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Published: March 9th 2010
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I received the sad news 2 days ago that Aghy, my Indonesian friend and brother of my former girfriend Nita, suddenly passed away. Shocking to hear. Just a few weeks ago, Aghy showed me around Jakarta. My thoughts are with Nita and her family who are going through the most difficult time now.
Before all this happened, but after the adventure of sailing the Whitsundays, I was heading for Townsville. On the way to Townsville I passed the Inkerman hill. It's just a regular hill, but it has a lookout with amazing views of the surrounding Aussie land. On my way, I also encountered a strange looking chicken-like bird, who was trying to threaten me by flapping his wings a bit. It didn't work, so he left; smart choice :-)
Much of the scenery along the road consists of sugar cane fields. Because of the unstable weather this time of year, the skies are beautiful or threatening, and sometimes both at the same time. I arrived in Townsville late in the evening and I had a nice view on the moon. I'm really happy with the new camera I bought for my travels. It can get great shots of the
moon, too!
After checking into my motel across from Townsville beach, I drove up to the Townsville lookout point (yes, another lookout!). After the nice views, it was time to relax, and book my dive to the SS Yongala, a ship that sunk 90km off the coast of Townsville about 90 years ago. At the time of my booking, the weather was not great so the dive center asked me to call in the next morning at 6am to ask if the dive was still on and the weather was not too rough. So the next morning I called in, and the dive was on!
That didn't mean the weather was all quiet and sunny though. As soon as we hit the water, the boat was getting some pretty heavy winds and waves! The boat was seriously rocking and most of the people got quite sick. Me too, but luckily I was not among the people throwing up. After 3,5 hours of serious pounding, we finally arrived at the wreck. The waves were still quite high and the currents were strong, so the 2 dives that we did were quite challenging. Unfortunately, the visibility was also not ideal, so
the conditions took away some of the experience, but it was still a beautiful spot to dive. It is actually listed as the best dive in the world according to some "top 10 lists", but I guess for me, the bad weather didn't make it the best dive ever.
After returning to Townsville and having a good night's sleep, I got back on the road again: on to Port Douglas.
On the way, I came to the first "tropical beach" in my terms, that is, which is beautiful sand, palm trees and clear water. So far, most of the beaches were missing the palm trees. This was at Cardwell and Mission beach, so I hung around a bit and had lunch in the area. Then, I took a detour through the Atherton Tablelands, a hilly landscape with a lot of waterfalls. Via winding roads up and down, I arrived in the beautiful town of Port Douglas!
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Murt
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WE DON"T BELIEVE YOU MADE THAT PICTURE OF THE MOOOOOOON!!