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Published: June 23rd 2011
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So its been a while since I last wrote an entry, which means a fair bit to catch up on, dont worry though its been chilled I won't bore you with pages and pages!
So we left Surfers Paradise and headed for Brisbane, we checked into a campsite about 25 mins out of the centre and checked out the local coastal town of Manly (our second Manly in Oz). The next day we took the bus to Brisbane, it was bank holiday monday so there wasnt many people about which was nice in a way. We did a walk which was in our guide book which showed us the main sites within a 3 hour walk, the weather was really nice (and has been every day since!) and it was cool to see another major city.
It was then time to move up the sunshine coast towards Noosa which my cousin said was really excellent. It didnt let us down, a lovely holiday town with a sweet beach and a national park. The next few days were pretty chilled out, we went for a walk in the national park one day and spotted dolphins swimming off the headland which
was pretty cool! The rest of the time was spent on the beach, enjoying the sun which we had been denied further south in Oz. For 2 of the nights in Noosa we stayed at a tiny village by a lake which was 15 mins away called Boreen Point, there was a so-called famous historical bar in the village which we visited both nights and drank with locals (couldnt understand much of what they were saying mind you!) which was a change from seeing lots of backpackers in Noosa. The other night we stayed at a scout ground (weird, but cheap!) and went out for locally caught fish and chips (hevs had a burger, really embracing the sea side location).
My friend Rob (who I lived with at uni) is currently on a working holiday visa and is working in the small town of Childers doing farm work so we took the 3 hour drive up the Bruce Highway and stayed 2 nights at the place he was staying. Not much goes on in Childers apart from drinking, so we got stuck in on the Saturday night. The next day we headed to the local beach (Woodgate Beach) and
tried our hand at fishing with Rob and his mate Showbiz (strange name, nice guy) but we didnt catch anything which was a bit of a letdown, still, lying on a beach in the sun with your mates... cant complain too much eh! On the way back we saw our first wild Kangaroos which was nice to see.... another box ticked!
It was then time to leave Childers and the following day consisted of driving, driving and more driving, we drove about 750km in a day between us which was a pretty good effort I thought. It was getting dark though and we had seen so many dead kangaroos by the roadside that we decided to call it a day and stopped for the night at a roadside campsite. The next morning we got up early and took the 1 hour drive to Airlie Beach which is the launching point for the Whitsunday Island cruises. We arrived at 9:30am and by 10:30 we had booked on a boat which was leaving in an hour! Cutting it fine was sweet because we got a really good price but it was super stressful getting everything sorted in 60 minutes! It was
made worse by the fact that once I got to the marina I realised I had left my dive card in the van (doh). I had to sprint back to the van (in flip flops) and grab it to make sure I could do a dive.
Because we had booked last minute we didnt get our own cabin and we slept in the shared sleeping area, which turned out to be fine and we got plenty of kip anyways. The boat itself was super plush and even had a hot tub out the front, winner! We set off for our first dive site and I went on a dive with the instructor and another qualified diver on the boat, first thing I noticed was that it was much colder than Thailand, but the coral and fish were awesome! At one point I had a 1.5m blue Maori Wrasse swiming 10cm from my face, which was the highlight of the dive! The annoying thing was that we came up too quickly, loads of people on the boat wanted to dive so we had cut it short to fit everyone in. It was for this reason that this was my only
dive out on the islands, I plan to do more diving up on the barrier reef so thought I would save my pennys for when I can dive using all my air rather than having to come up with plenty left over. The evening was spent getting to know eachother and there were some really sound people on the boat which was cool.
The next day was amazing! We started by cruising over to tongue bay, from here it was a short walk to the famous Whitehaven Beach. We started with a few lookout photos before taking the walk down to the beach. The beach looked sweet from above but once on the beach we began to realise what an amazing place it was, the softest whitest sand I have ever seen followed by the bluest clearest water, when paired with amazing weather and no wind it was paradise. It beat any of the beaches in Thailand which is saying something! The beach was surprisingly quiet and our boat had it to ourselves for a good hour or so which was even better. No one wanted to leave but we had more spots to see and more snorkelling to
do so it was time to leave, I couldn't stop turning around to get a last glimpse, it really was that beautiful! I went snorkelling with Hevs at the next site and we saw some sweet stuff but other people were seeing turtles! Heather was really cold but I was determined to spot me a turtle so I went out alone in the other direction, I saw another massive Maori Wrasse which was cool but then all of a sudden I looked around and saw a huge turtle swimming past me.... amazing. I swam with it for a bit before it swam too deep for me to follow (I wish I had my scuba stuff on so I could have followed him further!) I then began to swim back to the boat, content with my sighting, but on the way another one swam past and rested in the coral for a bit. I watched him for about 10 mins before realising how cold I was, on the way back I caught a short glimpse of the back of a reef shark which was cool (I hope to see one properly before the end of the trip). After dinner, the hot
tub got going and Hevs and I sat under the stars gazing at the Milky Way, we saw 3 shooting stars between us! All in all we had a brilliant day, one of our best so far!
We got back to Airlie today and we head further north tomorrow, who knows where to, thats the cool thing about the camper.. "It gives you a sense of freedom you dont get with other holidays" (Quote: Jay from the Inbetweeners).
Speak to you again soon, hope I am inspiring a few readers to think about a round-the-world trip, it is truely amazing!
(more pics at the bottom again)
James
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