We've been all round!!

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We stopped at Townsville and went to visit the ReefHQ - an aquarium where the exhibits are like the Barrier Reef. The people there were so knowledgeable - we had such a good time that we went back for a second visit a couple of days later and went to visit the turtle hospital where they had several green turtles suffering from lung problems. In between visits we took a ferry to Magnetic Island for the day and went snorkelling, bush walking and koala spotting. Lovely place - perfect to retire to we thought.

The weather deteriorated as we left, in fact it bucketed down so we headed inland - up in the clouds, to Eungulla National Park, the centre of the universe for platypus spotting. We were rewarded - saw lots of the little devils - got some great video footage, and lots of mozzie bites to show for it.

The next day we decided to back track a bit and go to Airlie Beach, gateway to the Whitsundays - just in case there were any boats going out - and before we knew it, we were booked on the Derwent Hunter, a beautiful sailing ship, for 3 days. There were only 13 of us and 3 crew, and we had an absolutely marvellous time. The wind was strong, so we sailed everywhere. We snorkelled and hiked and it was brilliant.

We had arrived at Airlie in the middle of their Reef Festival and were there for the firework display on the Friday night - so we haven’t missed Guy Faulks after all.

How are we going to top that sailing trip? We headed south towards Rockhampton and stopped in the Capricorn Caves for a bit of crawling about in the dirt, then on towards Agnes Water and Town of 1770 (where Capt Cook first landed) - to discover, when marking up the map, that we had joined up with our first trip so have now successfully circumnavigated the Australian Continent!!

We marked the occasion by booking into the lovely beachside campsite for 3 nights, and booking the trip to Lady Musgrove Island - the last coral cay on the Great Barrier Reef.

Barry’s birthday was spent snorkelling on the reef and fishing for strange looking reef fish - the pink one with blue spots was very tasty. Can life get any better than this?

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