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Published: November 20th 2007
Airlie Beach
No way is that me!Still at Myella, meant i mainly rode bikes around, swam and ate. Lynn also taught me how to crack a whip, which isn't as easy as you think. Tag on the other hand had lost interest in riding bikes and spent most of her time tending the baby roos. Admittedly there were amazingly cute the youngest was only just ready to be let loose around the farm. So we all formed a seated circle and let her go. Bless her all she wanted to do was nussle up into someones lap. So, we all decided to stand so she could only run about. She was weak and unsteady but she soon learnt. On the Tuesday we just sorted the car out and polished our boots we borrowed. At 2pm the Melbourne cup was showing so they held a little betting shop. $2 for a random horse out of the hat. I had 2 goes. The horses left the gate and as i glanced at the screen trying to make out the writing on the poor reception, i see 1st and 3rd are my 2 horses..... was this good or bad? Ultimately it was bad the horse in
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Anaconda III from shore 1st ended the race in last place..... typical, but, i did get a wooden spoon prize of $4.20 so i made 20cents haha. We left at 3pm hitting the road towards Rockhampton back on the coast. We had arranged to met a lady called Jane who was from Canada later that night and go out for a meal. We decided Rocky was crap so we would leave as early as possible in the morning.
Wednesday 8.30am we left and not a moment too soon the whole town just seemed..... skanky. We would now be going to MacKay a town a few hundred k's up the coast. Usual story Tourist info for accommodation, we weren't left with alot of choices the town seemed to be fully booked. It was a campsite we ended up in, but in a cabin no tents for me. Looked at the town map and said to ourselves.... there ain't much to do here so lets not waste time and head on.
Thursday And that we did not too early though. We would now be heading to Airlie beach the main point where people sail to the Whitsunday Islands. We had already booked
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Whithaven Beach ahead on a Yacht called the Anaconda III, ironic really seeing as i hate snakes. Seeing as me and Tag are a bit older than the crowd of Airlie we wanted to try and get a fairly quiet hostel. We found one just out of town with parking and a bar 😊 Having not had a night out for a while we decided to keep it fairly close to home and raid the bar at the hostel. Many drinks later it seemed there was a dominos lady holding a bag of pizzas..... oh yeah i remember now i ordered pizza 😊 Apparently i got drunk and even though Tag claims to have a picture of me pretending to be a ghost with a bed sheet, you can't actually tell if its me so i admit to nothing. I slept well that night.
Friday Our trip wasn't until 6.30pm so we recovered from the night before with alot of water. Did some window shopping. Tag got some sea sickness pills and i some gaviscon... heartburn from all the apparent drink i had. I remember nothing! Sorted out bags out with the list of stuff we were given and waited
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Full sail mode! on the corner for the bus. By the time we boarded it was dark and hard to tell how big the marina was. We had our introductory talk safety etc. Hired our stinger/wet suits and were showed to our cabin. Talk about pokey, but what do you expect i guess on a small yacht. Spent the evening talking to the other would-be sailors and hit the sack.
Saturday Shortly after 6am the skipper, Tim decided to raise anchor and head underway, awesome...... I managed to nod off again but it was a bit rough out so it was hard to stay asleep. I arose to find Tag had already go on deck. There she was looking a bit peeky concentrating on the horizon. Not a good start for her. Luckily it wasn't long until we reached our first stop Whithaven beach. I was going to be doing an intro to diving here so i put my stinger on and got in a dingy. I got all suited up and Andrew or "Sparto" as the crew called him, started giving us instructions on the equipment and safety measures. We had about 15 minutes including 5 practicing breathing under water.
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Tag catching rays It's so weird your mind is telling you to hold your breath as you're under water but of course you can so you have to ignore it. Me and Tag took a walk down the beach and back again, the water is so warm it's like a bath. After a couple hours had past we all headed back to the yacht.
We now had a long trip but there was a fair bit of wind so the skipper said we should be able to raise the sails and actually sail and hopefully, there was enough wind to make us go faster than the engines can. This proved to be true we hit about 10 knots 3 more than the engine can. We had lunch on route and finally arrived in Luncheon Bay. Here the already certified divers could have a dive, followed an hour later by the intro people. So in the mean time we could go snorkeling. What an experience actually swimming in amongst fish that aren't scared of you. You can actually reach out and touch them, hundreds of them everywhere. I had an issue with my mask and sat in a shallow part to sort it
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Aboriginal art out, just then a wave came in and knocked me back so i put my hand back to stop me.... OUCH! a rock with shells impeded in it, cutting my finger open. Blood + water = sharks. I got the attention of one of the tenders in the dingy and reported my injury he said not to worry sharks aren't attracted by human blood. Ok i said and carried on, but, my mask issue wouldn't go away and i ended up swallow alot of water. I had had enough so headed back aboard. Got some treatment for my finger and read my book. YES!!!!! i read books now! I decided to skip on the diving as i wasn't feeling too peachy, saving myself $65 which could be spent on drinks. We stayed where we were for the evening and had dinner. So far the food has been amazing, the cook, Paddy was awesome especially seeing as the galley was very small and she is catering for 21 of us plus 5 crew. Many beers later and we were talking to a couple of German girls, me trying my hardest to learn German, which they thought was sweet. Didn't last long
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Tag and I at the lookout on the bush walk though i needed to go to bed.
Sunday The skipper didn't leave the bay early today, this was because they were doing another dive just around the bay, also a snorkel. I didn't attend either, i didn't want a repeat of yesterday. Tag did though so i stayed back with a few others who didn't want to go either and had a chat. Once everyone was back on board the skipper checked the time sheet..... someone hadn't signed out or back in again, the penalty? a spoonful of vegimite... mmmmm. Onward we went to Nara Inlet where we stopped to do a bush walk around an area once inhabited by Aborigines. Once back we departed for Blue Pearl Bay where the cert divers were going to be doing a night dive. There had been a report of a 6ft croc in the bay only last week. Nice knowing you guys... We were able to see west this clear evening so the sunset was pretty cool, although clouds rolled in obscuring the sun as it passed the horizon. Once again an amazing dinner by Paddy. After we had few bevvies and chatting with a few frantic people running about
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The Anaconda gang saying there was a shark circling the boat, i didn't see it but they were certain. Bed followed shortly.
Monday Im going to finish my story although its a new week. A quick snorkeling session in the morning again i didn't attend, Tag did surprisingly what with the croc and shark possibly nearby, good on her to be fair. Unfortunately we will be heading back to Airlie beach. This would take a few hours and the winds were high again, so we sailed most of it. We even managed to reach 11.5 knots a new record for the skipper on this yacht. We arrived back around 2.30pm after having our final lunch. We checked back into our hostel and took a well needed shower as the one on the boat was tiny and we were restricted on the amount of water we could use. There was a table booked for our boat at a little bar called Reefos. So we took one of the guys at our hostel who was on the same trip as us and had a nice meal, Robert a Canadian guy turned up about an hour after us already wasted and had no plan
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Skipper Tim and his big wheel on stopping. He even bought a round of Tequila slammers for the 13 of us that turned up. We left early as we were both really knackered. Time to get a good nights sleep in a proper sized bed.
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indi
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Great read
Hehe Law its been fun spending my lunch hour reading your journals. Looks like you are having a blast, you arent missing much in the UK. Its cold, wet and windy...... and its entered that mad xmas season.. bah humbug!!! :) Please keep your blogs updated :)