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Whitsundays beach
This is why we went on the tour. Think it's worth the view? We headed out of Townsville to our next port of call, Airlie Beach, this would be the place where we got on to the boat for the Whitsunday Islands tour. Airlie Beach was a small town but had the best lagoon i think we have been to on the east coast, we did nothing much for two days whilst we were waiting for our tour to leave apart from soak up the sun at the lagoon. The day arrived for our tour so we went to the bottle shop to load up on alcoholic beverages. We arrived at the marina where there were about 100 other people, not all of them were on our boat as ours only took 23 passengers. When we finally got to the boat i looked at it and thought this isn't going to last the duration of our trip, it was an old catamaran, all the other people were getting on really nice sailing boats. The skipper Benny greeted us, he looked like an Australian bum, board shorts no shirt and flowing blonde hair and then the deck hand came out, he was called Marra, this might be short for something but the only similarity
that came into my mind was Marrow (vegetable) there was also a host who was called Vanessa.
We left the marina and had a short briefing about the rules of the boat. After this we started the meet and greet process. There were all sorts of people on the boat from all around the world, and I think we started drinking at 4:30 in the afternoon. We arrived at an island called Hook island, it was dark so we couldn't see where we were they just threw the anchor over the side and we were told that this is where we would be staying the night. We were starting to get really drunk and this small speedboat pulled up next to us and it was Benny the skippers friends. Turns out that it was Benny's birthday and they came on board for a party. It was really funny we started to play some drinking games and made a rule that if anyone of us started to sing happy birthday then Benny had to get naked and do a lap of the boat, after the fifth time this started to get boring so we decided as a group to steal
his clothes!! One of the chaps that came onto the boat started to play the guitar and we had a good old sing along, after this everyone started getting their sleeping bags out as we were all sleeping on the deck that night. The night was cloudless and there were so many stars out, Phil saw his first shooting star, and then his second a few minutes after!!!!
In the morning we did some snorkeling before moving onto Whitsunday Island, home of Whitehaven Beach. We were told to keep our cameras and watches well away from the sand as it is 98% silicone. I didn't know what that meant at the time but as we arrived onto the beach the sand was similar to baking flour, when you walked on it, it crunched. We only stayed here for around an hour so we made our way up to the lookout point. The views were breath-taking. We found another cove to stay in that night and I think everyone was pretty knackered from the previous night so it was pretty chilled out. We slept on the deck again only to be awoken at 2 in the morning by pouring rain,
Whitsundays
National Park so it was a mad panic to get everything back inside, and find everyone a bed to sleep on!!
In the morning we went for another snorkel at a place called Daydream Island. You couldn't hardly see your hand in front of your face so we soon got back on the boat and headed back to the marina. On the way back Benny threw the life ring into the water for us, and we jumped off the back of the boat to surf the sea! I was first in and it was really hard to hang on to the ring as the boat was doing 5 - 6 knots. After the first 10 people went on he stopped the boat and the next wave of people jumped off the boat, when he stopped the boat the second time i decided to show off my diving skills and proceeded to dive in the water with my sunglasses still on!!! stupid me!! We arrived at the marina and booked into the campsite again. In the evening we went to place called Reef'os for our after tour piss up.
When we arrived there there were three tables set out, one for
Whitsundays Beach
Waiting for the ride back to the boat each boat, we had the middle table and the other boats had around 30 people per table, we only had around 15 people and we started to chant to the other tables saying how crap their boats were, they were looking at us as if we were in a zoo, then we decided to get up on the tables and have a little chant, we all got really drunk and ended up in the local bar till the small hours of the morning.
After the night before me and phil were too drunk to drive in the morning so we waited till the afternoon before we left for Rainbow Beach. It took us a couple days to get there as there were a few stops on the way. One of the stops was a small town called 1770. The historic Town of 1770 is an idyllic stretch of coastline made famous as the first landing point of Captain James Cook in his discovery of Australia. The Town of 1770 holds a unique place in Australia's history. A monument marks the spot near Round Hill Head where Lieutenant James Cook first anchored in Bustard Bay and came ashore on Wednesday
the 24th of May, in 1770. We stayed here for one night as when we got there it was the 23rd of May and at the weekend they had a big festival marking the landing of the Endeavour, and the campsite was fully booked for the week.
When we arrived in Rainbow we booked ourselves into the hostel and got settled in as we had a few days to wait for our trip to Fraser Island. We decided to go for a drive around and stumbled across a place called Carlo Sand blow. Carlo Sand Blow was named by Captain Cook after one of his deck crew named Carlo. The unique “moonscape” sand mass covers over 15 hectares and overlooks the towering coloured sands. We decided to take a walk up to the sand blow and were amazed when we found a beautiful beach on top of a hill, it was really strange!
Fraser Island stretches over 76 miles along the southern coast of Queensland, it has an area of 184 000 hectares and is the largest sand island in the world. Fraser Island is the only place in the world where tall rainforest's are found growing on
Rainbow Beach
Carlo sand blow sand dunes at elevations of over 200 metres. And the highest dunes reach a staggering 240m from sea level. It is also home to Australia's only true breed Dingoes.
Me and Phil were put together with 9 other people, 6 of them were under 21 so there were only 5 drivers, and one chap was scared to drive so that left just 4 of us! We had to watch a video about the island and how to care for it and all the usual dos and donts, then the part about the Dingos came on the tv and everyone burst out laughing, this would now be the saying for the whole trip "DINGO SAFE" it was all right in the beginning but after a few days it started to get on my nerves a bit. In the morning we had our talks about the 4x4 trucks we were going to be let loose on for the next 3 days. When we got to island it was really strange as there were no roads anywhere to be seen, all you could see was sand and more sand. The first port of call was a place called Lake Wabby, we parked
up the 4x4 and walked to the lake, i think it was about a 2km walk. We walked up the path and i remember thinking it will be an easier walk in a minute after we get off the sand, then it twigged, we are on a sand island!!! doh. When we arrived all that was there was a huge lake and a massive sand dune, there were people running down the dune unable to control themselves half way down and hitting the water at break neck speeds. We left the lake and headed back to the 4x4 trucks, we had just got into the trucks and the sky's opened. We headed back to the campsite and started to set up our tents, me and Phil had brought our own tent and it was up in a matter of seconds, all the other tents had bits missing from them or wouldn't go up properly so that mixed with rain mixed with sand wasn't good for the group. But all was fixed when the beer and goon started flowing, i don't think anyone went to bed sober!! It was a really good night.
We woke early in the morning as
Fraser Island
Maheno Shipwreck we had to travel right up to the top of the island along the 75 mile beach to Indian Head and a place called the champagne pools. When we arrived there we climbed to the top lookout at Indian Head and stayed there for around 20 mins, we saw some sharks and a couple turtles coming up for air. We decided as a group not to go to the champagne pools, as the tide was going out and it wouldn't be worth it going all that way to see a few rocks, so we headed to a place called Eli Creek which was on the way back to the campground. When we arrived there, there were quite a few people there as it was a fresh water lake on the beach and seeing as though you couldn't go in the sea everyone was in the lake. We got bored here pretty quick and decided to dig a hole!! and what a hole it was!! we had to stop when water started coming in. We headed back to the campsite and knew what to expect with the weather so we parked the trucks up through the tarpaulins over the top and
Fraser Island
View from Indian Head even had time to build a bench seat out of sand. Then the drinking started again and then the drinking games, everyone was hammered again!! In the morning we went to a place called Lake McKenzie it was absolutely beautiful the water was very clean and the sand was really soft. We spent a few hours here as we had to get the ferry back to Rainbow Beach at 1pm. When we got back to the backpackers we all queued up for the showers in our rooms as we had gone nearly three days without a shower!!!!!
On the way to Brisbane we stopped at Noosa, and decided to stay there the night. We went on a walk around Noosa Heads and came back and sat on the beach. We saw a chap coming down the beach with a long board and his dog. I looked up and saw that no dogs were allowed on the beach?? but when the chap got in the water the dog jumped onto the front of his board, it was so funny watching this bloke and his dog surfing. The next day we headed down to Australia Zoo. When we arrived there we
were quite excited and when we got to the admission gates our faces dropped!! 48 bucks entry fee WHAT!!!! I suppose with all the tv coverage they can charge what they liked! We started walking around the zoo and went to the Steve Irwin museum and saw some of his family pictures and the genuine Crocodile Hunter 4x4 after this we decided to go to the croc show, they brought out snakes first and told us about them, then they brought the birds out and they were flying around the auditorium just brushing past you nose. Then they brought out the big male saltwater croc. There was a chap holding meat against the crocs nose just teasing him. Then he sat down in front of the croc (what an idiot) but he told us that in water a croc will most definatly kill you but on land they are so clumsy and cant move very fast. We also went to the most deadly snake section, and there were some really bad arse snake there!!! We thought there would be a memorial for Steve Irwin but there was nothing and the zoo seemed to function as if nothing had happened. After
the Zoo we headed down to Brisbane, where we spent the last month in Australia trying to sell the van. With the van sold we are both looking forward to New Zealand, but not the weather!
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