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Published: October 2nd 2011
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I spent two weeks in Agnes Water and had some of the most chilled, funniest and generally best days of my life. I worked for two hours every morning and then had the rest of the day to surf, kayak in the sea, lie in the sun and hang out with my new friends.
Last Monday I went on a scenic flight to a desert island near Agnes Water where we were left overnight to fend for ourselves. The flight itself was one of the best things I have ever done; it was a tiny 3-man plane and the pilot, aptly named Bruce, was absolutely crazy! I arrived at the airfield and he took one look at me and said, 'I'm going to enjoy the inflight movie today', which thoroughly confused me until we got into the air. I sat in the front and had some incredible views of beaches, the bush, creeks and the sea, and the pilot did all sorts of tricks in the air, turning sideways and quickly going up and down like on a rollercoaster. Whenever he did that I felt completely weightless, and made me really want to go into space! We had been in
the air for about 10 minutes when Bruce grabs my wrist and tells me to turn round and face the two passengers in the back. Then he says, with a huge grin on his face, that the inflight movie is watching my boobs go up and down as he does tricks in the air! I have never laughed so hard at the other guys' faces as we did nose dives and turned sideways. It was absolutely incredible and I could not stop smiling even when I got off the plane.
The island itself was quite small, and we had a camp of tents, a long-drop toilet and a stove and cooking equipment covered by a canopy. The afternoon that we arrived, we went searching for oysters on the rocks and managed to find a fair few and eat far too many! They were not really anything like oysters I've had in a restaurant - so much fresher and absolutely delicious. We did some exploring of the island and then cooked dinner and ate it round the camp fire in the evening. The next day I started to feel pretty isolated and stranded on the island, and was very glad
when Bruce turned up to take us home. While we were waiting for him, two dolphins came really close to shore and were playing in the water. Unfortunately they swam away when we got in the water but it was still pretty cool to see.
The flight on the way back was even better; he put our cameras on the dashboard of the plane and then said, 'guys at the back, get ready to catch the cameras!'. He then flew the place up at about 45 degrees, and suddenly dropped down and did a nose dive so all we could see was the sea below us. We were terrified, until we realised that the cameras were slowly floating in midair towards us, completely weightless! It was the most mind-boggling thing I've ever seen and our faces must have been a picture.
On Friday I left Agnes Water and had to say goodbye to all the amazing people I'd met there. It was pretty sad and shows the bad part about how close you get to people when you travel, but I needed to move on or I would never go home! I got the bus to Kroombit Cattle
Station, which is in Central Queensland and literally in the middle of nowhere. The scenery was completely different to anything I've seen before - very dry and dusty but still with quite a lot of plants and trees, and kangaroos jumping around all over the place. The cattle station was an amazing experience; when we got there we were fed steak from the station which was unbelievably good, and then we were taken off to muster about 300 goats on horseback. This is basically making a bunch of goats move from wherever they are on the station to the pen you want them in and was very frustrating, particularly when the older ones sat down and tried to sleep in front of your horse! My horse wasn't having any of it and quite often kicked and bit the goats if they didn't move! We then did some clay pigeon shooting with a shotgun which was seriously cool, and I managed to get 2 out of 5 - pretty good for a girl with no aim! Our guide then taught us to lasso the goats that we had mustered, which was unbelievably difficult and not something I'll be doing again in
a hurry... The best part of the day was learning how to crack a whip; it was one of the most addictive things I've ever done and I absolutely loved the huge sound I could get out of the whip. It's a lot easier than I thought it would be, and immensely fun.
On Saturday we left the cattle station and drove for 11 hours to Airlie Beach, which is where you can do sailing trips around the Whitsundays; 74 islands dotted around the sea just off shore from here. On the way we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn and so I'm now officially in the tropics, and the air changed almost instantly; it is much warmer and a lot more humid. At the moment it's the dry season and so nowhere near as humid as it gets during the wet season, but it's definitely a different kind of heat to further south. When we were about 2 hours from Airlie Beach we were stopped by the Bush Fire Brigade as there was a fairly big bush fire ahead and we couldn't go any further. The sky turned orange and the smoke was incredible. Fortunately we weren't stopped for
too long and we made it to Airlie Beach that evening. Airlie is basically a party town full of bars and restaurants (a little like Lloret de Mar but less tacky), but it also has a stunning lagoon and lots of palm trees, so lots of places to lie in the sun!
Love to you all, xx
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