A Jucy Adventure - Australia

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After Noosa we drove of to Rainbow beach to meet Peter's friends and head of to Fraser Island! Rainbow is a tiny place, with just three hostels down one small road - in which we camped! Apparently its called rainbow beach because there are different coloured sands in certain parts - we didn't see them, we were more interested in having a drink!

Needless to say we got rather pissed on jugs of Stella for £5, played drunk table tennis and generally farted about - good night! The first night we managed to fall asleep without wishing we had air con, and we woke up fully clothed!! We washed at some public showers down by the beach - Australia has the best, and cleanist public facilities ever - and waited for our pick up with a hang over!

The next day we headed of to Fraser Island on our two day one night tour! Fraser is a gigantic world heritage listed sand island - the worlds biggest! The massive sand island manages to house a rainforest, and over 40 different fresh water lakes! Its heavily advised here that you don't go swimming of its east coast as its infested with sharks, as well as stingers!

Once on Fraser, we trekked through the rain forest, then had a mamoth walk over the sand dunes to visit lake Wabbi - this was a mission in itself! The walk over the dunes was painful, they were scorching in the mid day heat! I suppose it was the closest you'd come to a natural oasis! Everyone took the easy walk back!

In the evening me and Rox went for a walk down the beach to relax - however, we were rudely interupted by a group of sand flies (we think), anyway they were massive! I decided to take my flip flops of and start to fight back splatting them - this made them angrier and they started chasing us - we ran! I dropped the camera in the sand - we're still cleaning it out now - Rox started screaming - we ran faster! Lucky there was no one else on the beach or we would have looked like a right couple of weirdo's!

The following day we headed of to India Head, this was very cool! This is probably the best vantage point on the island - we managed to see, sharks, dolphins, turtles, and rays, as well as a few big birdies! (we don't know what they were - maybe white bellied eagles!?) - we wish we had longer here!. We then headed of to see the pinnacles - a big area of cliffs made from all different coloured sands, apparently the different colours, all 70+ shades, are due to the different minerals in the sands, but were not sandologists so we could be wrong!

We then headed to see the wreck of the Maheno - a passenger liner blown ashore by a cyclone in 1935! Pretty cool, and relevant seeing as though we were going on a boat trip in the next few days whilst severe tropical cyclone Hamish was lingering about!!
We cooled of in Elie creek, drank the fresh water and then headed for the best part of the trip - Lake McKenzie! This is a stunning lake, crystal clear, fresh, and warm! We loved it! The sand is so fine, and perfectly clean - you don't mind this sand getting into places it shouldn't! We chilled here for a while, and it was so nice, Rox even put her head under!

Once back at Rainbow we drank again with Brad and Chris! Peter more so than Rox! Rox had to drive the next day as Peter was feeling pretty delicate thanks to the cheap cider! This was Rox's first drive since she smashed the curb to pieces in surfers paradise!

Rox drove to Bundaberg without incident! This was a qck stop over as we were only here to see the turtles! We went of that evening all excited to see the turtles - this was amazing!! We were so lucky as we were the first group of visitors to go down, we were to see a hatching! They were so cute, their little flippers breaking through the sand then pulling themselves out and scuttling off! They even received an 'ah' from all the burley blokes there! They instinctivley know to look for the lowest point of light, where the horizen meets the sea, this is how they know the direction to run!! The conservation rangers catch them all and put them in a little pen - they then brought a few round for us to see up close!!

When they were let go, we were to stand by and create a path for them to run down - we had specific intrusctions not to pick them up, and not to move so we don't tread on them - and what happens - a little turtle take a wrong turn at the traffic lights and veers of course and a silly old git picks it up, then walks across the path where all the other turtles are scampering to put it down, and in doing so treads on one - lucky the poor thing survived! We both hurteled some abuse at the fool, which he accepted and deserved! What a night! Apart from Rox pulled a local weirdo that lived in the campsite and was next to our pitch! What a lucky girl!

On our drive to Airlie beach we stopped over at Rockhampton - the home of beef for a steak lunch! This was quite a big place but had no people - it was pretty weird!!

News of cyclone Hamish started to spread - and was supposed to hit Whitsunday Islands the day before our sailing trip! We didn't take much notice and headed up to Airlie beach anyway! On the journey up however from Rockhampton the radio focused solely on Hamish, with an air raid siren highlighting a news bulletin was coming up! After hearing all this we decided to stay further inland at Prosperpine, and weren't really bothered until we reached our campsite and the manager warned Rox to lock all the camper and head to the toilet block for safety if things got bad! We were now starting to worry our sailing trip was going to be cancelled!

The following day we woke to light showers and no sign of Hamish. The boat trip was on!

We were with the Siska, a beautiful sailing boat - a racer! We were asigned to our supposed double bed, this had a rather large section missing which acted as the step up to the bunk above - needless to say Peter got this side! We were so lovely with the weather, perfect! Sunshine! The first place we arrived at we were lucky to see giant turtles surfacing for air - this was amazing! We trekked through the bush to a lookout that gave us stunning views of whithaven beach, then continued on to Betties beach for sunbathing and a game of cricket!! We were the only ones on the whole of the beach! Rox was pretty impressive at cricket!!

We had a few drinks, stayed up on deck with our new Siska buddies star gazing and looking out for dolphins!! Peter didn't manage the whole night in the bed - it was far to hot, so he slept on deck under the captains wheel - dreaming of his maiden voyage!

The next day we spotted some wild dolphins and went snorkelling near by!! We saw some massive flat fish swimming around us and Rox nearly freaked out!

From Airlie beach we drove up through Townsville and stayed just outside before continuing our journey up to Port Douglas!

We stayed in a nice campsite outside of port Douglas the day before our Great Barrier Reef. Once we got to the marina and got ready to leave we realised we didn't have Peter's wallet,we both started to panic Rox a little more then Peter! Luckily when we called the campsite they had found it at the phones where we had been the night before! We were so relieved and started to look forward to the rest of the day!

We boarded the silver sonic boat which was headed to 3 different reef sites. The first site appeared to be really deep and the sea looked really dark, this made Rox quite nervous but once we got our blue stinger suites on with hoods and mittens we were rareing to go. We jumped and Peter grabbed Rox whilst we were snorkelling and said look it was a bloody shark, the first thing we see this didn't make Rox any more confident. It was 2meters long and was a white tipped reef shark, it swam directly underneath us and then off in the opposite direction to which Rox was grateful. The marine life was amazing so much coral and different types of fish.

At the second stop Peter went off to do scuba diving whilst Rox stayed on board and made some friends. Scuba diving was brilliant, we went down to 12 metres, which i think is the limit for non PADI qualified divers, anyway it was deep enough - i had to equalize quite a bit as my ears were straining under the pressure. We swam round a pinnacle to see all the fish feeding around the coral, and out popped another white tip reef shark - this wasn't as big as the first one we spotted - but it was at ey level and about 5ft away. It was so impressive, it swam so gracefully and effortlessley.... It sent a shiver down my spine being so close, but they're probably not big enough to attack a human, although i dare say they'll make a mess of you trying! That was the highlight of the dive, and i was pretty eager to spot another one all throughout...

At the last stop we both decided to join a snorkel tour, the guide was brilliant we swam behind her and she would point out different types of coral and fish!she even picked up star fish, sea cucmber's , flat worm and a plants for us to feel and showed us some soft coral we could touch! Peter saw his third shark of the day swimming around the coral but Rox missed it again. There was huge fish called Maurice which the crew knew well that they fed, this was just over a metre long.

We had such a great day on the great barrier reef, we really wanted to go again but decided we need to save some pennies for New Zealand.

The following day we drove to the Daintree Rainforest where we stopped at the discovery centre to learn more about the rainforest and climed the tower to show us the different levels of the rainforest and above the canopey. We both got a little bit bored after we completed the walks and had an information overload from the audio guide and the information plaques.

Rox suggested we should go to a homemade ice cream factory recommended in the lonely planet, as we drove we saw a sign that said homemade icecream and 26different flavours so we stopped! We thought it seemed a bit strange there and wasn't quite what the lonely planet had described, the ice cream wasn't the best and we were served by a really old man who took 5minutes to get us the plastic spoons infront of him-bless him! We sat and moaned about the lonely planets recommendations, but as we drove not even 2minutes down the road we saw a sign for the ice cream factory- we laughed so much and took back what we said about the lonely planet.

We carrie on our drive up to Cape Tribulation and went to the beach there.... This was a lovely beach, we stopped there for a little while having a beer and some lunch... Rox was pretty worried about sitting near the bushes in the shade as there were warning signs everywhere telling you to watch out for salt water crocks! The drive round this part of Queensland was the attraction in our eyes, there is some stunning views, driving along the road that on one side has the Daintree rainforest and on the other the Great Barrier Reef.... We stopped numerous times to take in the sights and chill out... We stayed the night in a campsite surrounded by the Daintree - this was the worst night sleep so far - super mosquitos were patrolling the area so all windows had to be shut, and it was boiling with like 100% humidity - we were soaked... I woke (to the annoyance of Rox) every couple of hours or so to turn the engine on to get the air conditioning.... That 5 mins of cold air was bliss!

On our drive back towards Cairns, we stopped numerous times again - if anyone is heading up this way... the drive is well worth it! Once back in Cairns we chilled at our last campsite, making the most of our Jucy as were giving it back the next day 😞 ....... We spent most of the afternoon and evening finishing watching the 2nd series of 24 (the DVD's we brought in Vietnam!!) - pretty sad but we dont care!!!

The following day we spent sitting around the Lagoon in Cairns, catching the last rays before we fly of to Melbourne!!!

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