Cairns, Whitsunday and Fraser Islands

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Hey all, its getting harder and harder to keep this blog going!! I'm really enjoying Australia so far even if it was a bit of a shock to the system after getting used to cheap Asia. I got to Cairns just before New Years and on New Years Eve I headed out to the Great Barrier Reef for the day. We went to some of the outer reefs and I did two dives there that were really cool. The reef is so colourful and saw plenty of fish - no sharks but saw a few turtles and got to swim really close to them. I also did a bit of snorkelling which was nice too. I spent another couple of days relaxing around Cairns. It's rainy season up the north of Oz but weather wasn't too bad when i was there and was very humid with temperatures in low 30's. Its a lot worse there now with flooding and all!!

From Cairns in took an overnight bus down to Airlie Beach and i heaaded out to the Whitsusunday Islands from there. There's not a whole lot in Airlie Beach - an nice lagoon but after that its a bit of a party spot with most people either coming or going to the Whitsundays. I went on a sailing boat called Condor. Its won most of the major sailing races back in the late 80's. I spent 2 days and 2 nights aboard with 28 other travellers, the captain and 2 deckhands. The area we sailed about is beautiful, 74 islands in total and the stunning Whitehaven beach with the whitest sand you can imagine - 98% silica in fact!! The pictures dont do it justice. Everyone has to wear stinger suits, which look a bit ridiculous, in the water. We did snokelling here too and the middle day was nice but couldn't see much the last day because it was raining and water was pretty murky. The food on board was really good and the crew were good fun.

From Airlie I headed down to Hervey Bay for one night and then on to Rainbow Beach. Ths is where i visited Fraser Island from. The first night at Rainbow at sunset we climbed up Carlo Sand Blast and had nice view of the bay and beach even if the sunset was not that good! Headed off on my 3 day, 2 night Fraser expedition the next day. There were 55 of us split up into 5 groups - 11 per jeep. Basically we're given advice on what to see and where to camp and send off in our 4 wheel drives to the largest sand island in the world. Its 123km long, with lots of sand dunes, wild dingoes and sharks. There were plenty of Irish about - 3 in my group, a few English, German, Scottish and Israli. We visited the beautiful Lake Mckenzie, 100m above sea level right in the middle of the island. Was pretty wrecked after the 3 days and i spent another night at rainbow beach before i left for Noosa yesteday. Today i spent surfing at the beach and tomorrow i'm hopefully going to do some kayaking.

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