedition still to edit and post. As soon as they’re completed I will post them up here.

The are many more adventures still to have here in Queensland and my brain is already plotting the next one.

Watch this space dear friends,

But for now, yours expeditionally,

Ben & Crew

It’s where the very edge of the largest living organism in the world meets the open ocean, where the swells roll in after building for 14,000kms and where the depth drops away from a tame 40m to a vertigo-inducing 2000m!

In the last week of the Best Expedition in the World the crew and I have decided to head out to this part of the reef to see exactly what it’s like out there. To dive some of the cleanest and clearest waters in the world where impeccable conditions allow marine life from the calm Coral Seas and the rolling Open Ocean to live side-by-side.

Fringing reef and inner islands

Having been up and down the Great Barrier Reef over the last couple of years exploring the inside of the GBR I’ve become familiar with the fringing reefs that surround the 300 islands. They’re home to huge number of hard and soft corals, provide ideal nursery conditions for schooling fish and are perfect for a first-ever snorkel or dive.

The Inner Reef

The next step out takes you to the inner reef with sections up to 10kms long, twisting in shape; some long and spindly, some expansively wide. Having protection from the open ocean and far enough from the land to not be affected by sediment and run-off from the rivers and creeks. They are beautiful swathes of coral thousands of years old interspersed with every single shade of turquoise you can imagine. If god was as artist he would have used up all his blue paint pot right here.

The large coral bommies that make up the lee-side of these reefs are dotted around like freckles on a face, each creating it’s own micro-environment reaching from sandy sea-bed to the rolling surf above thriving with life, both permanent and transient. As we cruise past them they show only their brown tops, hiding the menagerie of life below. It’s only when we don our snorkels and masks and dive into the clear blue beyond that we can see it up close in its true form. Beauty and majesty fail to describe the scene.

The Outer Reef

It’s rare that people get to where we’ve been today. Operators, day boats and live-aboards stick to the more sheltered waters of the inner reef choosing protection as the most important thing for their customers, and quite rightly so.

So when the option arises to sail beyond these limitations Skipper Paul, Sophee, Kayleen and I grab it. As we left Port Douglas the weather wasn’t exactly playing the game. To moor or anchor 40kms from the coast requires calm and light conditions for a comfy and stress-free night’s sleep for skipper and crew alike…we didn’t get that for the first three I can tell you!

Leaving Low Isles behind we tracked north to the relative shelter of Mackay Cay, a sand island on the north-west corner of Mackay Reef some 50kms from Port Douglas – still the inner reef though.

Finally on the morning of the 6th September the wind has dropped off enough for us to head out to our destination – Agincourt Reef. A few months ago I read a report in one of the international newspapers stating it to be “The best coral reef system in the world” and I simply had to see for myself if that was true.

Agincourt is made up from four separate reefs all face out into the pounding waves of the South Pacific Ocean. The Outer Reefs are distinctive for their sheer scale of their walls, dropping from less than a metre deep at the top to over 1200m with a few hundred metres. This really is the edge of the abyss and reputedly where the big stuff lives – whales, sharks and huge schools of pelagic fish.

We’ve visited three separate dive sites since arriving here and the range of geography and geology is remarkable. There are vast gullies on the outer wall lined with heavy-duty corals, rubble and sand. There’s also protected bays harbouring bright, colourful and fragile coral bommies offering protection to all manner of marine life. The clarity of the water and visibility are superb too, the ocean currents doing their part in washing and cleaning out the reefs making dive conditions just about perfect.

Agincourt reef really is one of the most enthrawling locations I’ve visited so far on the expedition and really lived up to all I was expecting – if you ever get a chance hook up with one of the operators who come as close as they can to here. Find out more here

Today I hit the water again in my kayak with a fairly long 52km leg to go from here at Agincourt 4 Reef through to Bloomfield Lodge – a luxurious stop-off for one night to recharge both mine and the laptop’s batteries.

Only a few days left now on the Best Expedition…

Yours ‘Expeditionally’

Ben

During the planning stage of the Best Expedition in the World I was putting together this website and decided to include some Reef Heroes who go above and beyond to help protect the Great Barrier Reef.

Today I met some of those heroes, the children from the Gordonvale State School just outside Cairns. First job was to give a presentation to them all about the Best Expedition and the incredible adventures we’ve had so far…their little eyes lit up when I started talking all about sharks and the ugly Bumpheaded Parrotfish.

The national curriculum here in Queensland teaches about sustainability, the environment and lessening our impact on the planet. The students and teachers here at the school go one step further and have been recognised by the GBRMPA (Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority) as the best educational establishment in the state – well done to you all!

Their Excelsior scheme is a community approach to sustainability which the upper school take very seriously and integrate into their daily lives wherever they can. Recycling happens throughout the school, special bins are located in the play areas and the students have their own projects they work on to further decrease their footprint.

On our tour of the school we were shown the new permaculture area where fruit and vegetables are being grown, the tuck shop which next term will stock products with biodegradable wrappers and the creek which runs around the school grounds is the source of more hard work.

Amy Macalpine, Jarrah Pearce and Georgia Moor-Tolson have conducted audits of the banks of the creek to establish the bird, insect and fish life that calls the area home. Together with Queensland Fisheries they have investigated conditions conducive to fish species that inhabit O’Leary’s Creek compared to nearby pristine creeks.

The banks between the school and the creek have been turned from wasteland into flourishing habitats for birds and insects by planting over 200 plants, bushes and trees. The combined with a continual litter-picking program conducted by the lower classes and Nathanael’s project to limit the number of golf balls entering the creek from the neighbouring golf club, go a long to to ensuring the school’s yard, the creek, the ocean and ultimately the Great Barrier Reef stay cleaner and healthier for all those living in and around it!

There is still plenty of work to be done statewide to keep the drain ways, storm-drains and creeks clear of litter and rubbish ensuring less enters the Great Barrier Reef but with the work of schools such as Gordonvale the future is looking just that little bit cleaner and brighter.

Well done to all of you!

Ben

The beachfront roads are swamped with tonnes of sand and uprooted trees. Port Hinchinbrook Marina bears the human side of the destruction with 30 luxury yachts and motorboats piled up in one corner of the harbour.

Further out to sea some the islands of the Great Barrier Reef take a major hit with monstrous swells smashing into their shores, resorts taking a structural bruising and the landscape receiving a thorough spring clean of all the dead wood.

3rd August 2011 – A picture perfect day in Cardwell exactly six months since the category 5 cyclone passed through the area.

Idle curiosity got the better of the crew and I. We simply had to head there to see what had happened and how the recovery process was going. This part of the world is stunningly beautiful, has a heavy dependency on tourism so forms an important stop-over for the expedition.

Port Hinchinbrook marina looks ok, there aren’t many yachts or boats there admittedly, but it’s certainly open for business. We docked against a pontoon, met up with Mum & Dad (read about their Queensland Road Trip here) and caught a lift into nearby Cardwell. The shops along the beachfront are bustling, there’s people milling about, a Greyhound coach load of travellers fill the local cafe and life seems to be moving along rather well.

We sit down to order lunch, supporting the local business is the right thing to do. Helping them with our mouths and dipping into our pockets is one way to help the locals get their lives back to normal. Call it rubber-necking but the Grey Nomads are all stopping here too, curiosity can be a good thing.

I spark up a conversation with the local butcher, she’s owned her business here for a decade and shows me photos of what is was like the morning after Yasi hit. With a three metre storm surge entering her shop front and the main road almost washed away, things are obviously a little better now. But she insists that’s the psyche of Queenslanders – they just get back up and on with life again.

Orpheus Island

The aftermath of a cyclone can be felt above and below the ocean. With storm swell 9 metres above normal, the surging waves roll deeply across the ocean floor moving huge objects as big. Even as big as the SS Yongala – a 100yr old cruise liner! Fragile coral reefs are also at risk, thousands of years of slow coral growth can be destroyed all too easily. I had to get underwater in some of these areas to see for myself what had happened.

We stopped at Orpheus Island Research Station for a couple of days, it’s been here for 20 years and is a gem of a location. Nestled in the nape of the island with some superb coral reef and bommies out front and right in the line of Yasi. I’m not sure what to expect really but as I dive, snorkel and swim around the bay I’m very happily surprised by the amount that remains undamaged.

There are areas that have broken staghorn coral, but at least 80% of the bommies remain standing, the hardier of the corals remain untouched. The micro-environments these coral reefs provide are still thriving with fish and marine life, the colours are still there and I surface having had the best dive experience since Lady Elliot Island, one of my firm favourites on the Great Barrier Reef.

Up on the land the evidence is a little more obvious. Trees have been stripped of their foliage and the luxury resort around the corner has been damaged. I stop by to talk with Rob and Kylie, the resorts managers, about the night of Yasi and the phoenix that’s rising from the ashes.

This is a perfect opportunity to make things better. With slight damage to some of the holiday villas the owner of the island saw it as a chance to redesign and rebuild his business and bring it up to date with some of the other island resorts around the world. Eco-sensitive living is what the name of the game is going to be here. They are installing solar water heating and solar power systems in Phase 1, bringing online a rainwater collection and treatment system later in the year and planting their own market garden they will grow their own fruit and vegetables in for use in the resort’s kitchen.

He also decided to employ local indigenous workers from Palm Island to help with the rebuild over the next few weeks and once the work is completed some will stay on as permanent staff. It’s just a different way of thinking about the future and how to make things better after a natural disaster.

Conclusions

Let’s not beat around the bush here, the damage that Cyclone Yasi created was far reaching, but six months down the line the trees are looking green again, the beaches are as beautiful as they always were, the marine life has come out of hiding to swim all around you and the people have come out fighting.

Queensland has always had tropical storms and every time it recovers and comes back stronger. Visiting the epicentre has been an education in human spirit and natural resilience and one to be very proud of.

Tropical North Queensland is definitely back in business.

Yes, it has a intriguing past. But it also has a story to tell with incredible people, fantastic life and soul, a sense of community and sunsets to die for. Welcome to the aboriginal settlement of Palm Island.

When we pulled up onto the slipway on the Esplanade I really wasn’t sure what to expect. Having travelled throughout all of Africa over the last decade I know that alot of the time what you read in the press, isn’t always what you find on the ground.  It was time to discover things for myself…

Walking up the boat ramp Tamsin from the Palm Island school is there to meet the crew and I. She’s been in the job here for three years, sometimes it a struggle to keep her class full, sometimes they all turn up. It’s just one of the differences about being a teacher here. Today the 12 children we’ll be working with are chomping at the bit to get involved…this lesson will be at the beach and in the water!

Together with Reef Check, our chosen charitable organisation for the Best Expedition, we’ve arranged to conduct a Reef Search activity here on the island. It starts with an informal introduction in the classroom explaining the system and once that’s over we hit the Troopie (Aussie for Troop Carrier or Toyota Hilux), bounce down a few offroad tracks and out onto the beach.

Clad in wetsuits and armed with snorkels, masks and slates we cross the sand and submerge ourselves in the tropically warm waters of Pencil Bay, one of the more sheltered locations on the western side of the island.

Now remember these kids LIVE on an island. They eat, sleep and breath the island, know everything about fishing and, although being a little shy initially jump into their wetsuits and into the shallow water right behind me. It’s a fantastic feeling heading off to do this together; I teach them about how to look after the coral and life in the ocean, and they teach me about how to catch fish. Two very different opinions of the Great Barrier Reef and its use.

We spend two hours swimming around the edge of the fringing reef; diving down to see crayfish hidden under the coral outcrops, marvelling at the stingrays surprised by our arrival and recording everything we see.

The morning passes far too quickly and the cold takes hold of the kids, time to return to the beach to warm up. Jenn and Jodi from Reef Check gather up the slates, we pack up the wetsuits and we all make for the Troopie once more. Back at the school the excitement is clearly still there…especially at the suggestion that I’ll go and buy a round of chips for everyone!

It’s been a real education coming here to Palm Island school. When I walked into the classroom at the start of the day I was slightly nervous, I didn’t know what to expect!

I left having made friends, learnt lots, changed my mind about the community and wished we had another day to get to see more of the island.

Great Palm is a very different island to those we’ve visited so far, it’s more like the Torres Straits in terms of culture, community and simplicity. Tourism is not as big here as other islands on the Great Barrier Reef, but there are plans to change this.

Tessa, one of the locals, has just taken delivery of a brand new minibus which she hoped to start tours of the island in. Who knows how it’ll go? Our quick tour takes us past the local football match, the airport and the school once more. It’s basic but gives us an insight into exactly what the island revolves around – community.

We set sail from Great Palm and continue north towards Orpheus Island…

Yours Expeditionally

Ben

The Best Expedition Crew (or, should I say, skipper) has caught a fish.

In fact, the team has caught two: a yellow-fin tuna followed by a spotted mackerel. Both weighed in at around 8kg. Not bad, considering we’d had absolutely no luck up until the halfway point of the Best Expedition in the World. Check out the video below, to watch the drama unfold!

Our belated success certainly wasn’t due to a lack of fish in the sea. Thanks to GBRMPA’s zoning initiative, the Great Barrier Reef is positively thriving with marine life. It just took us a while to get our techniques, strategy, and bait right!

It felt awesome to catch our first two fish. It felt even better to know we’d done it whilst fishing sustainably (only one fishing line per fisherman) and in the right zone (blue).

Fingers crossed, our lucky streak will continue…

Teaching future generations about life under the water gives them something to relate to and something to respect and treasure. The work that organisations such at GBRMPA conduct at school level means that every year new Reef Guardians graduate and take their knowledge away with them.

Daydream Island in the Whitsundays held a Eco-Conference for Kids whilst we were there highlighting themes such as coral bleaching and marine debris. We joined in, I gave a presentation about the reef itself, fed the stingrays and helped coordinate the lessons about waste and recycling.

Libby Edge from Eco-Barge Services highlighted one of the main causes of concern being storm-water drain run-off.

Imagine a thunderstorm dumps 100mm of rain on a town. The waters race into the storm-water drain systems carrying with them all the bottles, lids and accumulated rubbish that sits in the gutters, washing them directly out into the ocean.

Over 60% of the waste found in the ocean comes from this source. I don’t have a simple solution but reducing this will have dramatically positive effects on the beaches and oceans of the world….marine life will be the biggest beneficiary of course!

We spent a morning with the team from Reef HQ here in Townsville, GBRMPA’s public side and the largest coral sea aquarium in the world. Their Turtle Hospital was set up two years ago to rescue and rehabilitate injured sea turtles from the Queensland coastline.

They currently have 17 patients and the majority suffer from ingested plastic bags; the single most damaging marine debris source. Turtles feed on sea grasses and jellyfish. To a turtle plastic bags can appear to be jellyfish. They eat them, can’t digest them and their intestines block up resulting in one very ill turtle.

Nick and the team at the hospital have had four patients here since the early part of 2011 and their time for release back into the wild has finally come, perfectly coinciding with our arrival. Polly and her friends are heading back to the ocean!!

These normally placid creatures seem to sense their impending good fortune, splashing around in the tops of their tanks waiting for the off. We carefully lift them out, place them into large plastic crates and cover their heads with a damp towel…just to make the journey to the beach a little less traumatic.

They’ve created quite a stir in the media. We’re met by television crews from Channels 7, 9 and 10! Polly, Bertie, Beagle and Stumpy (had a flipper bitten by a croc apparently)

One by one we take them to the water’s edge, remove the towels and lower them gently onto the sand….AND THEY’RE OFF!!

It is simpy one of the most incredible things I have ever been involved with. Watching these gentle, beautiful reptiles go back to their own world is awesome. With a few uncomfortable waddles down the sand they’re once more into a world where they become graceful, efficient and at one.

Without a thankful look back to their doctor Nick they leave, surfacing only to take a short breath a hundred metres from the shore.

Four turtles are back where they belong. It will take a conserted effort by individuals, councils and governments around the world to stop plastic bags entering the waters of the world’s oceans.

It can be done, but will require the effort of many, many people. Experiencing the release today reinforced my desire to help make this happen.

The simplest first step? Don’t take carrier bags from shops….buy green bags and reuse them over and over again!