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Published: July 20th 2006
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Hi All
Right to pick-up where I left off!
The Wednesday night I sat and had a drink with some of the people in thehostel, and then Thursday I got the Greyhound bus and then the ferry to Magnetic Island! I stayed at a place called Bungalow Bay,in Horseshoe bay. It’s a YHA hostel and all the rooms are little A frame Bungalows! It was a four minute walk to the beach with all the bars and restaurants, very pretty! As I was getting off the bus that took us from the ferry point to the hostel, I got talking to an English girl called Jane and we went out for some drinks and tea! AS we were leaving we heard this right racket from loads of birds. When we looked, the ranger from the koala sanctuary next door was feeding the lorrakeets! He had oatmeal or something warm and squidgy and if you held out your hand, the birds would come and land on it and eat from you! They were everywhere, on your head, your arms, your hands and afterwards I had porridge all over me! Lauren, you would have hated it! My camera chose that moment
to run out of battery, but Jane got some and so she said she’d email them too me! That night, they had coconut bowls in the bar, that I was obviously shocking at!! But it was fun, and met some nice people.
The next day, me and Jane got up early and did the Fortes walk, which is a short walk through the bush to wear they used to have a lookout in the war. You’re meant to be able to see koalas there but I think we were too busy chatting! Jane had to leave after as she was only staying for one night, but when we’d checked in, I had signed up for a day of fun golf! All the hostels were joining in together, and in groups of four, playing Ambrose (which is where all four people have a go at hitting the ball and whichever one goes he furthest you play) we went around four holes! I was playing with three older members of the team who all worked in the tourism industry and were there supporting the backpacker community; Maria, Warren and Bob. Bob had bad knees and so we got the golf buggy
and I got to drive!!! It was so much fun! Someone from the golf club came round on another golf buggy selling us all beer. I have to thank the guys as they didn’t let me buy a beer the whole entire day! My driving was a little erratic to say the least, and the quality of golf played definitely decreased as the beer flowed (to be fair though on my part, it was never that great to begin with!). Afterwards, we had a sausage sizzle (that’s a sausage BBQ to all you poms) and they called out the prizes for the day. There were prizes for the best and worst teams, of which we were neither. We came a very respectable fourth I think, but there was a raffle afterwards and Warren gave me his ticket and I won a free reef trip on the Great Barrier Reef! How lucky am I?
That night it was the full moon beach party at the Base hostel, the admission to which was included in the price of the golf day. I went there with a couple of girls from Sheffield that I’d met the previous night. The music was really
good. They had this band playing over the top of dance tracks and this girl singing with the most amazing voice. They started off by playing that Time After Time, dance song (can’t remember who did it, Harriet will know!) and it took me a while to realise that it was live! I left early though as I was really tired and a bit on edge and I had the reef trip the next day!
For that I had to get up quite early as the boat picked us up at 8.30am! I didn’t sleep a wink though, well hardly. Partly because people kept coming back from the partly, but mainly because there’s loads of birds around the hostel and they call all through the night! The noisiest screams in unison, together! Not very pleasant! Then, at dawn, all the other birds wake-up again, and off they all go together! Its actually quite nice to listen to them, but not when they kept you awake all night and you have to be up again in the morning!!
At the ferry port the next day (the boat was delayed by half an hour so could have got the later
bus and got an extra hour in bed, gutted) I met a German couple called Franzi and Thomas! They were so lovely and we spent the day mooching around together. The snorkelling was really really good. We went to a spot on the outer reef where there were no other boats and so much fish life. The coral was a bit dead though from the high water temperatures that year and the cyclone, but it was still amazing! The food was really good, with lots of it and they had a glass bottomed boat that they took you around the reef in to see stuff! There was a little family of Clown fish, the same as finding Nemo and loads of other stuff! If I hadn’t have been doing the Whitsunday’s I would have been really happy to pay for the day, and it was an even better bonus that it was free!!
That night I didn’t do much and the next day we got the Greyhound to Airlie beach, where you go from to do the Whitsundays! However, I’m going to save that for another entry as it was so special it deserves one all of its own!
I was a bit annoyed though as I was sat with this American girl on the bus, Franzi and Thomas were behind us and she came out for tea with us (oh that tea, how I wish I had never eaten it!). I would have quite liked it if it could have been just us three, as she dominated quite a lot of the conversation and I probably wont get to see them now! Oh well!
Anyway, the tea! Eughh! It was a Thai meal and I really enjoyed it as I was eating it, but the soup sauce was a bit thick. I was up all that night with really bad stomach pains, I was sick twice and kept on having to go to the loo! I couldn’t believe it! I don’t think it was food poisoning, or if it was, a very mild form of it, it felt more like it does when I eat something that my stomach doesn’t, like avocado Coffey!! The next morning I had to wait for all of Europe to finish in the bathroom and felt really weak. I had to check out and put my bags into storage and then get
The Dream Team
Bob, Maria and Warren the bus to take me to the marina! That all passed quite easily, but I certainly wasn’t looking forward to spending three days on a boat and was seriously considering cancelling it! Aren’t I glad I didn’t now……
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Pat Temiz
non-member comment
Don't believe it
Two posts in less than a week - what a 'together' person you've become. Looking forward to Whitsundays chapter now. Keep it coming Jules. Love Pat