Townsville to Bundaberg

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From Townsville we headed to Airlie Beach, one of the bases for trips into the Whitsunday Islands. Unfortunately, Airlie Beach was overrun by 'schoolies' (think all school leavers from all the schools in the area convening in one place at the same time and discovering the wonders of alcohol). One of the young scallywags pitched next to us invited us to join them 'for a drink or smoke or whatever' essentially on the cunning premise that if he invited us then we couldn't complain......we moved our van. The same night we also discovered the delights of what we have come to name the "recorder bid", basically because it makes a noise like a five year old child blowing very hard into a recorder, leaping up several ear splitting octaves as the recorder struggles to cope with the volume of air blown into it.

Having booked a few days on Hook Island we followed the 'Allo Allo' like arrangements given to us at the tourist information centre, meeting a french man named Michel outside of Gloria's cafe at 9am. Michel was to take us to the island on his supply ship which turned out to be a small speedboat full of 'grog'. The island was lovely although the facilities were obviously remnants from the Cold War, and we did get woken up by wild goats munching the grass next to our tent.

Disappointed by the reef at the island, although we did manage to see a large turtle feeding off the seabed, we booked ourselves onto a trip to the Great Barrier Reef. After a wobbly couple of hours where Laura amazingly kept down all of the cream scones she had consumed earlier, we arrived at "Reefworld", a fixed pontoon next to Hardy Reef in the middle of the ocean. Donning very fetching full body lycra stinger suits (including hoods and gloves), to avoid the allegedly deadly jellyfish (the locals looked rather puzzled by this quite happily swimming in their bikinis) we battled the current and went snorkelling. Unfortunately our underwater camera died, so no piccies, but the coral was excellent and we got to swim through huge shoals of fish.

From the coast we headed back up into the hills to Eungella National Park in the hope of spotting a platypus at dusk. Having arrived early we decided to go for a walk through the rainforest. About half way round we realised that a leech was trying to attach itself to Laura's ankle. Seconds later, having diffused the situation, we realised that another one had already attached itself to Andy's ankle. After several attempts Laura eventually gently persuaded the little bugger to let go by torching it's ass with a match. Our walk picked up pace somewhat after that, with us both frantically vowing never to enter the rainforest again without sleeves or trousers. After a long hour in the rain at the riverside we did finally manage to see a (sursprisingly small - only 40cm) platypus swimming.

A mammoth drive of 7 hours down the coast brought us to Bundaberg, where we spent the most amazing evening watching a Loggerhead Turtle lay her eggs at Mon Repos Beach. On the most beautiful starry night, we walked down the beach in the dark to find our turtle excavating her egg chamber. 141 eggs and 2 hours later she was covering the hole and heading back to the sea, leaving us humans to do the job properly and move the eggs to higher ground where they wouldn't be washed away (Don't worry there was a park ranger with us!). The only disappointing aspect is that we wont be here in the New Year to watch the little fellas hatch. Only 1 in 1000 turtles make it, but Laura's pretty sure that one from our batch will return in 35 years to lay her eggs on the same beach.

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Photos

Whitsunday Islands
The view from our tent at Hook Island.

Great Barrier Reef
Hardy Reef from the Pontoon.

Mon Repos
G'day possums!

Mon Repos
Our Loggerhead Turtle.

Mon Repos
Laura collecting eggs.

Mon Repos
Andy won the easter egg hunt.

Whitsunday Islands
Sunset.