Maeve and John take on the East Coast: Take 2

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Maeve and John take on the East Coast: Take 2.....
On our first night in the new van we stayed in Noosa - a really nice beachside town. Got in late enough so just had something to eat and went to sleep....successfully this time (my wonderful hunter gatherer acquired a fan in the van shop so we were to be a lot more comfortable at night from now on!). The next morning we pulled up to a picnic bench overlooking the beach and had our breakfast in the sunshine looking at lovely turquoise water. Finally things were as they should be!

Suitably jubilant we motored north and stayed in Rockhampton for the night. Rockie is home to Australia's best steak, well so they claim, so John had to provide an independent judgement on that and full marks to Rockie and it's steak. The following day we drove north the whole way to Airlie beach (fuelled by rumours of another inpending storm and wanted to get there before any more roads were closed on us). We made it through but were quite nervous when torrential rain lashed the yacht club the evening we were getting on the boat...here we go again we thought...

But luckily for us we left the rain behind the night we boarded the Anaconda III. The boat was a beautiful 101ft yacht that held 32 passengers and 8 crew. The skipper wouldn't sail out of port the first evening until after midnight because it was Friday the 13th. Bizarrely I also had to dump my bananas before getting on board because the skipper thought they were bad luck to have on a boat ?? So we went to sleep that night with rain and woke up the next morning in the Whitsundays to blue skies!! Halle-fu$!king-lujahh!!!! Our first morning we went to a coral beach to start snorkelling and also to learn how to skuba dive. I tried it for about 5 minutes and didn't like it, but John did a half hour dive that morning through the coral. I have to say though that snorelling in the Whitsundays is so amazing that you don't need to dive to see it. That afternoon we sailed out to the Great Barrier Reef - even got the spinnaker up for a while which looked amazing! Because the yacht was one of the largest sailing the Whitsundays it was able to sail to the outer Barrier Reef and we spent the next two nights at sea there. Wow - the snorkelling was amazing! There are these troughs in the coral that are about 8 or 10 metres deep that the boat can sail through and then when you jump off you can swim over to coral where it's only a 1m under the water. The visability we had was amazing as well - the water was crystal clear. We were really lucky that we hadn't made the earlier trip that we were booked on because the dive crew were saying that all the storms had churned up the water so it was really cloudy and you couldn't see too much. The colours of the coral and the fish we saw were just amazing and we even saw giant sea turtles (some people saw a few reef sharks, but not me thank God!). So by day we just snorkelled for hours, lay out on deck in the sun, and then in the evening sat back had a few beers or wine, enjoyed amazing sunsets, looked at the stars (they were so clear, just beautiful), and even magic lightning shows from storms off in the distance (our brilliant skipper sailed to the spots in between the storms every day so we enjoyed three days of sunshine!). On the last day we sailed back in around the Whitsundays and hopped off for a walk on Whitehaven beach, home to the world's whitest sand - literally!! For anyone thinking of booking the Anaconda III I would definitely recommend it. The food was all included and was really good. The crew couldn't have been nicer and the boat itself was, although a bit older, really lovely. It's not a booze cruise, you can't bring your own drink on board as they have a bar on board. This suited us perfectly as if you're going to be up every morning snorkelling at 8am you don't want to be hungover. All in all the Whitsundays and the Barrier Reef was the highlight of my trip so far! And what do you know as soon as we sat back into the camper and drove away from Airlie it started to rain again...oh well, it was good while it lasted!

As we had lost so much time with all the hanging around in the rain, and we had to have the camper back to Sydney by a certain date, we were under time pressure the rest of the way down the coast. I won't bore you with the details of all the driving (4,965kms in 3 weeks - the equivalent of driving Cork to Dublin everyday for 3 weeks!) but just tell you about another few highlights on the way down:

Town of 1770 - this is a small little fishing village on the coast and was a great one night stop - really pretty and the camp site was literally on the beach looking at the water. We were settled early evening sitting outside with a couple of beers and chilling out to watch the sunset over the water when John couldn't find the camera....retracing our steps we realised that he had it last at another beach a couple of miles back the road and he thought he left it sitting on a railing. He went back and yup it was gone...along with his ipod that was in the case and all the photos we had taken on the East Coast - whoops!! Thank God Kev in Sydney had put all our photos before that onto CDs for us and we had posted these home so we didn't lose all the photos of our trip so far... don't think I'd have been quite as forgiving if that had been the case!!

Fraser Island - the world's largest sand island. We did a day trip here as we didn't have enough time to do the 2 nights camping we were planning. This is an amazing island to see - the whole thing is made of sand and there are these huge forests that are growing there (it used to be one large commercial forest in the mid 1900s until UNESCO declared it a world heritage site in 1991). As the island is still growing these forests are being buried in sand dunes. We took a scenc flight over the island and you can see where the forests are meeting the dunes. There are also loads of fresh water streams and lakes that you can straight from (the whole island has more water in it than Sydney harbour) and so the whole thing was just beautiful. We have some photos but they were taken with old fashioned film in a fisher price style camera that we got on the ferry over so I can't put them up here.

Brisbane - spent one day exploring the South Bank and the city centre and it's a small compact city with a good vibe to it. That evening we drove south to Main beach on the Gold Coast and met up with Emer and Kev who were up for the weekend...a good night was had by all and we had the hangovers the next day to prove it! We were supposed to hit some of the theme parks the next day that the Gold Coast is famous for but we weren't quite up to it!

Australia Zoo - the is Steve Irwin's (the Crocodile Hunter) zoo and it's really cool! We spent a full day here and the crocs were really impressive! We bought another role of film for the fisher price camera here as well so we'll have the pictures when we get home.

Byron Bay - just wow! A beautiful town and more amazing beach. All was looking good here - we had a beautiful blue sky and a new digital camera to capture it all with! The lighthouse at the end of the beach is the highlight of the town. We would loved to have spent a few days here but alas needed to get back in the van and eat up another few miles on the road as time was against us.

Hunter Valley - we had a day and a half here and the first afternoon we went around to the various vineyards and had a lovely alfresco supper of wine, cheese, salami, olives etc. The following day we were planning to hit the vines with gusto but John wasn't feeling great so we just chilled out by the pool before we hit the road for home...well Sydney, but it felt like we were going home!

We had 5 more days in Sdney - staying in Aidan's 5 star luxury pad- thanks Aidan! - and the highlights would have to be our proper Irish breakfast! John and myself did a run to the Taste of Ireland shop to get proper Irish sausages and black and white pudding! We cooked a feast for Aidan, Emer and Kev on the Saturday morning and then Saturday night Aidan had everyone round to his for our going away drinks - thanks Aidan! It was off to the pub then at about 1am to watch Ireland take on England in the rugby - tough going to last it out until 7am but worth it for the win! and then just one last day in Sydney nursing the hangovers before our early flight out to New Zealand on Monday morning....

So sad to be leaving Sydney and everyone there but excited to be hitting the road again and exploring new places. So to all in Sydney - we can't wait to see you all back in Ireland soon!!! Miss you loads!

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Photos

Sydney Harbour on a Saturday morning
We'll miss this view for sure!

Last night in Sydney
Aoife and John - careful now!

Last night in Sydney
Tori, Jen, Alan and Aoife

Last night in Sydney
Emer, Siobhan and Dave

Last night in Sydney
Jonathan and John - I hope they were messing!