Lady Elliot Island is serviced by Seair Pacific’s aircraft daily. These flights bring all of our guests and crew to the Island, as well as our fresh food, veggies, milk, bread, linen and laundry. For our heavy equipment such as forklifts, recycled rubbish, vehicles and building materials, we are fortunate to have Curtis Ferry Service from Gladstone provide us with this critical service.
We have 4 barges per year, the vessel 'Curtis Ambassador' is 35 metres long and 8 meters wide, carrying over 100 tons of goods. The journey takes up to 18 hours from Gladstone and usually 12 hours to return with our recyclable rubbish. The trip out is always takes much longer as it is normally against the tide. The return journey is so much quicker.
The Curtis Ferry team do a fantastic job and we all enjoy working with Captain Ian Fleetwood and his team. The barge can only access the Island on a sufficient high tide to reach the beach and unload. This only happens a few times each month and gives us a maximum of 3 and a half hours on the beach to unload and reload each barge. Weather plays a big part and can put us back almost a month if we miss a tide.
Therefore, running an island so far out to sea is far more complex and challenging than it appears from the outside. Our team do an absolutely amazing job and we appreciate how well these barges work like a well-oiled machine in the limited time frame available.
Click the below link to head over to our Facebook page and view a time lapse video of our most recent barge, it is 2.5 hours condensed into a 2 minute video, I am sure you will find it fascinating. Enjoy!
Lady Elliot Island January Barge 2016
