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Published: September 29th 2007
Australia part Duex
Our ship to sail the whitsundays ( The Cliper )This is the blog from when we left Townsville heading for Sydney. We made stops at Airle beach, Brisbane , Hervy bay, coffs harbour and Byron bay then finally ended up in Sydney. We made more stops in between but these are the main places that we took piccies of.The first place we arrived at from Townsville was Arlie beach, this is the place to see the whitesundays and humpback whales if your lucky.
Its quite a long drive from Townsville to Arlie beach, like everywere in Oz i suppose but we wernt quite used to how many km's we could get out of a full tank and after we had been driving past sugar cane field after sugar cane field we started to get a bit worried because the fuel was running very low and there wasnt a petrol station in sight. Luckily enough we came to one just as we were getting into Arlie beach but the van was deffinately running off fumes by this point. So after filling up we found a nice campsite and settled there for the night. The next day we decided to go and look for a boat trip to the whitesundays which
Australia part Deux
Sally with her XXXX are a group of 74 sand islands and home to one of the top rated beaches in the world, whitehaven beach. We got told to go the centre were all the travel shops were as there were so many trips to choose from. We kind of had an idea of what we wanted to do, we had decided to do the whitesundays and then see the great barrier reef and do a bit of snorkeling around it and we thought we could do this in the one day as we didnt really want to stay over 3 days in Arlie beach. When we walked into the travel shop and told the girl what we wanted she just blankly said theres no way your doing all that in one day, you can either do a 2 day 1 night trip for close to $300 or you can do a 3 day 3 night trip for $350 so went for that one. The trip included all our meals, a day on whitehaven beach and loads of snorkeling around the reef which is exactly what we wanted. The trip was booked for the next day. We got told we should bring our own
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A Humpback whale with her calf we seen while sailing around the whitsundays alcahol on the boat because there was no bar on board and we wouldnt be able to buy any on the boat either so we should bring plenty.
So the next day we went the offy before we went on the boat and got our selves 6 cans of larger each because you wernt aloud to bring glass bottles on the boat (there went my brandy) so larger was the only thing we could think off. We thought 6 cans would be plenty because im not a big fan of larger anyway and i didnt particulary want a hangover out at sea. So we turned up at the meeting point with our 6 cans of larger each and when we looked round there were cases of ale everywere. One group had a pack of 24 cans each and a bottle of vodka each another group of lads had a pack of 24 each a case of wine each and a bottle of vodka each. We started to get a bit worried by this point thinking it was some big 18-30s party boat or something and here was us with our 3 cans of larger each a night haha!! Once
Australia part Deux
A game we played on the clipper, people we blind folded and had to stick a snorkel in the bog roll while pissed we got on the boat we got told the rules and then showed to our cabins and when we seen our one we were made up. We ended up with our own private cabin which you were supposedly expected to pay an extra $50 for, we thought this is a bit too good to be true. It was!! We had been in the cabin for about 5 minutes when we heard this noise which sounded like metal scraping along side the boat right were we were, it was that loud that i jumped out of my skin. So after standing there for 5 minutes going what the hell was that it happend again and we realised it was when the toilet above our cabin gets flushed. I havnt got a clue why it made that sound, but it wasnt the best nights sleep ive had in a while anyway.
Once we had sorted ourselves out we went back up to the top deck and everyone had all ready started drinking their huge amounts of ale but we couldnt really start cracking open our cans because they would have been gone by 4pm and we would have nothing left.The boat
itself was lovely and everyone on the boat seemed really nice apart from the fella who had the exact same voice as Andy of little britain "i want that one". It was the most annoying voice you had ever heard and whenever he was talking i had to look away because i just couldnt stop laughing. Wherever we went on the boat he always seemed to be there. The first day on the boat we just sailed around the whitesundays to a little bay were we would be spending the night. We had got talking to a couple of girls on the boat from Preston so we had a few games of cards with them and then the whole boat started to play drinking games. It was halerious to watch some of the things people had to do and the stories we heard on the truth or dare games were absolutely hystericle.
We got woken up the next day at 7am and i think everyone apart from a couple of us were very, very hungover. We anchored up at whitehaven beach and did the walk upto the lookout were the sights were gorgeous, the sky was a bit crappy
but it still didnt ruin the veiw it was fab. We then walked to the beach and had a couple of hours on it. No one was getting into the water because it was absolutely freezing but me and Lucy (one of the girls from preston) just said sod it and got right in, the screams were merciful haha!! After the beach we sailed round to the great barrier reef and were allowed to do some snorkling. I couldnt believe the amount of coral it was just like an underwater world it was gorgeous. We seen lots of lovely and unusual fish and coral. We got back on the boat, had our dinner and that night followed the last night of drinking games.
The next day we did a bit more snorkling along the reef, Neil didnt do this one because his ears were playing up but it was actually better than the first snorkle and the fish were huge. Neil sat on the little boat with the fella and thre fish food around me and lucy so the fish would surrond us, they were practically munching on our faces haha. We then sailed back to Airlie beach and
Australia part Deux
Snake on whitsunday got told that there was a party in the night in a bar were we got our tea for really cheap and it was a really good nioght out. Sso we all dai our goodbyes and all planned to meet up later. The night out was brilliant and we made some really good mates, the whole boat trip and the night out was fantastic and all in all we ended up having nearly a week in Arlie beach because we were so hungover the next day after the night out that neither one of us could drive.
After Airlie beach we made our way to hervy bay which we got to the same day. It was a nice little town and very similar to Airlie beach but day and night was enough here so we moved on. We started to head for Brisbane after Hervy bay but we wanted to stop at Australia zoo before we got there so we decided to head for a place called Dickie beach which was quite close to the zoo so we could get there early. We stopped at a few more places along the way before we got to Dickie beach. We
made ourselves a little packed luch each and went to the zoo haha!! I couldnt wait cause i knew you got to pet loads of animals but i didnt realise you could get as close as you did. As soon as we got there we seen about 20 crocodiles as you would expect in Steve Irwins zoo and we made our way around to the Koals which were just the cutest things eva. We got to the childrens zoo were you could feed the likes of baby cows and sheep and goats. All the animals would be fighting over the food trying to nudge each other out of the way to get to the food but one goat had it down to a fine art. He would stand on a barrel just putting his leg out trying to reach you so everyone thought it was dead cute and just gave him most of the food haha!!
We then went around to the kangaroos and i was made up when i realised you could go into their pen with them and just feed them and stroke them, they were lovely. After the roos we watched a croc show in the
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Sunset off the boat crocaseum which is where steve irwin did a lot of shows and after that we had a little walk around his memorial inside the zoo. It was huge with all shirts signed from people around the world it was dead sad. The zoo was a really good day out and we spent the whole day there and just about managed to see it all.
The day after the zoo we headed for Brisbane. I was excited about goin to Brisbane because it was one of the first big cities we were going to visit. We got there and it was belting it down which put a bit of a downer on it but we had a good walk around the city and took in a few sights. We only ended up spending 2 nights in Brisbane which was enough really as it was belting it down for the whole two days. We headed for Byron bay after Brisbane and when we got there the weather was pretty much the same and we found out we were in the middle of a storm, we soon realised this when we decided to go up to the lighthouse. As soon as we
Australia part Deux
The people on our boat got out of the car the wind was blowing us side ways, ive never been in wind like it. It took us about 20 minutes to reach the lighthouse fighting against the wind when it should probably only be a 10 minute walk. After Byron bay we stopped at coffs harbour which was a very little town with nothing there really and the weather was still crap.
We were thinking about spending a couple of days in Coffs harbour but because the weather was that bad we just decided to head staright to Sydney.
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donna and roy
non-member comment
hi neil and sal
hi ne/ sal just looked at the new blog it looks fab i,d luv to do that trip cairns to sydney in a camper van [two old hippies haha] bet sally was made up to see chris . it looked like you all had a ball .some of those pics are realy funny the one with the wig on neil you look like uncle roy haha.well dont leave it to long for the next blog cant wait .hope to speak soon take care you two luv donna...roy xx nan and gramps send there luv tooxx