5 September 2022 Monday – Christmas Island day 7

Mark & Sue are our guides this morning for a walk into Hosnies Springs. The turn-off is along the Dolly Beach Road & the track into Hosnies Springs is not signposted at all, you just have to know where it is. This track is a bit overgrown & covered in red crabs so we have to have some crab sweepers walking in front of the cars clearing the red crabs from the track. There is some muddy sections & a few steeper sections & Doug, our driver, manages to navigate through it all, with branches scraping the side & roof of the car all of the time. Glad it is not my car.

The walk into Hosnies Springs is only meant to be 800 metres, but it seems a lot longer, it is a lot of hard work clambering down the weathered sharp limestone & winding through the pandanus. There are lots of red crabs along the way & at one spot I see a red crab being devoured by a Robber Crab, the first time I have seen this. We walk past a freshwater tufa flow, where the calcium in the water solidifies as it trickles through. Near the end of the tufa flow a branch has been covered with limestone, then the log has rotted away, nature is amazing.

Hosnies Springs as a spring is underwhelming, water bubbles slowly out of the muddy ground, enough to support a colony of two species of freshwater mangrove. However, this is a Ramsar listed wetland of international significance because of the freshwater mangroves at this height above sea level & so far inland. These mangroves are really tall & straight, at least 15 to 20 metres in height, totally unlike coastal mangrove. There is a variety of young mangroves growing in the understory, with a lot of seedpods with their ends buried in the mud & sprouting new leaves for the next generation of freshwater mangroves. There are lots of blue crabs here with the abundant freshwater, as well as the ever present robber crabs in both orange & blue flavours. There are lots of different fungi in this part of the damp & dark forest. The walk out is tougher, finding our way as the track markings of pink ribbons tied to a branch are not that clear & it is a little overgrown & the climb up over the limestone is more of a challenge.

On the drive out David, Sonia & I are the crab clearers & we walk the full distance out to the Dolly Beach Road, clearing lots of red crabs & the occasional robber crab off the track. We climb back into the car & back into the Settlement & Flying Fish Cove for lunch. To our great surprise we are the first group there with Linda & Graham waiting patiently for us with lunch. There are some nice seats & we enjoy the views over the cove & also watch the Border Force ship being loaded with provisions by barge. Tereza is with another group walking into Dolly Beach & Lisa, our organiser, starts to get worried because they are so late getting back so she drives off to try & find them in case they have run into problems. After a while Lisa returns & says that they will be getting back shortly. It is a relief to see Tereza sitting at the back of the bus when it pulls back in.

After lunch I decide that I would like to go & see Dolly Beach as well & borrow one of the small Toyota RAV4s & take 3 other women in the group that also went on the Hosnies Springs walk & wanted to see Dolly Beach. The road in is not too bad with the two steep sections dry bitumen. There are a lot of deep potholes with a bit of water in them so I take it very slowly & there are only a few places where overhanging palm fronds scrape the car.

Dolly Beach walk is very easy after our walk to Hosnies Springs with a plastic mesh boardwalk most of the way through the lush forest. In sections we walk along dry pandanus leaves that have fallen, also some water puddles where we just have to suck it up & walk through, a tester for our water proof shoes. There are lots & lots of red crabs & robber crabs out after the recent rain & we take a lot of time stopping & taking photos. There are also a few birds that we stop & try to see & identify. It takes us over an hour to get to the stairs down to Dolly Beach, they are moist & slippery & we hold on, the track is also wet & slippery & one of the women slips & falls, luckily with no injury.

On the beach there is a younger couple breaking open coconuts & there is a lot of robber crabs around looking for a free feed. I walk the length of the beach & there is a huge pile of rope washed up, amazing that it missed all the cliffs & rocks & landed on this beach. There is lots of plastic rubbish everywhere on the beach.  All along the beach are robber crabs, with one chewing on a fresh coconut husk. Around the coconut stake I count 19 robber crabs, with a few fighting each other for position & food.

On the way back out we waste no time & walk at a good pace as it is starting to get late, reaching the car park within 30 minutes of leaving Dolly Beach. There are bags of plastic rubbish that have been collected off the beach piled under the welcome sign, Tereza’s group contributed a few of those bags. The drive back out is uneventful & we leave a group of 3 younger people at the carpark to follow us out. We get back to Sunset Lodge around 5pm & time for a shower to freshen up before dinner. Tereza started to worry about us, she wasn’t impressed that I went out there without a guide.  They worried about Tereza’s group coming in late during the day with a guide, she wasn’t happy as it was getting dark & what if something happened to the car etc., it was all good we all got back in time for dinner & happy that we didn’t miss out on seeing Dolly Beach.

Dinner tonight is at the Rumah Tinggi Tavern & is set in a spectacular garden location with coconut palms scattered among the mown lawns, it is a beautiful spot. The tables are set up along the verandah & we pick a spot looking out to the sea, also out of the rain as when the showers come over the other side gets a little bit of rain on their backs. The evening starts with a talk by Lisa & she puts up some of the challenge photos, the two I took of Sonia & Annette staggering out of the surf I named Blue Breasted Common Boobies & Sue under a pandanus, the Blue Rumped Crawling Pandanus Warbler, when she dived under the Pandanus looking for the wedge tailed shearwater. These photos are both highlights & everyone had a chuckle. Lisa thanks all of her guides plus her mum & uncle that helped with the food. Next Mark gives a funny talk on teddy bears & how they lost their arms, everyone is laughing. Sue is next & provides some quotable quotes from some of our fellow travellers, also very funny. Dinner was superb, entrée was stuffed mushrooms with a hummus pastry, main meal was a mix between rack of lamb & chicken, again delicious. The dessert was superb, 3 parts, a cheesecake slice, a chocolate slice & a dab of ice cream, we thought that we were so full but amazingly we had room for the yummy deserts . Everyone seemed to enjoy the function & the food. The winter weather is mainly hazy, some drizzling rain & 26C, humid, glad we aren’t here in summer.  Another great day.