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We met Paul and Claire, our friends from Mexico and San Franciso in Townsville. Had dinner with them and then the next day met at the Aquarium in Townsville. It was OK. Then headed over to the Aboriginal cultural center for an hour of aboriginal dances. It was interesting. Townsville was lovely. We stayed right on the beach but of course no swimming because of the stingers but they have a huge pool right on the beach in town. Kind of a good compromise to the ocean.
Left Townsville and drove for a few hours to the town of Airlie Beach. There we got our Whitsunday couple of days organized. We had wanted to stay on Hamilton Island for a couple of days but full up so it was suggested that we go to Hayman Island. The next day we went to the dock for about 8am and were picked up by a huge sleek ship for the hour trip to Hayman Island. We were greeted on the ship and fed and offered drinks. We were the only guests on this ship. They had some staff making the trip to Hayman but they were religated to the downstairs of the
ship. We felt a little like Oprah sitting at the back of this luxurious ship being waited on. When we got to Hayman, there were 4 people there to greet us and take us to our room at the beautiful Hayman Island Resort. This Island is a National Park. Hayman Resort is the only resort on the island or the only anything for that matter. It is spectacular. We will both need to work an extra couple of weeks to pay for this 2 day adventure. The food and drinks are spectacular but expensive. Drinks by the pool are $18, a bottle of wine we would pay $25 - $30 for was $80. That was the cheapest bottle on the menu. Breakfast is included, so you can imagine after breakfast we don't need to have much in the afternoon.
We leave here tomorrow at 4PM so get to enjoy the day here. Back to the trailer park for a very comfortable room for $75. More our style!!
Our trip back from Hayman was exactly the same. Just the 2 of us swilling champagne on this 65 foot boot with a dozen or so staff downstairs basically unable to
see the light of day because we are the paying guests!!
Now we are back to reality. Spent another 2 night in Airlie Beach. We had not really seen Airlie. Yesterday, we drove down toward Rockhampton but turned off the road toward the beach for a place called Yeppoon. Again, another caravan park!! This one was $100 but with our discount card it was only $90 and is very nice. Our own cute little cabin with kitchen, TV, wireless internet, 2 nice chairs and a nice comfortable bed with great linen and spotlessly clean. I can't imagine how much $$ we have saved over this 4 months at Big 4 caravan parks using our Top Ten tourist park discount card that we bought for about $20 in New Zealand.
A disaster has happened!!
My computer has been dying for the last couple of weeks. It gets this vivid blue screen that says something about it is going to dump its memory and if this is the first time I have seen this screen I should turn the computer off and restart which I do but I get this screen often. Other times, I get a little box
that says it is opening in another profile because it does not have sufficient resources?? to open as usually or something to that effect. It opened like that after I got back from Hayman Island but I thought OH well its sick but carried on downloading my 140 pix from Hayman. Also, I have been in the habit of downloading my pix and also at the same time deleting them from my camera so I always have lots of space on my camera. Well, you might have guessed it by now. I downloaded the pix like normal, ticking the box to delete the pix from my camera and after they supposedly download I get this box that says there was an error and they could not be downloaded in this profile. So now I have deleted the pix from my camera and don't have them on my laptop. I have searched everywhere. No where!! I was so sad. I remembered that I had exchanged email addresses with a nice couple that had written out some stuff for us to see in the Hunter Valley wine area. I emailed Georgia and she said she would be happy to send us some
Hayman pix. We have wonderful memories of Hayman but it would be nice to back it up with pix for when we are more feeble minded then we are now.
Tomorrow we head to Agnes Waters. This is our 4th home exchange. AW is a small resort town from what I have gathered. We will spend a couple of days there and the owners will join us for another couple of days. We are later arriving here then we initially thought and they had plans to celebrate John's 60th BD at AW so we are very lucky, we get to spend time with more wonderful Australians.
The weather has be hot and sunny most everyday. About 28 or 29C during the day and then cools a little at ngiht. As we head south, the weather should get cooler especially at night.
Considering OZ has all of the most deadly bugs and snakes, we have seen none. We have done lots of bush walks etc and nothing. We did see a possum. I don't think he was on the list and we have had ants in our kitchens if we leave anything on the counter over night. That
is the tropics. We battled ants all last year in Mexico. Tiny little things that are there one minute and gone the next. So, if you ever think about touring Austrlia but think about the bad bugs and snakes, think again.
I have my photos and my email contacts backed up on my ipod so my theory is that if my computer actually dies, I will have my photos. The test will be whether I can retrieve the photos and get them back on my computer from my ipod. My Quckbooks and Quicken programs are stored on 2 separate memory sticks so they should be safe.
We have enjoyed my ipod a lot. I download podcasts and then we listen to them along the way. Mostly they are 20 minutes or so and mostly CBC radio programs. Lots of very interesting topics. Of course, the Vinyl Cafe is a favourite. These podcasts are free and anytime I have internet they just downlaod automatically. Lots of Rick Steves, the travel writer talking about so many wonderful places still left in the world to see.
We are counting down the days until we fly home. I am over my
few days of homesickness and enjoying things much more. I knew it would hit at some point but I have recovered. We still have so many things to see and not many days left on the calendar.
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