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Published: August 4th 2009
Wednesday 17th January 2007 We drove down to Ayr to go wreck diving on the S.s Yongala. You can go from Townsville, but it is 3 hours there on the boat and we were heading south anyway. AS it happens it was a good job we didn't have to spend 6 hours on the boat. We took 30 minutes to get to the dive site from Ayr and in that time most of us were feeling really ill. Lisa was the first to throw up and aftyer my first dive I wasn't too far behind... It was really choppy. I actually lost count of the number of time I threw up, including on the surface just about to dive and on the surface just after, as I tried to get on the boat (Lisa had to swim through it!).
But it was all worth it - the diving was awsome - the best I have ever done! Sea snakes, turtles, baracuda, rayshark, huge fish, loads of colour and coral. SEE LOG
We had really nice BBQ food when we got back and did some tests so that the two dives (Wreck and Deep diving) would count towards our Advanced
Diver certification.
That night we stayed at Gonago paid camping park. We met up woth the owner and a few locals, drank beer, played pool and chatted with them. Ken (a chef) recommended snake to me as a nice dish...
There were also a lot of Rhino beetle flying around, crashing into things and landing on their back. As I walked to thye van I was told not to go ot the kitchen - big snakle in there - thought Ken might have been making me supper... LOL
Thursday 18th January 2007 We drove to Arley Beach (more no swimming) and swam in the free Lagoon Pool. We used it to get laundy done (lots of sweaty clothes) and had another carpark lunch. We drove till 10pm that night and saw the sugar cane fires (that put he workers out of a hob) on the roadside. We also experienced Lorry drivers being arseholes - overtaking us at 120km!
We got to Marlborogho and stayed at a free spot opposite the Marlborough Hotel.
Friday 19th January 2007 I got up at 6am to call Parcel Force in the UK. A parcel I had sent from NZ
Is that a yellow snorkel?
Or are you just pleased to see me?
Airlie Beach lagoon poolto Emma had been siezed by customs for 100+ GBP of VAT due. This was on winter clothing I was sending back and had already paid for in the UK! THe reason it was becuase you have to put all the item values for insurance and I had also included in the box a small present for Tam and Em. So when I ticked the Gift box on the form, it was assumed all the items value were gifts bought in NZ and sent to the UK and Customs and Excise wanted it's slice. Which I think is shite anyway as I would have already paid NZ tax if I had bought them in NZ! Anyway I had to call Parcel Force UK to get them to send it back to Customs for a reassessment...
So I dragged myself to the phone box at 6am to make the call, only to find no answer yet. So I went for a walk round the tiny village to waste some time. No one was up at that time (apart from stalks and cockteils) , but what was amazing was the museum was open - as in it never closed! It was
left with lights on, door open, unmanned! Again it wouldn't last 2 seconds in the UK, but here things were different - people more repsectful and less vandals/f**kwits. SO I walked around the museum and then back to the phone to try again. Still no answer. It was then that I realsied I got my times mixed up! I could have called them in the evening, not get up at 6am - it was the middle of teh night in the UK! Doh!
I wasn't in the mood to try to sleep any more so I drove us south and we arrived at Rockhampton at 8am which was famous for it's steaks. We were due to get here much later and I was supposed to have a steak lunch. Lisa managed to sweet talk a butcher to do a me a really nice cut of fillet ($6) and take it next door to be added to a cooked breakfast (they charged $5 just to cook it!). The steak was amazing, but the breakfast wasn't. Still Rockhampton is famous for steaks not cooked breakfasts!
We drove onto the 1770/Agnus Waters for a swim on the beach (first time in
Oz) and even then we could see Blue Bottle stingers washed up, so it was a bit risky. We also did our first hike in Oz, up around the rocks by the sea. It is just so uninviting to walk off paths with so many nasty creatures in the grass/rocks.
We left heading for Bunderberg... It was a while in ot he journey (and no service stations passed) that we realised we were low on fuel and it was late afternoon. We looked on the map for places that might have fuel and crept towards them on fumes, puting in the clutch down the hills! These were pretty remote roads and I really didn't want to be stuck on one over night or try and walk out as the evening drew in. We arrived at a little place caleld Lowmead. It was a tiny village, with no gas, but it did have one thing - a lively pub. It has a raffle every week and the prize was up to 3000AUD - people drove to the village from all around, it was really busy. It also had a pool table. So that was it - we aprked under a
tree and decided to worry in the morning - time to get pissed and play pool! We had a really good night mixing with locals.
Saturday 20th January 2007 The next day we picked up a local who had just woken up (having no idea how he ended up in Lowmead pud - good night!) and needed a lift inthe way wer were going (Rosedale) - je said he knew the farmers on the way in case we didn;t make it and needed to get gas. Luckily we made it and dropped they guy off. Turns out if we had turned left instead of right the night beofre we would have made it to Rosedale, and missed the pub! - Fate.
We got to Bundaberg and just missed a tour of the Rum place - so we took atht aas fate too and lcarried on driving. We carried on to Hearvy Bay where we parked up for the night in the carpark of the Roving Fraiser Island Hostel and had a meeting with the group we were going with on the three day 4x4 tour of the Island the next day. Afterwards we went to the bar to
Coconut catchers
Never seen that before - lots of people die from coconut related injuries...
Airlie Beach amke some food choices (had to shop the next day) and had a few beers.
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