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16/11/2005: "GANNET CAY ......small sandy island in The Swain Reefs."
The Swain Reefs are on the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef. They are a cluster of hundreds of coral reefs seperated by deep water. The term Great Barrier Reef should really be plural as in reefs - which Dr Robert Endean always highlighted during his lectures at the University of Queensland.
Many folk wrongly imagine the Great Barrier Reef to be as in The Great Wall of China - an unbroken barrier! The GBR is thousands of reefs, many or most with deep channels seperating them from each other.
. Gannet Cay has a surrounding reef rich in coral diversity.
. The Belgian Expediion ship De Moor anchored here in 1967 leaving hundreds of beer bottles (in deep water).
. Wally Muller established a radio base station here for Gulf Oil who were making aerial charts of the GBR in 1964
.Gannet Cay appears briefly in Ron Taylor's 16mm documentary film Slaughter at Saumarez (1964)
.Wally Muller lost his false teeth here during a night of excessive rum consumption with his mates.
.(Ron Taylor and I searched unsucessfully for the missing teeth, with scuba, in the maze of corals, sharks and sea snakes below).
.The sand cay 'moves' due to wind and sea currents. A weather station built in the centre of the island-cay was position over water two years later when the cay shifted.
