31 August 2022 Wednesday – Christmas Island day 2

Up at 6am for a 7am start to breakfast at the nearby Golden Bosun Tavern. There are frigate birds & bosun birds flying overhead & out the front of our unit all the time, the frigate birds are so graceful in flight. The breakfast is a help-yourself light breakfast with toast, cereal, fruit & juices, then sitting with our fellow travellers & chatting, a nice start to the day. After breakfast it is time for a group photo shoot next to the red throated thong bird, a caricature of a frigate bird made from discarded thongs.  The lurking patrol boat was closer to shore this morning & a lot easier to see.

Our first stop is the Mar Chor Nui Nui Taoist Temple overlooking the clifftops, relocated from Waterfall Bay when the casino was built on Christmas Island. An Earth Temple was built next to the Mar Chor Nui Nui Temple to atone for the relocation. The temple is simple with small statues of the goddess & her helpers either side. Perched on the rugged limestone cliff overlooking the sea are a few brown boobys (birds) & they do not seem to be too disturbed by our presence.

Our next stop is at the Grotto, a small open cave in the limestone that the sea washes into, it looks pretty, however, must be wild on a day of rough seas. Down near the water edge is a red crab, the first we have seen so everyone crowds in to take a photo. I bang my head on a stalactite, watching my feet rather than my head. The path in through the rainforest is also a nice walk, the jungle is very rugged with big jumbles of broken limestone & lush vegetation.

Our bus driver then takes us for a trip around the settlement to show us the house, shops & other buildings. The detention centre for illegal immigrants is a sad shamble of portable mobile houses cobbled together. Across a sports oval from the detention centre is a big new sports centre with swimming pool, very nice. The phosphate mining is still in operation & the large buildings & conveyor belts are still in use. When we stop the bus parks next to a large bush with a Christmas Island Imperial Pigeon sitting on top, a bird that is endemic to the island. The school is large & looks new. We then call into the George Pham Centre where Christina Ricci, a PhD student is studying the brown booby & Christina gave us an interesting talk & how she counts the nests.

Our next stop is the Pink House, a research & rescue centre for endemic lizards that are facing extinction. We have a picnic lunch to start to start with fresh buns, cold meats & salad, delicious. While having lunch we spot some robber crabs, they are really big with large menacing claws.  We admire some white spider lilies & some colourful butterflies flitting around.  The Lizard Lounge is where the scientific research takes place with a breeding program for threatened blue tailed skinks & also geckos endemic to Christmas Island. A young scientist explains the problems of why the lizards are facing extinction, primarily due to a feral introduced snake that feeds on skinks. She shows us through the breeding programs with the opportunity for Tereza to feed the baby skinks.

The orphan bird feeding program is our next stop & here there is a collection of orphaned or injured brown booby birds, some of them are such cute little balls of white fluffy feathers. Hanging around the site are a few juvenile frigate birds looking for a free feed as they have graduated from the program & are free to fly wild. As each bird is fed they explain how old they are & any issues they may have. The chicks all eagerly await the fish, or even chase the handler around looking for a feed. It is such an amazing opportunity to get up so close to these magnificent birds, we thoroughly enjoy the experience.

Back to Sunset for a rest where I sit out on the verandah & have a cheeky little Christmas Island Thrush come up to me. There are Frigate birds & Bosun birds continually flying past & overhead, this is a very special place. Dinner tonight is at the Christmas Island Golf Club, established in 1955, we have a Corona beer before a BBQ dinner with salad is served out on the top deck with lots of chatting with fellow travellers. There is a plague of moths flying around all over the place, landing on tables, plates, glasses & in people’s hair, they were very pesky. Another great day.