Blogs from Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, Australia, Oceania - page 15

Sunday morning and another beautiful day here on the island After a lovely leisurely breakfast I headed up to the Stella Maris Chapel a wonderful setting for this interdenominational church Today Reverend Terry Ayling was conducting the non denominational service He was a lovely Australian guy, about my age, (yes young then!) who has the reasponsibility for conducting services here and on Hamilton and Day Dream Islands There were 10 of us at the service today including a couple who had been married at Hayman three years ago in the very Chapel We sang to a DVD and watched a video presentation about other people seeing Jesus in us.....food for thought. It was very informal and we had a chance to chat together afterwards and take in the wonderful views It was rather appropriate that we ... read more

After our Reef adventure we decided to see a little more of the Australian landscape. We were in northern Queensland (northeast coastal area) and wanted to visit the Atherton Tableland. It is from there (50’s era Atherton Motel, home of the rare 24-hour internet access!) where I posted a blog entry last month. After circling counterclockwise from up north Daintree National Park, Mossman Gorge, down to Antherton, then Yungaburra, and Crater Lake, we decided we really wanted another day out at the Reef. We had planned on a day in Yungaburra, but it really is a very small town that is easily seen in an afternoon, so trucked on back to Cairns (and saw some wild kangaroos en route!) and made another launch at the Reef. This time we decided to go to Green Island, which, ... read more

Well our first officialy tour in awhile, on the boat at 8AM and out to Michaelmas Cay, one of the many parts of the reef. Beautiful day for boating... Got to the island which was is the middle of nowhere and the sand was so white and the water so blue it was amazing, hard to belive desolete places like this do actually exist. Dan went for his first intro dive and loved every minute of it, not much freaking out at all... Kel of course chickened out and chose to snorkel, which didn't happen since we ran out of time. We did get to go on a semi sub and see the reef and the wildlife which was very cool. Pictures will be posted soon!... read more

We arrived in Cairns and booked ourselves into a lovely hostel...really chilled out and had a few days hanging out, shopping and planning our last two weeks in Australia. We arrived in Cairns two weeks early than we planned to be there so we had to go back to the LP and travel agencies and fill our next two weeks with fun - filled things to do. I was looking into doing a day trip on the Great Barrier Reef but David and I talked about it and we had just had such an amazing time on the Whit Sunday cruise, that we really wanted to go back out on a boat again for a few days. We decided on a three day live aboard the boat diving trip and I was so excited. This time, ... read more

August 22, 2007 What a wonderful day. We were a little upset because all of the snorkel tours we wanted to do were all booked so we settled on another one, which turned out to be better. There were not many people on the boat compared to all the other boats in the Marina that looked like hardly any room to move around. We were on a sail boat and the only problem was really not that bad. We were on board with a group of Koreans and therefore everything was pretty much done in Korean before it was done in English. It would have been nice to be able to speak with some other people on board but beside us and a couple other families sitting next to us on the bow, we were it ... read more