Advertisement
Published: October 22nd 2008
View from the Mountain
Adam went up the mountain over 10 times, it was still as amazing every single time.Its currently 10am on our first full day off Lindeman Island. I (Adam) am stretched out on the sofa in the livingroom of our luxury apartment over looking the ocean watching tv on a big flat screen. Nick is sat on the balcony nursing a hangover from our night out in Airlie Beach. Mel and Kelly (friends from Lindeman) are making a full english breakfast for us in the kitchen. We have saved enough money to not work for the next 3 months. Tomorrow we are hiring a car and driving to Ayres Rock in the centre of Australia before flying to New Zealand in 10 days time. We just finished working 3 months in paradise. Could life possibly be any better? We think not.
Our blogs slowled during our stay on Lindeman Island, and a good excuse would perhaps be that we were working full time and living a pretty normal life, this however was not the case. I will try my best to sum up our 3 month stay on Lindeman Island, tell a few stories, introduce some people and even throw in a bit of history...
Lindeman Island is located on the East coast of Australia
Snake!
Probably our best snake photo - yellow belly tree snake! and is part of the Whitsunday Islands. There are 72 islands that make up the Whitsundays and they are all national park and world heritidge areas. Captain Cook sailed through the islands on the christain festival of whitsunday, hence the name. It is actually now known that Cook didn't take into account the international date line and it wasn't Whit sunday at all! Lindeman island is named after the skipper on Cook's boat who's surname was Lindeman, and who's father owned Lindeman wines which are still doing very good business today. The island has always been used as a holiday site and the first wooden cabins were built for guests in the 1930's. It has expanded a lot since then and now Club Med is the only resort on the island. The island has about 10 beaches but only 4 of them have walking tracks to them. The peak of the island is Mount Olfield. The island has lots of wildlife, we had seen no snakes in Australia before arriving on Lindeman, now we have seen over 10! We saw lots more wildlife while enjoying the sports on the island...
Some of our best days were spent Kayaking. Our
Break time...
This is where we sat to eat our lunch when working at Nicolsons Restaurant! first big kayak was to Seaforth island, this is the island nearest to Lindeman, we did this with Joe and Sandra. The next big kayak Adam, Dane and Mel attempted to circle Lindeman. We weren't completly sure how long it would take, but we never would have guessed 5 hours! We saw all the beaches and battled through some strong currents, but the main highlight was the amount of sea turtles we saw. We must have seen about 7 or 8 and some came up to breathe right next to our kayaks, some were over 3 foot long! A week or so later Adam kayaked back to the same spot with Lisa and saw more turtles and then saw 2 dolphins! The dolphins were jumping up on the surface and were about 10 meters from us - it was amazing! Adam took Nick to see the turtles and we saw a really big one, however the highlight this time was Adam trying to swat a sea fly with his paddle and then falling into the sea. We got a boat to the mainland once during our 3 months, something we didn't plan on doing but Adam's shoes broke. While on
Kayaking around the island
Taken around the rocks where we saw so many turtles the boat we saw a humpback whale, it jumped completly out the water and smashed back down into the sea, one of the coolest things we have seen on our trip, then Adam picked up some shoes in 'Big W for $1!. We also saw turtles from the restaurant in the sea while we were working! We saw a python in the grass while hunting for golf balls, and lots of tree snakes on walks up Mt Olfield!
Last week we finally did our trip out to the Great Barrier Reef, it didn't dissapoint. The reef is the only living thing visible from space and you can't understand the size of it until you see it, and we only saw a small bit of it! We managed to do about 3 hours of snorkling, we say many colourful fish, a small shark and a sea turtle sleeping on the ocean bed. There was also some very colouful coral and some big clams that were about 1.5m across - when we put our fins near them they closed shut, this was good fun for a long time!
We met some very cool people while working on the island. We
Stopping for a rest...
over half way around the island! became good friends with Will and Joe from england, and will travel New Zealand with them in November. We worked with lots of people from Peru and will see Sandra in Fiji after NZ. We fell in love with the bunch of Korean people on the island, they are the funniest and kindest people we have met. 'Steven' the korean became very close to us both and we spent many nights hanging out with the koreans, learning a few words, learning how to make noodles 'army style', drinking Soulja (korean alcohol) and playing 'go stop' which is a korean card game using flower cards. There we some very nice Australian people on the island too and some amazing characters, including a gardening alcoholic and a crazy pool cleaning man who had been on the island 25 years. Dane and Mel from england also spent a lot of time with us towards the end half of our sentance on the island.
The work we did was also very fun. One of the highlights was Matt and Candice's wedding, which we worked a few weeks ago. Guests included some minor Aussies celebs and a buisiness millionaire who runs half the Whitsunday
Underwater photo taken at the Reef
Coral, fish and nice blue water... Islands companies! The wedding seemed like a perfect wedding, everyone was good looking, the speeches were top class and the best man played piano and sang 'Your Song' for the couples first dance - probably the best part of the wedding. As the night went on the married couple invited all us waiters and waitress to get changed and join the party! At 1am we got changed and came back to join them, they gave us expensive champaigne they had imported and shipped over and we all had a great night, ending with a lot of wedding guests and staff skinny dipping in the guest pool until the early hours of the morning! They had sticks of rock as wedding gifts for every with 'Matt's Candy' writen through it - a nice play on the couples name. They flowers arrived by sea plane on the wedding morning! We also worked fancy BBQs at top pool, served a presidents son, a millionaire and a bejing gold medalist! We couldn't have asked for better jobs during our working stint in Australia. We got so many free drinks and ate like kings. We tried emu, crocodile, fois gras and Adam ate kanagroo almost
Nice fish
Took a good snap of this fella while snorkling! every Monday at his restaurant! We also managed to save about $8000 once we have our tax back, not bad at all for 3 months in paradise.
We also had some great staff parties while on the island. Highlights were the bikers and bitches party, toga party and bad taste party. Everyone made an effort for these and had some great outfits. Adam's room mate chuckles came as Steve Irwin for the bad taste party, an absolutly genius outfit. We took over 1000 photos while on the island including lots of video footage. We have made a 10 minute video using the best of them, itd too big for us to load onto the internet at the moment, but made a great leaving present for everyone we left behind and will be something great to show people when we get back! We have totalled up over 5000 photos from our trip so far - not bad for 8 months! While we are extremly sad to be leaving everyone behind on the island, we are excited about the next part of our trip. The time seems right to move on, remote living is not easy and its easy to see
'Steven' the korean
Taken during a game of go-stop! Check out the crazy cards! why so many people on the island seem a little bit loopy! We had a great leaving party with lots of people attending, there were a few tears from Koreans, and more tears from Cat the scot when we left on the boat the next day! It was really touching saying goodbye and we will never forget sitting on the boat watching the resort dissapear on the horizon as people waved us off from the jetty. Steven the korean gave Nick his korean football shirt and Adam the 'go stop' playing cards.
When we left the island for the last time Mel, Dane, Kelly and Lisa came with us. We checked into the posh sea view appartment that I am sitting in now and then had a big night out in Airlie Beach - one of the best places on the east coast for a night out! It started with cocktails on our balcony, went on to a nice Thai meal, and finished late in the morning the next day. They have all gone back to the island now and it seems all our sad goodbyes are over and we can look onto the next part of our trip.
Lisa and the fish
Taken at the Great Barrier Reef Tomorrow morning we pick up a rental car and start our 2500km drive to Alice Springs in central Australiia, here we will visit Ayres Rock and Kings Canyon. Then we do another 2500km upto Cairns for our flight to New Zealand. We have only 7 days to complete this so a lot of driving needs to be done. Flights worked out about the same price but we are eager to see the real Aussie Outback that we don't think we experienced on the busy popular east coast we drove before. We spend 25 days in New Zealand with Will and Joe and then move on to Fiji where the 4 of us will be joined by Sandra from Peru that we met on Lindeman.
Hope everything is going well back home for everyone. Seems the financial crisis is bad, but will probably effect us more than you guys because we have to move all our money over to our english bank accounts soon and it won't be at the rate we were planning for! Couple of good results and England in the football and a great result for Andy Murray in Madrid - the tournament that we both
Go go power rangers!
These are stinger suits to protect from jelly fish - we didn't wear them in the water but thought they would make a good photo!! went to see this time last year!
Please keep in touch guys and let us know whats new in your lives back home. We miss you all. Also help us out by spreading the word that our blog is now back in business!
These are just a peak at some of the best photos we have - many more to see when we get back home!
If this Blog has been more useful than your guide book, saved you some money, helped you re-live old memories or just given you a good laugh...
Please feel free to donate to us! We are both home now and very very poor! Every penny (or pound!) would help...
PayPal Donate 😊
We have writen more words in our blogs than your average novel and would love to afford to write some more...
Thanks for reading...
Adam Gibson and Nick Burke
Advertisement
Tot: 0.186s; Tpl: 0.027s; cc: 8; qc: 51; dbt: 0.1064s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
neil
non-member comment
Wow!
5000 pics, lol that gonna cost hundreds to print the lot out!! sounds like you guys have had alot of fun, starting to get cold over here now, bet you dont miss that eh?! take care neil