During her time in North Queensland , she has worked with prominent activists Arthur and Margaret Thorsborne and others to save the wildlife and rainforests of the region , the Germanic Queen has been through several cyclones , a bushfire and the recent monsoonal downpour which damaged her house .
While on the 2011 Torres Strait Pigeon count mission on North Brook Island she saw and photographed signs of the havoc caused by Cyclone Yasi . Staying in the Cardwell caravan park , she photographed the op shop , its roof torn off.
A new op shop was started in another building , operational today , from which this blogger has bought items of interest , later pausing for a vanilla slice in a nearby eatery .
Journeying from Cardwell by launch to North Brook Island for the pigeon count , the Queen saw Reef Herons standing on branches of trees stripped of foliage by the cyclonic winds .
It came as a shock to find large turtles had been swept way ashore by pounding waves , apparently stranded . Sharks appeared to be "herding " turtles into the shallows , preparing for a kill .
Her group struggled to push some of the heavy, cumbersome creatures into the sea , one of them above . When Cyclone Kathy, with winds up to 250kmh, smashed into the tiny settlement of Borroloola in the Northern Territory in March l984, conservationists , with the help of helicopters , went to the rescue of scores of turtles and dugong stranded by the huge tides and surges at the mouth of the McArthur River.
