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Published: December 27th 2007
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Happy Holidays all!
It has been a few days since I posted a blog so I figured I should go ahead and do it now. First though I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and thank all of you who are helping me continue my journey by way of monetary support. I very much appreciate your gifts. I reflected a bit on Christmas Day on my family and friends and I very much miss all of you. This is the first time I have not been with family over the holidays, and when I see other familys laughing and playing on the beaches here, I greatly miss that closeness. Even though all of you seem so far away, you aren't in my mind. I have the everlasting memories of our family get togethers and the foresight to know that we will have many many more. Ok now to write about the past few days before my time runs out.
The last I wrote was about our hike through the jungle in Mission Beach I believe. The day after that we took our bus 4 hrs further south to Townsville. Townsville is a decent size port town, with a
strip of stores a movie theater, and a 2.2km walk along the coast called The Strand. Which was basically all there was to do for people like us with no money. We walked along The Strand for most of the remainder of the day, catching some decent Christmas carols and a very warm swim in the ocean within stinger nets of course.
There was a hike we could have done up to a lookout of the bay, but it was incredibly hot and humid so we opted to go the route of less exercise and more lazy lying around in the sun. It was awesome!
The following day we caught our bus to Airlie Beach which is further south another 4 hr. Before we caught the bus though I realized that I had left my water bottle somewhere. I told the bus driver I would be back in a couple minutes, and raced back to the hostel we had stayed at. But to no avail. I ran back to the bus in a sweat where it promptly left. I thought about where else it could have been. I had stopped at a corner to look at a map
of the town enroute to the bus station and had set everything down. Maybe it was there however the bus was going so I could not check.
The bus drove down the street and turned toward the corner I had stopped at. And as we passed it, sure enough, as if there was a white elephant in the room, there was my waterbottle, nicely reflecting the sun into my eyes on the corner of the street. At least I knew where it was eventually 😊
Anyway, we continued on the bus to Airlie Beach, where we checked into our hotel and got a buy one get one free pizza at the restaurant. We were even treated to some live country rock music. And we got a surprise guest, an 8 year old girl from the crowd went on stage to sing and play the guitar! She was quite good to.
The following day was Christmas, so almost every store was closed except for a couple places to eat and an opal shop. I spent most of the day walking along the coast and going into the opal shop to chat with the girl there. She had opened
to store because her family are all Jehova's Witnesses, except her, so she decided to just open her dad's shop for him that day. I talked with her for a few hours about religion, business, opal and didjuridoos.
According to her, opal can only be found in Australia and some place in Mexico. I haven't been able to corroborate these statements with Wikipedia yet, so take it on hear say, but she claims that her dad is one of two people in Australia currently that is allowed by the Abboriginals, to mine opal. If that is true it was incredible to be in a shop with some of the most recently mined opal in all the country or the world for that matter.
The shop also sells didjuridoos, but in an incredibly unique way. The man who makes them has the customer give details of what they have done on their vacation, and then he paints a corresponding story through landscape pictures, and animals as metaphors, on the didjuridoo. A very cool idea.
After relaxing all day in Airlie, we caught a bus at 5:25 pm to Noosa. We arrived in Noosa at 10:10 am. That's right,
a 17hr bus ride. I slept maybe 2 hr at most, but in incredibly uncomfortable positions that I would not wish on anyone.
We arrived in a daze, but had to stay awake the rest of the day to keep up our sleeping pattern. It was rainning so we couldn't really walk around the town much, I couldn't focus on anything because of my sleep deprivation and maybe some side effects of the malaria pill I had just taken. We needed something mindless and easy to do. We watched Alien vs Predator: Requiem. Wow it was horrible. There is something else I wouldn't wish upon anyone either.
Finally I am caught up to today. So, this morning we got up around 6 and caught a shuttle to a 4x4 off roading bus, which would take us around Fraser Island. Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world and is a World Heritage site. There are many of these sand islands in the area from river run off and then ocean currents and wind taking it north, making Fraser Island, some 70,000 odd years ago.
Before actually getting to the island we were taken on an
hour drive on some country roads on the mainland, where we finally saw some live kangaroo! We had seen a dead one in Mission Beach😞 We then continued on to a ferry which took us across a channel to Fraser Island. The swell was around 6 ft, so we weren't able to drive on the beach for some of the trip, but eventually our driver thought it was safe enough to after about 10 min. Immediately after getting on to the beach we saw a dingo! I did not get a picture of it because I was filming, but i'm sure Paul has one on his blog. It was a very cute pup, and it looked kinda like Jazz.
We drove along the beach as the driver had to time some of the corners with the tide. I have never driven on a beach, but it was a way cool experience. We stopped for some morning tea on the beach and then continued on to an area called Central Station, where an old mining town now stands. We got to do a quick walk along an incredibly clear stream and then had lunch.
There were signs in the
area warning that some of the kauri fruit trees may drop their fruit on your head, resulting in severe injury or death. So now not only do I have to watch out for snakes, spiders, and jelly fish, now I have to watch out for trees that may kill me! How does anyone survive here?!? Just joking, I haven't really been worried at all about the nature here. The locals seem to not worry so I don't.
We then continued on to a natural lake that had incredibly fine graded white sand all around it. It was the finest sand I have ever seen. It was almost like a liquid. I wanted to eat it at one point because it felt so nice, but I decided against that idea. The lake itself was gorgeous and had an almost oily feel to it. This is due to the tea leaf trees, (I think that is what they are called), that release some kind of oil.
Alright I can't write anymore because of time, you will have to read my detailed journal when I get back.
Daniel
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kamdab
a.k.a. Kameron Ahler
kam the man
tea tree oil is really good for you! you should put as much of it on your skin as possible immediately. just make sure it's a tea tree, otherwise i'm sure there's a number of ways you could kill yourself doing that. see you soon man