The next 'must-do' thing: The Whitsundays

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The Whitsunday sailing trip is one of the must-do things on the east caost along with going to Fraser Island and Byron Bay.

There was a bit of hanging around in Rockhampton to wait for the bus and eventually we were off. Fortunately I had been directed to the correct bus stop by a young English couple. Although I thought the correct bus stop was the one I eventually went to, I would have disregarded this as the ticket stated that the bus would depart from the stop on the other side of the river. I suppose I should trust my instincts more but you would have thought the ticket would have been correct. I was relieved to find Ellie at the correct bus stop as I arrived, she seemed mystified that I would have gone to where the ticket said the bus departed from rather than trying to remember where the bus dropped us off on our arrival. Anyway it was a sleepless coach journey that arrived in Airlie Beach 6 hours before check-in. I used this time to try and up-load pictures to the web at the slowest internet cafe on the east coast of Oz.

The following day people assembled at the marina and at 1 pm we were off. First stop was some snorkelling which I am growing to very much enjoy, besides the conastant irritation of salt water in my eyes and mouth.

The further I travel up the east coast, the more freqauently do I bump into people that I have previously met. I suppose this makes sense as we are all going the same direction and the longer I travel the more people I get to know. On-board the boat were Frankie, Margritte and Ken from the canoe trip in Noosa. Other people were all new to me and there were 26 of us in total.

The following day we had an early start and made a line for famous Whitehaven beach. The beach with the adjacent Hill Inlet is remarkably beactiful and was really quite an idyllic spot. The tranquility was broken by the hundreds of other backpackers and tourists there, and of course most were bloody English.

After lunch it was time for another snorkel session. The highlingg of this was seeing a turtle which I was really pleased about. We had already seen quite a few at the surface coming up for a couple of big gulps of air. We also saw a shark from the boat but no-one saw any while snorkelling.

After a steak dinnner cooked on the bbq mounted on the rear of the boat (presumably an addition since the boat's retirement from racing) there was a long evening to enjoy our tranquility of our surroundings and a good deal of camp fire sing songs. The songs did not unfortunately go down too well with some people sleeping below decks.

The final morning we got the sails up and headed for home. The weather had been great but the wind had been a little too low to get the sails up all the time but on this last morning we seemed to be flying along. Once in port (or whatever the technical term is) it was not too long before I had checked into the hostel and had got some much needed shut-eye. In the eveing was a bost get-together which most people, besides those leaving town immediately, attended. I bumped into people from the Fraser Island trip (which bizarrely some of the people from the boat knew from London) and a couple of guys from Hervey Bay. It was a good night out and an escellent way to round off a thoroughly enjoyable section of my trip.

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