Spending some time acting like a tourist

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The last while has been busy, trying to fit everything into my short stay. Two weekend's ago, me and Megan went to Yeppoon to stay with her parent's. Since Kay (Megan's mom) was in Brisbane when I arrived in Yeppoon, I had yet to see her. So we spent friday evening visiting and got up early Saturday morning for fishing. Unfortunately, the only thing I caught was a sunburn. Kay & John each caught one fish, but the were no bigger than 6-8 inches. Apparently it was one of the worst fishing days they had seen (just my luck!) Saturday afternoon we drove to Rockhampton (about half an hour from Yeppoon) to stay with Natika (another friend). We had a girls night on the town and returned to Emerald on Sunday.

Since we were running out of weekends, we decided to make plans during the week. So last Tuesday we went to stay on a friend's (Rowena & Chalmers') cattle property about 50km from Emerald. She picked us up in the work Ute (aka truck type vehicle) after work and in a 2 seater vehicle we crammed in 3 people and 3 dogs. When we got to their property, we realized that the gate had been left open and so there's a chance that cattle got loose. Once we brought our bags inside and tied up the dogs we were going to chace the cattle back in the fence. But the Ute wouldn't start....neither would the 4-wheeler. So we took apart the 4-wheeler, had Chalmer's on video phone helping us, but it still wouldn't start. It was completely dark outside, with no lights near the Ute. So we took the car out to shine the headlights on the Ute. Not only could we not fix the ute, but we got the car stuck in the mud (5 minutes of pushing the car got it free). By the time all was said and done, we went to bed.

The pharmacy i've been working at employs several university students. Since it's the beginning of the Uni year, they are leaving us. So we had a farwell supper for them on wednesday.
I took thursday and friday off work to go on vacation. Shane, Megan & I woke up at 5:30 on Thursday morning to drive 4 hour to Mackay (and yes, I drove part of the way...a standard car, on the wrong side of the road and I didn't stall, not even once...believe it or not). When we stopped at a Caltex (gas station), we bumped into 2 other people from Emerald that we knew and made plans to have supper in Mackay. Me and Megan spent the day shopping and Shane spent most of the day sitting in the car. LOL. After shopping we went for supper with Brad & Phil and then spent the evening on Phil's dad's yacht in the harbour.
We left the beautiful, expensive boat to our cheap, dumpy motel room for a short sleep before getting up early. We left for Airlie Beach, which is another hour drive. Airlie Beach is a coastal backpackers/tourist town. At one local travel agency we booked an overnight stay on one of the nearby islands. There are several small islands just off the coast of Airlie Beach which is all located in part of the Great Barrier Reef. We got an awesome deal to go to one of the fancy, expensive islands. We took a 1 hour boat ride to our resort where we were treated like royalty. We spent the evening relaxing and the next day snorkeling and swimming. That afternoon we returned to Airlie Beach, where we had planned to meet up with 10 friends driving out from Emerald. We had a big night on the town before the 5 hour ride back to Emerald the next day.

It's now my last full week of work and my last weekend is coming up. We've got Rowena's Hen's Night planned. It's a cowboy's & indian's dress up theme with a savanger hunt and bus tour to the Springsure pub (a town about 70km away). Can't wait!

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