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Published: November 2nd 2006
G'Day! Hows it going?
Well... what can I say? The last three weeks or how ever long it has been have been pretty mental, manic, and action packed. I've not had much sleep, spent a lot of time under the influence of alcohol, spent a fair bit of time in the ocean, crammed in loads of activities and have probably done loads of stuff which I have now forgotten. It has all kind of blurred into one but I'll do my best to tell my story to the best of my ability.... Enjoy!
Welcome to Cairns. :-) I arrived in Cairns at sometime in the evening on a Thursday. Cairns is a town that thrives on tourism... most of the development is there for tourists and because of it's close proximity to the great barrier reef it is a pretty popular place. I arrived at Gilligan's backpackers which is a slightly more upmarket place and caters to backpackers' every need.. It has a bar/club, pizza restaurant, bottle shop, swimming pool, gym and really nice dorm rooms. It's pretty nice.. more like a hotel. It's safe.. like a house. Perfect!
On arrival I decided to get the formalities out
of the way and book a 5 day Scuba diving course, and also a day trip to Cape Tribulation which is further north up the East Coast. So having got that lot done I headed out with the people from my dorm to drink and dance. There's some quite good bars here and they are all full of backpackers. The people in my room were quite cool... some English peeps, Aussie's, and an American. Think that's it. There seems to be people from pretty much every country here in Oz. I've met some weird, cool, strange, amazing and mad people. Anyway, I believe I ended up in some cheesy place called the Woolshed until pretty late and got to sleep around 4.00am. Nice.
Two and a half hours later I awoke to the sound of summer or perhaps just my phone alarm. I felt pretty bad. Anyway, a vehicle picked me up and we headed out of Cairns driving along a nice scenic road next to the ocean. Some pretty nice beaches north of Cairns and a nice journey towards Daintree. When we arrived at the Daintree river we took a boat ride to see some wild salt water
crocodile's. This is crocodile country up here and swimming is definitely not recommended! The crocs even hang out in the sea so some of the beaches aren't swimmable. Well they are but you could get eaten by a croc and die. We saw some crocs hanging out in the riverbed and then headed to the other side of the river where we continued our journey into the Daintree rainforest. Here we did a walk to see some of the mad plants and trees frolicking in the mist, or the sun. There's some pretty amazing tropical scenery here where the rain forest meets the sea. Lovely place!
We continued up to Cape tribulation which was named by Captain Cook because of the trials and tribulations he was having when he passed this place. After a rain forest lunch we headed to the beach.... A long, rugged beach completely backed my rain forest. Nice. There's not much at Cape Tribulation apart from the rain forest and the sea. However, I've heard that loads of hippies live here. Peace out man. We left Cape Tribulation and journeyed back south to Mossman Gorge. The river here is very wet and perfect for swimming.
There are plenty of massive boulders which make the place look pretty special. On the way back we stopped at the Alexandra Range lookout for some top views, and stopped in at Port Douglas which is pretty much a scuba diving town for rich people! By this stage I was pretty tired so on getting back to Gilligan's I went for a power nap until I was awoken by some Gappie's who were arriving in our dorm. Gappie's' are people who are on their gap year between School and Uni. Note that Australians like to shorten words and put "ie" or "y" at the end: Sunnie's, Tinny, Barbie, Stubby, Aussie, Dunnie, Pokie, Possy.... In a similar way they like to put an 'O' on the end of shortened names... Jon-0, Steve-O, Pop-O, Craig-O. However these Gappie's were not Australians but from that wonderful country called England. Anyway these guys were pretty cool.. and were on their holiday from working in Sydney.
For my next day in the wonderful land of Australia I began my PADI Open water scuba diving course. Once you have your Open Water certification you can basically go diving on your own without an instructor and
do more advanced and exciting dives. Pretty neat. There were 4 others in my group, some Irish people who I got on well with and an Australian girl from Airlie beach who was pretty funny. A school teacher that was more like a kid. Oh and our instructor was a girl from new Zealand.. she was pretty cool. The first day involved watching video's and practising questions ready for the final exam followed by dive training in the pool. All good stuff. I then headed back to prepare for another night out on the town. More drinking, dancing, the usual stuff. Met some cool people including some safe Danish girls. Another very late night then up early for more diving...
Pretty hungover on this fine morning but jumping into the pool seemed to do the trick. Even better than drinking a mug of gravy. I kind of like it underwater... it's pretty cool. Today we did some more training in the pool, watched video's and took the final test which I passed. Pretty easy really although somehow the Irish people managed to fail. It's ok though they can take it again on the boat! To be sure.. to be
sure! A good day at the office but I'm pretty tired out. Oh well I might as well go out with the Gappie's. And so... we headed out and got messy. More alcohol consumption and dancing. Met more people from around the world. Good stuff.
Hip Hip... Hooray! It's 6.00 in the morning my favourite time of the day - especially when I've only had a few hours sleep. But guess what?? I've now been travelling for 80 days! If I was as good as Willy Fog I would have got right the way around the world by now - but I'm obviously not. I've only made it to Cairns. Oh well. Maybe he didn't stop to go diving...
And that's what I did to celebrate my 80th day of exploring. **Please note I am an explorer, not a backpacker. We headed straight to the harbour where we boarded a big catamaran called 'Reef Quest'. A pretty mint boat to say the least! The journey out to the reef was pretty rough with some big waves. I didn't expect the sea to be this rough and that the reef would be a few hours away from the land,
but it was. Loads of people were sea sick, mainly the Japanese people on the boat. Oh well... I wasn't. We arrived at the reef to some amazingly blue waters and some mad little waves on the edge of the reef. My first open water dive was a pretty amazing one... We did lots of the certification stuff under water and saw loads of cool fish and corals. Lovin it. After a tasty lunch we moved locations for our afternoon's dive. Again more procedures to do underwater such as breathing your buddies air, emergency stuff, strange floaty stuff, mask taking off etc. All went well. We did a fair bit of exploring on this dive and saw loads of cool stuff including a massive fish known as "Wally", the Maori Wrasse. This is one BIG fish! An amazing day, and a fun bumpy ride back to Terra ferma. Exhausted!!!
Our second day on the great barrier reef all went well. After 2 dives in the morning we were now certified divers! Yay! In the afternoon we headed to a place called Turtle Bay on Norman reef. This would be our first dive on our own without an instructor. A
bit scary and I had the job of navigating! But it went really well... Saw some absolutely amazing stuff down there including some big sea turtles. Cool creatures... Me likes the sea turtles!! We made it back without getting lost and surfaced on time near the boat. Good stuff. I'm am starting to love this diving malarkey! Again I headed out with some peeps, Alex (UK) and Jacky, (Austria), drank lots and passed out asleep at some stage, although can't remember when. Perfect. Lovin it! Nearly as much as McDonald's!
Great Barrier Reef Day 3 - Our morning dive went somewhat pear shaped but was still pretty cool. The object was to swim around this bommy, (an isolated patch of reef) and swim back to the boat before the air ran out. It started off well and we were treated to the experience of seeing a big shark which was slightly scary but exciting, however we never found our way around the bommy. We kept on swimming trying to find the way round and thought we were heading in the right direction but no. Navigating underwater is not easy. As my buddy was running low on air we decided
to surface only to see the boat as a small object in the distance. We were in the middle of ocean a long way from the reef. It took us a good 25 minutes to swim back to the boat and by the time we got back were completely exhausted. Oh well - It was good exercise. The afternoon dive went better - not amazing visibility but saw some good stuff and navigated well. Nice One. A great day out in the ocean. Come back soon please. Yes, thank you please. Goodbye. Over and Out. Eye Eye Captain. Respect the Ocean.
The following day I left Cairns and my Gappie friends and took the morning bus down the East coast on a mission to a place called Mission beach. I checked in to my sleeping quarters then spent most of the day walking and chilling out on this extremely long rugged beach backed by rain forest... a pretty cool beach. A good relaxing day for me. I also saw some people skydiving and landing on the beach which looked pretty amazing... mmmm tempting. The place I was staying at was pretty chilled out so spent the night drinking, eating,
and well... just hanging about.
My next destination was a town called Townsville. A perfect name for a town. However, I didn't stop here for long. Townsville is the gateway to Magnetic island which is named so because Captain Cook had compass problems when passing this place. However, the island is not magnetic, although maybe it makes people want to stay so it does have magnetic qualities??? We shall see....
I took the short 20 minute ferry over from Townsville to Magnetic Island and the bus to my accommodation of choice... Base. Base backpackers. Nice name. Base is a pretty cool place right next to the ocean at Nelly Bay where that famous elephant once went with a trumpety trump. It has some cool A-frame style dorm accommodation and some interesting foreign girl inhabitants... and me. Perfect. Oh and a Canadian guy. After beaching it up for a while I headed to the bar, met some people, played bingo?!, didn't win, drank some jugs and listened to music and voices with my lovely ears. Nice work. Then bed. Night kids. See ya's tomorrow...
Hello welcome to tomorrow, or "today" as some people in the southern hemisphere might
call it. Early start for me for a bus ride to the other side of the island to Horseshoe bay. A lovely beach here and some nice little cafes and pubs on the beach facing street. Nice!
If you can remember from my Thailand post I am now a professional kayaker, and I therefore decided to do a Kayak tour here in Magnetic. Whilst the guy who was leading it sounded somewhat like Keith Chegwin, he was quite cool. My kayak partner was a girl from Denmark. She didn't speak much English but that doesn't matter. She had better qualities. Anyway, the Kayak trip was highly enjoyable and we paddled for a few hours out in to the ocean on this lovely hot day to some secluded beaches... Balding and Radical Bay. Pretty radical man. After a tropical breakfast on the beach we headed back and spotted some sea turtles popping up for air. Good stuff. Pretty tiring on the old arms though. A good trip.
"Mook Mook" There are these mad little cars here that everyone hires... there called Mooks. Mad crazy cars. Anyway I didn't hire one... maybe next time. "Mook Mook".
I spent the
afternoon at this hot beach with plenty of sun tan lotion on. I have heard on the grape vine the the Aussie sun is even more dangerous than the Asian one. I am therefore wearing lots of the white stuff. ** Please note Asian people I am not wearing skin whitening cream!! After sweating it out on the beach and walking around on the sand at low tide I decided to go walkabout and do one of the many walks on the island. The forts walk goes up into the forested hills and has some amazing views of Arther and Florence Bay. This walk is also popular as it is a good place for Koala spotting. Just in case you are wondering, it is called the fort walk as there are old forts on the top of the hills with gun turrets left over from the war. I spent the majority of my walk looking up in the eucalyptus trees for some koalas but reached the top without seeing any. However, I did hear their very loud growls. Slightly disappointed I headed back down only to find some people looking up into a tree where there was a mummy koala
and its little baby sitting there in the tree... Well cute! Its cool seeing these animals in the wild. :-) It was pretty low down as well just having a nap. Here's some koala facts: As some Australian girls once told me and Rich in London... Koalas should not be referred to as Koala bears!! They are not bears! And I have also discovered in the land of Oz that Koalas sleep for about 20 hours of the day. The rest of the time they eat or move to another tree. Pretty exciting life huh! Anyway I returned back to "base" a happy bunny and was even lucky enough to see another one on the walk back. It was eating some leaves and even climbing!
Australia is pretty expensive, well compared with Asia anyway. Actually some stuff seems more expensive than England like crisps, chocolate, coke and some food. All the good stuff. Alcohol seems about the same. Anyway my point is... I've spent loads here and I'm going to start having to cook my own food occasionally. Tough life isn't it! So on this night I had an amazing meal which was basically the Oz version of Super
PeterPopper
hey!! Is that a koala I can see over there?noodles. Pretty tasty! Or Not. More alcohol consumption in the evening.. If you buy a whole jug of beer it works out cheaper so that's what I'm gonna do from now on. Wow.. I'm really good at finding ways to save money. :-)
After a good sleep in the A-frame it was time to depart this place on a floating devise known to sailors and marine experts as "a ferry". Nice. I hopped on the bus at Townsville and headed south to a place called Arlie beach. Arlie beach is the gateway to the Whitsunday islands and marine park. Lots and lots and lots of boats here! I had pre-booked a trip so on arrival at my backpacker place which had some top views of the bay, I headed down to the main street to check in. Not much to do here apart from watch a safety video. Safe! Now you meet a lot of people whilst travelling but it's not often you meet someone from nowhere. He asked me where I was from... I told him. I asked him where he was from... He said nowhere. He had been in so many different places at so many different
times and didn't know where he was from. He was just a man from nowhere. A pretty cool place to be from. Mad.
The next day it was time to begin my sailing trip. I picked up some alcohol supplies from the drive through bottle shop which is somewhat like McDonald's except they sell alcohol instead of Big Macs. But, as with McDonald you can also walk in... so I did... purchased some tinny's and headed to the harbour to meet the crew and my fellow sailors. My vessel of choice was called "Wings", a catamaran with sails and mean motors. It was a a pretty amazing boat and is probably worth a few squillion bux. Nice. The crew were all pretty sound... Captain King Dave, Kiwi Harry, Australian Brie, (like the cheese), and another Australian woman, (sorry I forgotten your name). It's hard to remember names when you are travelling as you meet so many people. There's about 20 of us on board some English boys from England, Irish girls from Ireland, Ze Germans from Germany, and some Japanese people. I can't remember where they were from??? I love Japanese people, they are so funny. Every time I
meet them and say I'm from England the first thing they say is "David Bekham". He's like the only English person they know. They are always happy as well and get excited about nothing! Love em.
And so... On this extremely hot day with beautiful clear blue sky's we set sail into the ocean which had a lush greeny blue colour and looked more inviting than a perfect strawberry soaked in cabbage water. Well... nearly. Relaxing on that net thing they always seem to have on catamaran's I enjoyed the views of the islands as we sailed through them. The Whitsundays really are an beautiful place. There wasn't much wind so we relied on the use of the powerful engines to take us to a bay on the main island in the Whitsundays which is aptly named: Whitsunday island. Love it. Weather reports coming in were reporting strong wind so we needed to get to this bay before the waves got too big to allow us to do so... and we did... thanks King Dave! We anchored up in this bay which was rich with turtle life. Cowabunga! It was then time to crack open some tinny's and have
a barbie! 'Wings' has a BBQ type device attached to the back so Harry cooked up some pucka chicken which we had with an amazing selection of other eats expertly cooked up by the in boat chef... Brie. A perfect name for a chef me thinks. She's not French though! We spent the evening drinking, eating, talking and looking at the stars. I also saw a satellite... I think. Amazing skies out here in the Whitsundays! After watching a presentation of photo's taken in the day and a movie on the big screen multimedia system set up in the boat it was time to visit the land of nod. My sleeping quarters could be described as "a shelf'. Although it was more comfortable than a shelf.. it just reminded me of one. As the night went on it became more windy as the noise of the water splashing against the side of the boat which happened to be where my head was kept me up much of the night. Oh well.. who needs sleep anyway.
We were up early for breakfast and were greeted by dark grey clouds and then rain. After some breaky we headed over to the
mainland on the speed boat and walked into the Whitsunday nature reserve up to the main viewpoint for Whitehaven beach which is regarded by some as one of the best beaches in the world. As we reached the top of the lookout the weather had worsened... it was now raining lots and windy. A storm was brewing. Perfect! Apparently this was the first time it had rained like this in months. Perfect again. Oh well... You win some and you loose some. Rain is fun anyway. Look on the bright side I always think. Despite the weather the view was still pretty special with the crazy swirling sands of Whitehaven beach. An amazing, somewhat wet, spectacular view. Nice one mate, nice one.
We headed down in the rain to play on the beach. The sand was the whitest and finest I've ever experienced and in the wind and rain it looked like snow. The beach was pretty deserted apart from us and we spent a few hours playing in the water and sand. We were completely drenched and just gave in to the fact that we were wet. All good fun. Whitehaven beach is an extremely natural looking beach
in its purist form. An amazing place. I would strongly recommend it - even in the rain. Lovin it. Maybe I will go back someday when its sunny? Perhaps... yes.
We headed back to the boat as the sun was peering through the clouds to say hello. The weather had brought with it some strong winds and big waves and whilst some people may refer to this as "crap weather", it makes sailing lots of fun. We sailed back out into the ocean making use of our sails and engines. There were some great waves which the boat had fun surfing down and this felt a lot more like sailing than it did the previous day. Some people however felt sea sick again. I loved it. King Dave let me drive the boat for a while which wasn't too difficult as it had a GPS and I just had to steer to keep the boats course in line with the computer. Still loads of fun though.
After a few hours sailing we arrived at a bay on Hook island where we did our first scuba dive of the day. I was pretty keen to get back underwater after
my diving in Cairns and was pretty excited. The dive was pretty good, however the weather made the visibility poor. We then sailed around to Manta Ray bay where many people did a second dive. Not me - I decided to wait until it got dark to do my first night dive. There was only me, the instructor and a dive master that wanted to do it so there was just the three of us. We had a torch each and a small glow stick attached to each of our tanks. We jumped into the water in the pitch dark and swam over to a coral area where we went down together. It was slightly scary at first and you couldn't see anything at all down there apart from where your torch was shining. However, this dive was an absolutely amazing experience. We spent about 40 minutes down below swimming through this dark underwater world. The torch light brings out some crazy colours in the stuff down there and I saw some pretty cool stuff including a sea star as big as me, lobsters and crabs, colourful clams, big spikey colourful balls, random eyes, and these floating things that glowed
Whitehaven beach
From the lookout blue in the dark without the torch light. The instructor didn't know what they were either? Mad things. It was quite difficult swimming around the corals and rocks in the dark and it's very easy to get disorientated. The strong currents also caused a few problems but nothing major. Anyway.. I loved it. Scuba diving at night is a top experience. Amazing! When we surfaced near the boat we were greeted with the smells of steak cooking on the barbie! Perfect! We climbed aboard had a barbie with steak and beer then enjoyed the evening under the stars. Again the weather was blowing up so we sailed around to another bay to take shelter. Good stuff.
After another nights attempted shut eye we got up for an early breakfast. More rain. Loving it... just like being back at home. Kind of. Except I'm on a boat... in the sea. Anyway we did another morning dive which was probably my best yet. We went through loads of caves and swim through's and there were absolutely loads of fish and beautiful corals down there. Some of the gaps were quite small but I managed to get through banging my self on
the rock a few times. You have to be really careful not to damage the corals down there! It was mint under the coral caves as you get to see some big fish and sea creatures hiding out. I can't believe how colourful and beautifully decorated some of them are.. It's like an artist has gone down and painted intricate patterns on them all. At times all I was completely surrounded by fish and all I could see was a wonderful mix of colour. Nice. Visual ecstacy.
After luncheon it was time to sail back to shore in the big daddy waves. I had originally planned to leave Airle beach when I got back to dry land but decided to stay an extra night to go out with the peeps from the trip. And so.. I made a few calls, cancelled some stuff, changed some stuff, checked back in to my backpacker place and went out to some bars and stuff to get proper wasted... It was a bit mad because I bumped in to loads of people at once in this bar at Arlie beach... a gappie girl that was in my dorm in Cairns, some Danish girls
The Ocean, Whitsundays
I see a little fishy... I met in Cairns, and other people I met somewhere in Oz. Anyway... jugs of snake bight are popular here and because of this I ended up pretty hammered. I good night if I remember correctly.
The day before tomorrow is the day after yesterday which is often referred to as "Today". Not a good day by any means. I had to get up at 9.00 to check out feeling somewhat hungover, then spent the rest of the day on the streets, hanging about and stuff. Didn't do much at all... in fact I'm not really sure what I did for those 11 hours until I had to catch the bus. Definitely not the most productive 11 hours of my life. Oh well.
Oh yeah... just remembered... I had a pizza. Pretty productive after all. I take that back.
The 13 hour bus journey to Hervey bay wasn't as bad as I expected. Usually I can't sleep on buses but having only had a few hours the previous night I managed to visit dreamworld a fair bit. I shall remember that for future long haul bus journey's. I arrived in Hervey Bay in the morning hitched a
ride in the mini bus to the backpackers and chucked my stuff in the room. I then went exploring... Hervey Bay as a town is not particularly inspiring. Some weird locals, an average beach, the odd shop, and the customary backpacker establishments and bars. But Hervey Bay has a few special tricks up its sleeve... Firstly it is the main entry point to Fraser Island and secondly it is a great place for whale watching...
And so, on this fine sunny day in Hervey Bay I sailed out into the sea in search of these big things they call "Whales". I had booked the whale watching trip a few days ago as it came well recommended from my greyhound bus magazine, lonely planet and people at the backpacker place I stayed at. It better be good after all those recommendations! After a short ride to the harbour we boarded this big fast catamaran boat. And it was fast... we sailed out into the marine park alongside Fraser Island in hope of seeing a few of these great giant mammals. At first I thought we weren't going to see any but after about an hour we started to see big
splashes in the water in front of us. We ended up seeing loads of these amazing humpbacks, many very close to the boat, some swimming right under it. Many of the humpbacks were breaching, launching themselves out of the water and splashing back in to the sea. Others were just splashing there tails in the water and coming by to take a look at the boat of strange people. There seemed to be an endless supply of these amazing whales here and it didn't take long for us to find others. The whales hangout in Hervey Bay every year on return from making babies further up north. Many of them therefore had little nippers which were very playful copying what their mother was doing. It was a pretty cool experience. Loved it. An amazing sight. I had a whale of a time! Ha Ha. We sailed back to the marina as the sun was setting. Goodbye Whales, Goodbye sun.
The following day I had a very early start. 5.00am. I checked out of the backpacker's and stored my stuff in a locker. It was then time to watch a video to prepare ourselves for Fraser island, the biggest sand
Its Me...
Getting ready for the night dive - Whitsunday's island in the world. I met my group of about 10 people who would be joining me on this adventure. Again lots of Germans and some Hungarians a Swiss girl and a Japanese girl. After signing a form to say that if we damaged or crashed the vehicle we would owe them lots of money, we headed to a big warehouse to get our camping gear... the usual stuff... tents, cookers, BBQ etc. After loading up the Toyota Landcruser it was pretty full of gear and people. We then went to the supermarket to purchase food for the trip and more importantly beer and goon. "Goon" is basically wine that comes in a box. You take it out of the box and you have a big bag of goon. It's cheap, you get loads of it and it doesn't taste that bad. All backpackers in Oz drink the goon. I love the goon, its amazing. You don't even need a cup, you can just squirt it directly into your mouth. Its a meal in a box, or a bag if you like. Once you've finished drinking the goon you can use the bag as a pillow, a life raft, or
just a big silver toy. Perfect. Anyway, that's enough about the goon for now...
After our shopping session we were jam packed in. We were running late and only just made it on to the ferry for the 45 minute journey to Fraser Island. Stephan drove first, and seemed to know what he was doing. We let the tyre pressure down once we reached the island ready for some hardcore sand driving. Fraser island is a pretty amazing place. If you love the sand you will love this place. And I do... I love both sand, and sandwiches. Whilst its completely sandy there are still loads of forests, natural lakes, and other cool things to explore. Our first destination was lake McKenzie. It took as a good few hours to get there over some pretty crazy sandy tracks. Many vehicles got stuck on the way and had to dig themselves out. Driving on sand is pretty fun especially when there's loads of steep hills, bumps and deep sand to manoeuvre through. Pure fun apart from screaming girls in the back. Anyway, we arrived at Lake Mckenzie a massive fresh water lake with possibly the clearest cleanest water I've swam
in and lovely natural sandy beaches around the lake. The water is so clean there is very little life living in the water. This day was pretty damn hot so swimming in this place was a joy. After a good few hours enjoying this natural wonderland we headed off to find a spot to camp. We picked a route and headed towards the eastern beach. By the time we got there it was starting to get dark so we drove up the beach at high speed and eventually found a cool place to camp just up from the beach. Perfect. It's pretty mad - The beach is actually a registered road and its a bit mental seeing loads of vehicles speeding up and down it.
We set up the tents and cooker as the pink skies turned black. We then cooked up an amazing BBQ with steak, chicken, burgers, corns and loads of other tasty stuff. We had loads and loads of grub so didn't go hungry. I love food. It's one of my favourites! We saw a load of dingo's that came to pay us a visit whilst we were eating. There's loads of dingo's on the island
and lots of warnings about them. Apparently your not supposed to walk around on your own and if you have children you should camp in fence protected areas. The dingo's seem quite cool though and just wander about. They didn't try to eat me or anything so I am a friend of the Dingo's for sure. After a walk down the beach in the dark for star viewing it was time to sleep. Not the most comfortable sleep I've had, but hey, I'm not here to sleep.
Up at around 6.00am the next day as it was getting far too hot in the tent. We made breaky, packed up, loaded up and drove up the beach to Eli Creek. A pretty mint creek flowing from the inland to the sea. We walked up the creek through the crystal clear water passing lots of kids on body boards and blow up dinosaurs etc. Looked pretty fun. Wish I brought something to blow up and float down the creek on! We then continued on further up the beach to the Maheno shipwreck, a pretty cool wreck half buried in the sand. Nice. More beach driving on the harder sand and a
few inland bypasses to avoid rocks and we arrived at Indian Head in the early afternoon. We parked up on the beach and walked up in the sweltering heat to to the top of Indian head, a cliff that protrudes into the sea. Some pretty special views from the top... the water was so clear and looked so inviting. However you are not meant to swim in the sea as the area as it is also popular with sharks. From the top we could see loads of massive fish, some absolutely ginormous sea turtles that kept bobbing up to the surface and in the distance a humpback whale that was breaching. A pretty special place. After taking in these amazing views for an hour or so we jumped back in the land cruiser to attempt to reach a place called the Champagne pools. We had to drive inland over a particularly difficult part and to no surprise we became stuck and had to dig ourselves out. It probably took us about 10 goes of reversing back and taking a run up to try and power through but eventually we made it. The tide was coming in and we became pretty
close to the water as we bumped through the sand. Apparently if you drive in sea water you loose your 1000 dollar deposit. This Hungarian guy went a bit mental every time we approached a sea puddle. He was like the sea water police. I just found it funny as I do most stuff.
We made it to the Champagne pools in the late afternoon. The rocks around the beach created these natural pools that are secluded from the rest of the sea. As the waves crash over the rocks they fill the pools with loads and loads of white mushy water which looks a lot like champagne. Hence the name... champagne pools. And you are allowed to swim in these! Amazing fun splashing about in this champagne as the waves crash over your head. 100 percent fun to be had here. Unfortunately it did not taste of champagne. More like water of the salty variety. Loved it. Definitely worth the drive.
It was then time for me to drive. Yeeeeaaaaaah!! The Germans said that I reminded them of a little kid with a new toy. It was pretty fun to say the least. Actually it was lots
and lots of fun! We drove over some pretty cool, bumpy, windy and hilly tracks in an attempt to find a camping place on another beach further up the coast. Loving it. We found the place but discovered that we needed a pass to camp there so headed back on ourselves to find a free place. Perfect. Again we put up the tents and cooked up. Spag bol for dinner. Yum, Yum, Bubble Gum.. Then it was time to drink Goon and lots of it. It's cool to share the goon so I did with some of the Germans. Some of them didn't drink but two of the German girls seem to like the goon nearly as much as me so I had some fellow team goon members. Just in case you are wondering why its called goon... I haven't got a clue! I asked a few Aussies and they hadn't heard of it. I think it may just be a backpacker word. Anyway, after climbing the odd tree, learning some German phrases and teaching them some proper English I eventually went to sleep.
As you can imagine I felt amazing the next day as always. Another early start
and I'm the driver again. Pancakes for breakfast... Perfect. The foreigners had never had lemon and sugar on pancakes before.... Pretty weird. They loved it though. On top of that they don't even have a pancake day... Even weirder! Anyway off we go... After driving even further up the beach in search of another shipwreck that we eventually discovered was underwater we made the journey back to the eastern beach and got stuck in the same place... again! More fun digging though.
Beach driving is also pretty fun as you can go quite fast, however you have to watch out for these big craters that often appear from nowhere where water flows into the sea and creates big dips. On top of that you have to watch out for aeroplanes landing... the beach is also a runway and a few planes landed on the journey. Around noon we parked up and did the 45 minute walk through the forest to find another lake known as lake Wabie. This lake is somewhat greener but still lovely to swim in and surrounded by these massive sand dunes which you can run down and jump into the water. Brilliant! I saw the
Sign - Fraser Island
Welcome to the biggest sand island in the world! biggest lizard I've ever seen walk by, ate some biscuits then headed back. It was then time for the journey inland back to catch the ferry. Some pretty exciting driving again and we made it in good time to catch the boat back.
Fraser island is an amazing place. A must do if you are travelling the East coast. I loved it and the weather was perfect. The people were pretty cool as well which made it good. Cool Banana's. Lovely jubely. Perfect Strawberries.
Another early rise at 5.00 the next morning to take the bus to my next stop... Noosa. Noosa is a an upmarket holiday destination and has some cool beaches, a lovely national park and some cool shops. On arrival in the late morning it was somewhat overcast. Oh well. It can't be sunny everyday. I took the bus to my backpacker joint of choice. Dolphin beach house on Sunshine beach. A pretty sweet place. Well relaxed. After a pie or two it was time to head off on a walk in the national park. I tramped along sunshine beach and into the park for the coastal walk. Some mint views of the ocean to
be seen, some nice rugged beaches and some good greenery. I managed to see some koalas and a kookaburra which was quite cool. As the afternoon went on the sun did manage to sneak through a few times. I found a nice secluded beach and watched the surfers for a bit, and then finally completed my walk at the busier main beach of Noosa as the sun was departing. Nice. After browsing the streets I headed back to Dolphins to chill out there for the night and listen to the trance that was coming out of the speakers. Laterz....
Crikey Mate! The next day I headed to Steve Irwins Australia Zoo, and what a lovely day for it. I didn't manage to get a ticket for the free bus but turned up anyway and managed to get a place. On the way they played video's about Steve Irwins life. A bit sad. Some good scenery on the way as well. Australia zoo is by no means the best zoo in the world but it's all about the crocs and the live shows. I decided to spend the day watching as many shows as possible.. the best ones were the
croc ones by far. They make a hell of a noise when they snap their jaw's to eat the dead rats or meat that is dangling teasingly above them. The whole zoo is pretty much based on the Croc Hunter himself and there's loads of big pictures and videos of him everywhere. There's also a memorial type thing that was being set up and a massive photo gallery which I spent some time looking at. Also during my day I met some giant tortoises that where 170 years old, bounced about with some kangaroos, saw Terri Irwin. Oh yeah, and I had a Bindi burger. And that's about it from Australia zoo. See ya later... alligator. In a while... crocodile!
I decided to walk back from the bus station at Noosa to Sunshine beach but managed to get lost. Thankfully a nice Australian woman gave me a lift back to base. Thanks very much whoever you were. Cheers.
Brisbane was my next destination, Australia's 3rd largest city. This is pretty much the first taster of city life I've had in Australia so was looking forward to some hardcore pollution and noise. On arrival I had to wait about
an hour to be picked up in a mini bus which broke down three times on the way to the backpacker joint in heavy traffic. It was therefore late in the afternoon before I got my self sorted and headed out to explore. I started my journey at Central station and headed down to the river to take in the river and city views. Some nice buildings here. Walking through the colourful botanical gardens via the mangrove boardwalk I checked out the Uni and some other buildings. Some reasonably interesting stuff to be seen and it made a welcome change. I then headed back to my backpacker place in the centre of town via the main shopping street. Later on after some scran I headed to some bars with some peeps from Finland. And that's it for day one. See you tomorrow...
The next day it was hot hot hot. I headed across the river to the south bank over the Victoria bridge. A very enjoyable walk near the river through the well landscaped South bank park lands. There's some quite nice little restaurants, cafes and shops here. The perfect place to have lunch... fish n chips for me.
:-) Also on the south bank there is a big artificial beach that has been built, set in some lush grounds with some cool views of the city skyline in the background. A nice place to relax and cool off for a few hours! Back over the Victoria bridge for me and time to attempt to find bus 471. Not an easy task. It took me a good hour or so and I had to phone up the travel line for help. It wasn't my fault though... roadworks had caused all the buses to divert. Anyway, bus 471 eventually took me to the Mount Cook-tha reserve for some pretty good views looking down over Brisbane, Moreton Bay and the Islands. Nice. It was then goon time. After getting gooned up I headed out to the Valley where there were some quite good bars with real music. Good stuff. And that was it for Brisbane.... whilst its not the most inspiring and beautiful city I've been to its quite a cool place to hang out for a few days... Next stop Surfers Paradise.
Paradise??? Not really. I arrived in Surfers paradise on a cloudy day to find thousands and thousands
Beach - Fraser Island
Makes a perfect road! of people on the streets, lots of traffic and overpriced backpacker places. Why?? Indy 300, Gold Coast, Australia 2006. They basically build a massive track around the streets and have lots of fast car races going on all day long. There are therefore thousands of people that love car racing in there team racing gear and those promotional girls everywhere. Getting to my backpacker place in Southport just outside surfers took ages. I dropped off my stuff and headed into town. Surfers is not the most attractive of towns... lots and lots of high rise flats and extreme commercialism. Whilst its called surfers paradise the breaks here aren't the best, although there were some people out in the sea on this cloudy day. It was a bit surreal at the beach... Fighter jets zooming past aren't what you usually expect to see. Crazy. Anyway I checked out the beach for a while and some of the shops, oh yeah and had a kebab. Pretty damn tasty. Now if I was here to watch the Indy 300 and could afford the 90 dollar day ticket it would have probably been quite good. However, after some consideration I decided that it wasn't
worth paying 90 dollars to stand behind a fence. The grandstand seats were even more. It would been better if I could have had a room on one of the many high rises that surrounded the tracks. Pretty much every balcony I could see had people on it. Then it rained.. a lot. I got wet... very wet. It carried on raining for a long time so once back at the backpackers I decided to not venture out again in these storms.
The next day it was Indy again. I considered going to watch it again but decided to save my precious money for stuff that I really wanted to do. A good choice me thinks. So I decided to leave on this day... for that place the locals call Byron Bay. I'm a poet and I don't know it. Well I do know now.
Anyway I think that's it for Queensland. I wonder why its called Queensland?? I wonder if it has anything to do with the queen?
Some final points:
You know you are not in England when Woolworth's starts to become your favourite shop! In Oz Woolworth's is like Tesco in England. It's
everywhere and sells food, not cd's and kids toys!It's pretty much the only supermarket give or take a few others and the only place you can get any reasonably priced food. But even some stuff seems expensive. Oh well... Respect to the Woolworth's!
Oh yeah and another weird thing... In Australia a Lollie is any type of sweet or candy... weird.
Ok then, I guess it's time for me to go...
I'll see ya next time.
Save a tree... Ride a cowboy.
Slap the goon.
Laterz...
PeterPopper :-)
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