Hot and Steamy - not for the squeamish

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Spent the morning trying to stay cool - temperature already in high 20s by 8am and rising we were all up early - too hot to sleep. Wendy was off surfing at 11 while Cara and I had opted for more relaxing walk along beach. Got to surfing beach in time for Cara to catch Wendy riding a wave (admittedly not a big barrelling roller) but pretty cool dude nevertheless. By the time she had finished it was 1.30 and hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement. Back to hostel to hide from sun for a couple of hours. Couple of kangaroos turned up and hung about grazing some 50 yds from our porch but were eventually scared off by the local horse.

I checked out and eventually booked tour of Fraser Island, the world's largest sand island ( look it up on Web for full details)

Today was the big reef day - out on a largeish boat with 150 people for an hour and a half trip to the coral lagoon at Lady Musgrave Island. Trip was calm and uneventful. Then strip down to costumes, put on life jackets, flippers and a snorkel and we were off into the coral. Despite the large number of people it wasn't too bad - the lagoon is in itself huge over 12 mile in diameter.
Dozens of bright coloured fishes, tiny and larger, coral like a rock garden, cacti etc, but underwater. I even got a prescription snorkel mask that was almost my own glasses prescription, which meant I could see! We went for a walk on a coral island - Lady Musgrave. Coral islands are made up of bits of dead coral - I'd thought the bits would be fine like sand, but they weren't. It has lots of noddy birds (sooty terns?)- these have a horrible symbiotic life and death with the trees they nest in. The seeds catch on their wings and bodies, preventing them from fllying, and as they eat fish, it stops them fishing and eating so they die. Yuk!

We went back to the pontoon- seeing a few turtles swimming as we went back - and had a lovely buffet style lunch which was extremely good and very healthy. My new camera (to replace Willy's old one, which developed an inability to zoom and will hopefully return to the UK without me, when Gavin and Niome go back later this week) has a really good zoom, so the turtle picture is good.

After lunch we went for a ride in a semi-submersible through the reefs - saw lots of coral and lots of amazing coloured fish, but no Nemos.

Then back to the water for snorkelling - so many fish, so many colours - electric blue and green, violet, irridescent purple, black and white and plain grey. Every so often I wondered if there was anything deadly out there, but was very careful not to touch anything. It was absolutely brilliant and all three of us would do it again given half a chance.

I had a final dip in the sea unencumbered by the fins, snorkel and life jacket - it was good, but I couldn't see a thing, cos I had no lenses in.

Then back to shore. I was knackered and slept part of the way back - even woke up this morning sore. I was also sunburned - just one little patch at the top of one leg, where my swimsuit must have ridden up.

We took a cheap underwater camera with us, but it didn't work - turns out the film wasn't properly on the sprockets and wasn't winding on.

Then we organised accomodation at Rainbow Beach for Saturday and Monday, (either side of our trip to Fraser Island), which is a massive sand island off the Queensland coast. The drive down to Rainbow Beach was tedious its such a huge country one stretch of over 50 miles was simply driving through this big forestry area the only habitation being the occassional hamlet or small town.

We've given up on camping in Australia - too many insects and beasties that bite (and that's just the everday ones not the deadly ones), too hot, no air conditioning or ceiling fans, light too early and too many noisy creatures at dawn. May reconsider when we get to Blue Mts.

Stopper at Backpackers in Rainbow Beach, its Ok but I think the Southern Cross at Agnes Water has spoilt us. Quiet evening then up early for trip to Fraser Island

This should be a link to Cara's first blog entry, for anyone who knows her:

http://www.travelblog.org/fred.php?id=116408 - Got here at last!




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Photos

Surfing
well almost - this was the closest I got to standing and I fell off seconds after the photo was taken

Snorkellls on
Notice the injuries caused to my knees by the previous day's attempts with a surfboard

Roseate terns on Lady Musgrave island
They're definitely terns, not sure about the roseate bit

Hello Mr Turtle
We saw him coming back from the island - and the new camera worked really well