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Published: August 7th 2007
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Going for the natural look with my hair clips - the little bugger wouldn't let go for ages after this!G'day
I know this blog comes fast on the heels of the last one but we're moving up the coast pretty quickly at the moment so I thought it'd be better to do shorter blogs more frequently than one big huge one when I'll have forgotten half the stuff I've done!
The day after the pirates party in Rainbow Beach we revelled in the fact that we had absolutely nothing to do other than nurse our hangovers and cringe about our behaviour the night before (I don't know where my compulsion to do cartwheels comes from when I'm drunk!) The following day we caught the bus to 1770, a few hours north. We weren't sure what to expect from this as we hadn't heard much about it other than some reports from fellow travellers who said it was meant to be great. We had time to kill and a free night at a hostel there anyway so figured we'd be as well checking it out. We stayed at a hostel called Cool Bananas and it pretty much lived up to its name. It reminded me of the guest house "Julie's" Brendan and I had stayed in Chang Mai in
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A model at last - I knew my beauty would be appreciated one day, even if it is when my face has been completely covered in clay! Thailand - a really relaxed and friendly atmosphere and a great place just to take time out for a couple of days.
On our first night there we were having dinner and were semi-accosted by a guy who was offering free clay treatments. He put on his best sales pitch for us and before we knew it we had agreed to go on his tour the following morning where we were told we would be taken on a bush walk and shown some of the lesser known beaches in the area before receiving a full body clay treatment. Since it was only $10 and we had no other plans we were happy enough to go for it. So we were up bright and early the next day to meet Scott, aka The Clay King, and his dog Gus then head off on the tour. We were quite surprised to be the only people from the whole hostel going but in the end this turned out to be great since we got all the attention!
Initially when we set off with Scott we wondered what the hell we had got ourselves into. The "bush walk" turned out to be
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How I'll look when I die - how this will attract people to Scott's tour I've no idea but apparently it's art! a walk through the woods where he pointed out bush turkeys (seen them all over Queensland already) and ant trails, thrilling. He also had a pretty interesting narrative where he changed between telling us conspiracy theories and recounting his former glories as a karate master who, by the sounds of things, could out-do Bruce Lee without even opening his eyes. My fave conspiracy theory was that the governments of the western world are conspiring to cause the drought in Oz by sending certain types of planes over the land to dry out the air with their fuel trails, their plan being to use this as an excuse to tax the remaining reserves of water to the hilt and then suddenly the rain will appear again. And my fave Bruce Lee story was about the time he was in Thailand and so drunk he could barely stand but still managed to fight 3 guys who ambushed him with sticks and then escaped by diving through the back passenger window of a car that happened to pass by (aye right!). As you can imagine we began to get a bit nervous about what kind of loon we were actually alone with here!
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With the man himself - Scott the Clay King and Gus the wannabe dingo! But once we hit the beach we were fine and were soon mucking about in the sea having a laugh. Then it was time for our clay treatments which resulted in all three of us looking as white as I did when I left Scotland (see, I have picked up a bit of a tan!) Scott then asked if he could take photos of us for his promotional brochure (a model at last!) which we were all happy to do, hence some of the bizarre poses! Once the clay had set we washed it off in the sea and I have to confess that my skin didn't really feel much different! But we'd had a good laugh and agreed that it had definately been worth the money, even if only to hear some of Scott's stories - very entertaining!
We had a quiet evening and then got up the next day for a free orientation tour of 1770. The town is apparently the first place where Captain Cook set foot in Oz when he discovered it (apparently he never got off the boat when he passed Sydney) and there's no prizes for guessing which year he landed in!
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On the chopper ready to humiliate the boys (and myself if anyone saw me in that helmet - looking good!) The tour also told us about some activities that you can do in the area, such a fly a plane for $65, so we were gutted that we had to move on that evening and since there wasn't availability to do the plane thing until the Friday we couldn't even hang around to do it as we had booked in to do the Whitsundays at the weekend, bummer!
But we were also told about a motorbike tour we could go on that afternoon which sounded good so we decided to go for that. We hired chopper bikes (50cc so nothing spectacular but it still felt pretty cool!) and went off on the tour which took us past some stunning views in and around the town. We even saw some kangaroos (including one with a joey in her pouch, aww!) and wallabies which was great since I'd only seen them in the zoos before. Typically though my bike starting leaking oil so I got told to hang back while the others went on ahead. A guy came out and fixed the bike and I complained to him that it was pretty slow and I wasn't impressed about being stuck
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Sitting with a beer and watching this beautiful sunset was just amazing, I love it here! near
the back. Once we caught up with the others he came over to me with another bike and said that since I was such a "hoon" I could try this one out - it was only later on that I found out he'd swapped my slow bike with Brenda's 'cause he said she was going slow anyway, she was not too happy!! This bike was much better, I well annoyed all the boys by roaring past them (as much as you can at 80km an hour!) and reached the pub first in line! We then all grabbed a beer and sat out overlooking the sun set over the beach, it was gorgeous. Then it was back on the bikes (I was happy to slow down after this since I'd had a beer and had already proved I was faster than all the boys anyway!) and back to the hostel where we managed to grab some dinner before jumping back on the greyhound and heading north again.
We reached Rockhampton - the beef capital of Oz - a few hours later but since it was so late we just headed to our hostel and hit the sack. Again we
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Getting tucked into our steaks before we got the hell out of that town for good! knew next to nothing about the place but had decided to stop there because it would break up the journed north and kill an extra couple of days. The next day we went for a wander around the city and discovered that it was very weird indeed. Everyone there looks (and probably is) inbred - I kept on waiting to hear the banjo riff from "Deliverance" in the background! And you'd think the guys hadn't seen a girl in three decades since we got stared at, beeped at, shouted comments at and whistled at every 5 minutes, it got to be a complete pain. We quickly realised that there wasn't much to the place so filled our time by going to the internet cafe and then a few shops. That night we decided to go out for a steak since it was really the only claim to fame the place had. We went to a place that had been recommended by the guy in the tourist board as the place that "all the country folk and work men go to" which wouldn't have necessarily put it at the top of my list but it also got a good write up in the Lonely Planet so we decided to give it a go. Walking into the place was almost comical - it was full of men and every one of them turned and stared at us as we walked by. Not the most comfortable of feelings! The dinner turned out to be good but I've had better so I wouldn't even recommend stopping in the city to get a steak! And even that was ruined when just as we'd finished dinner a cockroach appeared beside us causing us to make a quick dash for the exit - eek!
And luckily that was all the time we had there! We were up mega early this morning to catch the bus and were all very relieved to be leaving Rockhampton behind. We're now in Airlie Beach and we head off to the Whitsundays tomorrow (Saturday) for 3 days and 2 nights so that should be one hell of a party! Watch this space for the update!!
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Ross Johnston
non-member comment
Fraser Island...
hi Linds, Glad you've enjoyed Fraser Island - it really is one of the best places in Australia but I'm pretty glad I missed out on Rockhampton - must have missed that particular delight on the night bus! ha ha! I hope you have a fantastic time in the Whitsundays. Lovin the blogs (especially the alliteration of your titles) and the photos. All the Best, Ross