Blogging? What's that?

---

It's the 26th Of April right now.. My last blog was on the 11th oops?

Yeah I was going to try and blog daily so I would not forget what I had done.
Whether it was motivation or just plain laziness or me doing a crazy amount of things which did not allow me to write well I guess it's a mixture of all of them.

Lets's continue with April 12th.
I drove to Mackay which is a town famous for being close to The Great Barrier Reef so I wanted to look in to going snorkelling or diving. I drove to an information centre to gather some information on how to set it up but they basically said all the company's that go to the reef there were closed due to the cyclone and the company's that did go had a crap view as everything was dead. They strongly advised against going snorkelling and to wait for a couple of weeks, they also advised to go up north more as the weather would only be terrible and everything would be destroyed.

yeah i'm pretty stubborn and when I want something I will go and do it even if someone says it's a bad idea.
I roamed around Mackay for a day and went to the botanical gardens where I skated for a bit and after went to the beach. Mackay was not the place for me so after staying a night in a holiday park I drove to Airlie Beach which is North more which I was told not to do.

Hah boy am I happy I did go to Airlie Beach.
I drove in to Airlie Beach and on my left I had the beach and beautiful blue sea with a bunch boats in there and a huge cruise ship just sitting in the sea. While driving on that ocean road it put a smile on my face and I drove in to the small town towards my holiday beach. All the trees were broken and there was not 1 leaf left on them. I drove over 2 big hills before arriving at the amazing place called "Flametree Tourist Village" the name spoke to me straight away as my cat is called Flame so I felt a funny connection haha. I drove on to the drive way and a guy with with a great beard came outside and asked if he could help me. I explained I wanted to stay there for the night and possible more as I was planning to do a tour to the Whitsunday Islands.

He went on to explain to me that they were actually closed due to the damages they had suffered from the cyclone and thus if I wanted a tour to pick me up they could not pick me up from the park and I could not use the camp kitchen or pool other than that if I was okay with that I could stay 1 night. I agreed and paid for the night. Before going to bed I drove back in to town to see if I could book a tour to the Whitsundays as that is where I wanted to go snorkel and discover the great barrier reef.

I went to some information centre that helped me book a tour however I could not go straight the next day but on the Saturday. That was okay with me I just needed to find a place to sleep until then but I was sure I could find something.

I bought some food and drove back to my holiday park. I walked over back to the man that helped me before and explained I had booked a tour and was wondering if it was alright if I could stay until Sunday morning as I had the tour on the Saturday. You could see him thinking and he asked me what I was doing the next day (Friday) as to which I explained nothing as I had not thought about that yet I only had the tour booked for the Saturday. He asked if I was willing to work for the day and help them clean the park and help with the damages to which I said of course. He said I could stay the nights for free until then even though I was more than willing to pay I thanked him greatly. He said they started at about 8:00 and I could decide how long I wanted to work for them and what time I wanted to help them implying I could sleep in.

I thanked him and walked to my camper and started to make dinner while filming my surroundings and enjoyed the cockatoo's laughing.

I went to sleep after eating and enjoying the animal sounds around me and woke up early to go and help them clean up. I walked over to the owner and we introduced formally, his name is Aron. A car just pulled up with a man and women in there and the women got out. Aron introduced me to the man in the car, "This is Kev and you will be following him today, whatever he is doing you do or wherever he is you are okay?" No problem, I shook Kev's hand and got in the car. We drove to the back of the park where there were fallen down trees, leaves and branches. Attached to the car we had a big trailer.

He handed me a rake and we started raking all the fallen leaves and branches in to piles. I cannot describe how hot it is to at 8 in the morning already but I have major respect for all people that have to work in these conditions every single day. We multiple piles of leaves, sticks and branches. We walked over multiple areas picking up everything that had fallen and chopped up trees, used chain saws and generally just made piles of everything. After that Aron came over with an excavator and picked up everything up loaded it up in to the trailer. He was pretty skilled with that excavator and Kev made jokes that it was Aron's toy and he loves to play with his toys haha. Aron was racing around and made sure to put as much as possible in the trailer before Kev and I got in the car and drove to some dumping area where the whole town is dropping of the leaves and wood where the government is using it to make wood chips and other things to recycle it.

After driving up and down and refiling multiple times we had Lunch, Aron's wife's mother had made us all sandwiches and there were 2 girls and 2 children driving around in a golf cart bring around drinks for everyone. Once we had eaten enough and drank enough we continued to clean up the park until about 4. After we had worked all day we all sat on the patio of Aron and Angie's house having beer and Angie thanked all the volunteers for helping that day and had us introduce ourselves. They thanked me for my work all day as to which I explained I actually had a really good time and enjoyed it very much. I ate some food and had a shower and got my hair cut. There was a women at the park that travels around Australia with her husband and she did haircuts to make some extra money. I got my hair nice and short again after a little talk I headed back to the camper I went to bed.

I got up early the next day.. Saturday the day I was going to go on a tour to the Whitsundays.
I drove to the car park where I parked and walked over to the meeting spot where we were all supposed to meet up for the tour. I went with a boat called the Bullet which is a new boat and it's the fastest one. While I was waiting for everyone to arrive a taxi arrived that picks up everyone from the hostels are a bigger group got out. One of the dudes that came out and sat next to me. Casually waiting a bit we started talking and introduced. Nicolas was from Germany and had been traveling for about 8 Months now and was leaving back to Germany next week.

While talking for a while the tour guides called us all together and counted heads and we had to fill in some forms saying whether we were good swimmers or had allergy's etc. Nicolas and I were the only weird ones haha he had to get a special food package because he was vegetarian and I got a special one without nuts. We all walked over to the boat and got on. Nicolas and I quickly became friends so sat next to each other. The engines started and off we went, of course we got some simple rules and we got our lunch esky's that contained one wrap and 2 bottles of drink and 1 piece of fruit!

We drove? in the amazing blue sea for about an hour to reach our first destination. Hill inlet lookout, the one and only and major famous spot. We walked on a little trail for about 15 minutes to reach the look out and holy moly was that an amazing view. I cannot get over how beautiful the view was, even the tour guides said it had not looked this nice in such a long time.

After spending some time there and getting an explanation of the history of the place we went back to the boat and took off, we drove? to the famous Whitehaven Beach. The beach is famous for it's amazing white soft sand and blue sea. Obviously in my case all the trees were all brown instead of green due to the cyclone but it was still beautiful and the sand was so soft.

We stopped on the beach on got 2 hours to have a good time, they guide's brought some balls and a Frisbee.
They gave us a stinger suit against any animals that could sting us, the first thing Nicolas and I did was put on our wet suits and ran in to the water for a fresh dive. We spent a good 20 minutes swimming before we grabbed a frisbee and started chucking that at each other while floating around in the beautiful ocean.

After about an hour in the water we got out and ate our lunch and sun bathed a bit. I'm at sunbathing so as the guides said if you rub the sand on your body and in your hand it makes your skin soft after about 10 minutes that is exactly what I did. I completely covered myself in sand and ran right back in to the sea, this time without stinger suit haha.

The water was colder this time but maaaan it was so good. I swam around again for a bit before we had to get out as we were going to our last destination. Everybody got back on board and drove? for about an hour to the last spot where we could snorkel. I put my stinger suit back on and put my GoPro on my head and hopped in the smaller boat and was brought to the snorkel location. Nicolas got in the sea put our heads in the sea and looked down both came up looked at each other and said "I can't see anything?" and laughed. I lifted my goggles a bit and flop there goes my ear ring. Nicolas said I lost my earring, I felt my ear and asked if he saw it drop. Well there was no way I would find that in the sea, I took my other one out and continued to look for coral. After a little bit we started finding the coral and the fishes float about. It's sad to see a lot of coral affected by the Cyclone but there were also loads of very life pieces of coral which were bright yellow and bright blue. It was beautiful to see and a once in a life time experience.

We floated around looking at fish and coral for about an hour before being picked up again and then went back to to Airlie Beach. Once we arrived back at Airlie Nicolas said bye to each other and he stood to wait for his taxi back to the park. I offered if he wanted to drive with me as I needed to go in to town anyway as I needed to go to the tattoo shop to buy a new ear ring. He agreed and I drove to the town where I dropped him off at his hostel and I parked in a parking area. I ran to the tattoo shop, bought a new ear ring and went back to the park. Just on time for their Saturday Barbecue they had invited me for the day before.

I sat down by the fire and ate some food and got a beer. I talked to the owners of the park thanking them dearly for letting me stay with them even though they were closed and that I very much appreciated all the food and drinks. Angie had explained they still had some issues with their IT as I explained what I did for a living. We agreed I would help the next morning with some IT related stuff before I would drive to Townsville. We had a great evening drinking and laughing, everyone had gone to bed while I spent some time playing cards with some people from the park before going to bed myself.

The next day I woke up early and walked to Angie who offered me some hot cross bun's at it was easter.
We walked inside and I helped them fixing some issues regarding the Mail and Dropbox. After everything worked again and they were happy I thanked them for everything again and hopped in to my camper and started my drive to Townsville which was about a 3 hour drive. And this is where I will pick it up from next time again. I am no where near up to date but my hands are tired from typing haha.

Thank you for reading.

---