Life and death on Bare Sand

ON A MARINE navigation map, Bare Sand Island is just what it promises. A kilometre or so of white sand just off the northern coast of Australia, with a single tree marked. A cartoon island for comic castaways.

In reality it boasts three trees - casuarinas planted 20 years ago - and an importance in the world eco-map quite out of proportion to its physical size.

Bare Sand Island is a major nesting site for some of the grandest old turtles in the southern hemisphere. Ancient creatures a metre long who, though endangered, tend to end up all too often on Chinese banquet tables, being shipped into Hong Kong by the container-load.

There is little that can be done - from the Australian side at least - about the turtle trapping, which happens mostly in Indonesia. But in the hope of learning how to increase the world's turtle population the University of the Northern Territory in Darwin is carrying out studies about the nesting habits of these flatback turtles whom - they believe - return time and again to the same nesting sites.

And they are getting tourists to help out, in a dramatic, all-night, eco-tourism adventure that was launched in June by NT Wilderness Expeditions. The price is on the expensive side, at A$200 (HK$825) including meals and sleeping bags if needed, but profits go towards the research programme, so tourists are helping both financially and practically.

I meet my group of six paying eco-volunteers at Cullen Bay, a new, chic marina complex a few minutes from downtown Darwin. Our guide is Tim Lucas, a 21-yearold biology student who does this in his spare time. 'It's my dream job,' Lucas says happily, as he packs his swag (sleeping gear) into the hold of the Lazy Girl fishing boat. She is named after one of the turtle mothers-to-be who apparently needed a helping hand back to the water - a feat which tried the strength and ingenuity of all the volunteers on the tour that night.