Oceania - 15. Oce Chapter 15

After seven whole weeks, the building of the accommodation was finally completed, with Travis and I moving into our new home, just a few days after Nigel and Mitchell had moved into their house. It was decided to use the transportable that has been used as a lunchroom for the building team, be used as a recreation space, at the village, so a concrete slab was poured at the back end of the village, and once it had cured, the heli-crane came once more to relocate the transportable building to it’s more permanent location.

Once that had been achieved, the two tanks were also relocated to beside the extra building, for additional storage of sewerage waste and fresh water for the village. By the time the last house was put into place, the boardwalk from the village to the bridge had been completed, and a semi-circular roof had been built over the village patio deck, to provide all year round weather protection between the two rows of buildings of the village.

With an area of 282 acres, our next project is to plant mostly native shrubs on the island, with small patches of small-sized eucalyptus trees, to provide a windbreak. Although the recommended coverage area is 200 plants per acre, I decided to not make it so thick which would just cause another fire hazard, so we would be planting half the number of trees per acre.

As an added safety precaution, I had decided to install a large reticulation system on the island, that will run along either side of the boardwalks, with each sprinkler having a range of 25 metres, which will assist with watering the new trees and shrubs while they are growing, and also protect them from fires during the summer months.

I also wanted to increase the amount of vegetation on Little Broughton Island, as it is very patchy in places. I had already asked Travis to source as many native seedlings as possible from native tree nurseries, in the whole of New South Wales, aa we would be requiring a staggering 28 thousand seedlings.

The village cabins were originally to have the main bedrooms with a Queen size bed and for the two-bedroom cabins, the second bedroom was to have two single beds, but I had changed that so each bedroom has two king single beds in them, so as to be able to accommodate extra staff when needed during the project, and later when it is completed, the king singles can be put together to make a king Double bed when paying guests come to stay.

With this arrangement, we are now able to accommodate a total of 24 workers, of which some would be working on building the boardwalk, while the others will be planting trees and shrubs, firstly on the smaller island, to allow the boardwalk to be partially built, to reduce any foot traffic damage.

For the next 18 months, we all worked hard with this project, with the Aquaria and Oceania calling in occasionally, so all the crew could assist with the project, during their one-week long visits. When the project was finally completed, with a 98% rate of success of the seedling surviving, I was very pleased with the results.

Both islands are now looking very green with all of the new plants, the boardwalk, which is two metres wide, provides access to most of the island, and access to only the northern Providence Beach, with Coal Shaft Bay and Esmeralda Cove, both now off-limits to all boats, recreation craft, campers, and pedestrians, to allow them to become new nature sanctuary’s for the dolphins and seals that visit the bay on a regular basis.

Once all the workers had left the island, Nigel, Travis, Mitchell and I spent a week, getting the village cleaned up and looking in good order, so it is ready to accept paying guests to the island, we had also established a total of 15 mooring buoys on Providence Bay, to allow visitors to come to the island in their own vessels, as long as they agreed to the rules of visiting the island.

The most important rule is to remain on the boardwalks at all times, and that Providence Beach is the only beach where visitors are permitted to be on, with all other beaches being off-limits. Those visitors who have booked accommodation will have access to both islands during their stay, but day visitors will only have access to the main island.

The cottages will be available for a maximum of four nights stay, with self-catering during the length of their stay, as there would be no café restaurant facilities on the islands. Before being permitted to allow visitors back onto the island, we invited the NSW Parks and Wildlife to come and stay on the island, and inspect everything that we have achieved in less than two years on both islands.

In response, we were informed that a total of six Parks & Wildlife staff would be coming to stay for two nights on the island, arriving at 4 pm on Friday afternoon by vessel and that they would bring all of their own food supplies with them.

When they did arrive, we had the village looking spotlessly clean, and the boardwalks were all free of bird droppings, which is the only regular problem that we have to deal with on a nearly daily basis. The one and a quarter metre high rails on each side of the boardwalk, have vertical posts spaced 15 cm’s apart, so as they cannot be climbed on to get over the top rail, but still be able to see between the posts and over the top rail, to see the views.

After I had officially welcomed them to the island, Travis took the lead, to direct them upstairs, over the bridge and along the boardwalk to the village. The first question that was asked, was the reason for som many buildings near the bridge on Little Broughton Island, and I jumped in to answer that question, explaining that the larger house is the home of my partner and I, with the smaller building attached as our administration office, while the second building accommodates the other two permanent staff.

On arrival at the village, the guests chose to use two of the two-bedroom cabins and two of the one-bedroom cabins and informed us that two more staff would be arriving tomorrow morning for a one night stay. Allowing them to settle in, we headed back to the office, where we waited to see what heir thoughts are on the island and the work that we have done on it so far.

When no one turned up at the office after an hour, we headed over to our accommodation, and settled in for the night, uncertain on what the guests had thought of the place so far. As was his routine, Travis was up at 6.30 am, to make us both a cup of tea and also make some toast, before I drag myself reluctantly out of bed at 7 am.

But today, Travis came rushing back into the bedroom, just a few minutes after leaving. “They are already up and looking around, they are on the boardwalk heading towards South Point” Travis announced, and I quickly jumped out of bed.

“Let the other two know, and we will go and meet them at the junction on their return, oh and you better shut off the automatic timer on the sprinklers” I responded, as I headed to the bathroom. “Too late, the sprinklers have already come on,” Travis said, as he followed me into the bathroom.

Ten minutes later, all four of us were heading over the bridge to the main island, and from the bridge, we could see our guests standing at the South End Lookout, in deep discussion, and I glanced over to my husband with a worried look on my face. Travis grabbed my hand and gave it a little reassuring squeeze and smiled, to let me know that it will be ok, as we continued on through the two gates.

By the time we arrived at the junction of the boardwalk, the visitors were already at the junction and were once again in deep discussion. “Good morning Mr Blackthorn, what a lovely day for a walk,” the area manager said when we arrived.

“That it is sir, I see you have already taken a look around South End Lookout, what do you think of the view?” I responded, “Absolutely spectacular, we even saw a few humpback whales a little way out, which was an unexpected treat, and we have already seen the lookout at Providence Point and had a walk on the north beach,” the manager said to us.

“Well, you have indeed been up very early, if it wasn’t for my partner here, getting up to make us some tea and toast, that we would not have known that you were already up and about” I responded, and the guests smiled.

“Mr Blackthorn, we are all in agreement, that you and your team have done a remarkable job in the past 18 months, especially with building this impressive boardwalk and the lookouts.

The only criticism that we do have, is that there are too many buildings on Little Broughton Island, and we would recommend that you reduce the number cabins by two in the village, and remove the second house close to the bridge” one of the other men stated, who we had not been formally introduced to.

“Oh, by the way, this is my immediate boss, Mr Carl Garrett, he is Director of Conservation Programmes for the Hunter Central Coast Region,” Mike Jarvis, the Nelson Bay Area Manager said to me, “I see, well I can see that you would like to have a lot fewer visitors to the island, and that is understandable, but this group here is my very basic staff, so I need to be able to accommodate them, without having to make 45-minute long daily boat trips each day” I responded.

“Very well, how about an alternative suggestion, of moving your administration into the larger house, and removing the smaller admin building,” Mr Garrett said to me, and I turned slightly to see what Travis thought of this. “Yes sir, that is viable, we certainly have just enough space to have the office in the dining area of the house,” Travis said.

“Good, that is settled then, and with the village, I suggest removing two of the two-bedroom cabins, and maybe you can expand the size of the decking, where the cabins are being removed” Mr Garrett said, “Yes sir, we will get onto that, as soon as we can arrange for a small building team to prepare for the buildings to be transported, and arranging the hire of the heli-crane” I said.

“Good, now we have seen all that we need to see, so we will head back to the village and await the arrival of the other boat, with its special cargo” Mike Jarvis stated. “Special Cargo?” I asked, and all of the visitors smiled. “Did we neglect to inform you that we will be delivering some wildlife to the island?” Mr Garrett stated.

“It appears so sir, what may I ask are we getting?” I replied. “Well, we had a list of possibilities, and now that we have seen that you have a number of man-made swampy waterholes, to provide fresh water, we have come up with a list of 7 animals that we will be introducing, two pairs of each, with three animals being introduced today, and the other four in the middle of next week” we were informed by Mr Garrett.

“Platypus, Spotted Quoll’s and Echidna’s for starters, with the other four being the corroboree frog, pygmy possums, bandicoots and the Wood-hen. We hope that other birds will find their way over to the island, to establish homes, and if need be we may introduce some pairs of Kookaburras, Spotted Pardalotes, Little Shearwaters and King Parrots to the island,” Mike added to the news.

“Well, it sounds like we will be keeping busy making sure they do well on the island,” Mitchell said, speaking for the first time at this boardwalk gathering. “That you will, and we will be making monthly visits for the first twelve months, to the island to monitor how everything is going,” Mr Garret said.

We were told that the vessel would be arriving at 9 am, which gave us time to go back home to have some breakfast and relax for a short while.

While most of the guests returned to the village, Mike followed Travis and me to the office. “We do have regular sightings of a lot of marine animals in the area, in particular, the Humpbacks that we saw today, and we also spotted a few fur seals sunbaking on the very small western beach, opposite Esmeralda Cove and some Little Penguins nesting just east of that same beach, and we are also very pleased that you have closed off Esmeralda Cove and Coal Shaft Bay, to all recreational craft and boats” Mike said to us.

“Yes, we wanted to provide safe havens for the marine animals, where they won’t be at risk from our noisy boats and watercraft, we have only made Providence Beach on the North Side available for boats to moor offshore,” I replied.

Later that morning, we all witnessed the release of the animals onto the island, which was interesting to see, and as a celebration of the event, we had a BBQ lunch at the village for everyone, for our guests and all my staff.

Later the next day, I sent an email to my Dad, informing him of the successful release of animals to the island, after a two-day visit from Parks and Wildlife.

As agreed, we did remove two of the two-bedroom cabins from Little Broughton Island, and they were sold off as excess stock, to a building company in Newcastle. We decided that the administration building would remain, as well as the second house, and in the village, where the two cabins used to be located, one area is now an extension to the patio, while, the second area, has a large six-seater spa pool, with decking around it, as an extra bit of luxury for our guests.

Over the next two months, Mitchell, Travis and I, worked on a business plan, and marketing proposal, for promoting environmental tourism to the island. We developed a set of strict rules for guests, to be known as Guest Protocols, so as not to damage all the work we had done over the past two years, and these had to be signed by the guests when they make a booking to stay on the island.

When the day came for the advertising to begin on television and radio, it was not long before emails came flooding in requesting bookings for the first four days that the island opens to the public, for the first time in two years.

The six cabins were booked out for the first visitors, within minutes, and bookings kept on coming in for other days after the debut first visitors come. There stay was a huge success, with the guests, adding an online review of their stay, which was a perfect review, that led to a lot more enquiries to stay.

By the end of Autumn, over a nine-week period, we had received a total of 240 guests stay in the village, and a further 420 day visitors arrive. On one weekend, there were so many boats arriving, we had turn-away all boats that were not moored to a designated mooring line in Providence Bay.

The restoration project was a big success, and now the new business of environmental tourism was looking very successful also.

The End