I have now been in Lake Bunga for a few days. Got a chance to fish today only to find a large school of baby Aussie salmon...not even worth taking a pic, let alone putting a T-Shirt on for the event 😊 Oh, well tomorrow is another day.

However, yesterday I found this on the beach...a paper nautilus. wow ho :)

When I found it I had no idea what it was. But I knew I had found something special. Then coming off the beach I met an old bloke that knows all about the paper nautilus.

To find a whole one in almost perfect condition like this, is really a once in a life time find...and even then you would be lucky. The old bloke said it would be worth about $75 to a shell collector. But Google (Google knows everything) puts it at about $200...I am going to keep it !!:)

These things are seriously delicate. Just ridiculously fragile. I am not sure of the exact kind of nautilus it is, but the common name is paper. That is because the shell is almost paper thin.

The old bloke said there is an octopus that steals the shell to live in. But the octopus is good food for many fish...so the shell get destroyed by the fish to expose the octopus. On the very slim chance that the octopus out grows the shell, the shell will be smashed on the sea floor. In short it is almost impossible to find a whole nautilus shell.

So, the odds ?? Well I am told if I walked the beach every single day, I might if I am lucky find a piece of a nautilus shell large enough to actually identify it once every 7 years.

This one measures about 7 inches from front to tail.