Qualla: Raine Island https://qualla.com/raine-island en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:34:04 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/y/q/raine-island-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Raine Island https://qualla.com/raine-island Raine Island: Introduction https://qualla.com/raine-island/ Photo credit Edwin Augustus Porcher, Public domain. From the air, Raine Island looks like nothing at all - a pale smudge of sand and low scrub on the very lip of the Great Barrier Reef, 620 kilometres north of Cairns, where the continental shelf drops away into the blue of the Coral Sea. Land in a single glance from horizon to horizon. Yet for a few weeks each summer, the water around this 32-hectare speck churns with what may be the greatest reptile gathering on the planet. Drone footage taken here in 2020 went viral for a reason: the sea itself seemed to be made of turtles.

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Image: Edwin Augustus Porcher | Public domain

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/y/q/raine-island-wp/rjyq-raine-island-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Raine Island: An Armada in the Shallows https://qualla.com/raine-island/ Photo credit Edwin Augustus Porcher, Public domain. Raine Island is the largest green sea turtle nesting site on Earth, and it is not a close contest. In a strong season, more than 60,000 females - by some counts as many as 64,000 - drag themselves up the same narrow beach to lay their eggs, the same beach turtles have used for mo...

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Image: Edwin Augustus Porcher | Public domain

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/y/q/raine-island-wp/rjyq-raine-island-an-armada-in-the-shallows.mp3 0:06 2 full Raine Island: When the Refuge Turned Deadly https://qualla.com/raine-island/ Photo credit Edwin Augustus Porcher, Public domain. Then, quietly, the nursery began to fail. Through the 1990s, hatching rates fell. As the cay's shape shifted over decades, its beaches crept outward and lower, so that high tides drowned the eggs buried in the sand. Worse, the gentle slopes had hardened into small sandy cliffs, a...

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Image: Edwin Augustus Porcher | Public domain

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/y/q/raine-island-wp/rjyq-raine-island-when-the-refuge-turned-deadly.mp3 0:06 3 full Raine Island: Reshaping an Island by Hand https://qualla.com/raine-island/ Photo credit Edwin Augustus Porcher, Public domain. Heavy machinery was barged to one of the most remote and protected places in Australia. Crews moved roughly 40,000 cubic metres of sand to reprofile some 35,000 square metres of nesting beach, raising it clean above the reach of the tides and smoothing the killing cliffs into ram...

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Image: Edwin Augustus Porcher | Public domain

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/y/q/raine-island-wp/rjyq-raine-island-reshaping-an-island-by-hand.mp3 0:06 4 full Raine Island: The Beacon and the Bones of Ships https://qualla.com/raine-island/ Photo credit Edwin Augustus Porcher, Public domain. Turtles are not the island's only history. Stand near the eastern shore and you will find the oldest European structure in tropical Australia: a stone beacon, some twelve metres tall, raised in 1844 by twenty convict labourers on orders from the British Admiralty. They quarried t...

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Image: Edwin Augustus Porcher | Public domain

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/y/q/raine-island-wp/rjyq-raine-island-the-beacon-and-the-bones-of-ships.mp3 0:06 5 full