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Published: February 20th 2007
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Well our travel plans went completely off track over the last few weeks due to fairly severe tropical storm and cyclone warnings in the northern regions of the east coast...I guess that's the rainy season for you!
When the flooding first hit we'd travelled as far north as a town called Rockhampton (the meat capital of the east coast apparently) where we spent a couple of days at a farm stay called Myella....learnt to ride a motorbike (although never got out of 4th gear...too scarey!), rode horses bare back (wish they had gears!), milked a cow, hand fed orphan wallabies (SO cute), cracked whips, learnt to lassoo (how do you spell that?!?!), made breakfast over camp fires and basically got down and dirty with the cowboys!!! All great fun!!
We then got stuck in Rockhampton for a couple of days - not alot to do apart from eat steak and annoy the hotel bar manager! Oh we did visit some caves which were quite cool as they had a 'church' inside them...see the pics. Eventually we managed to get a midnight coach to Airlie beach which had been the next planned destination...nothing like a 8 hour over night coach
Myella Farm
...feeding the resident adult roo ride to make you appreciate air travel! And so we got to Airlie..and it rained...and rained and rained a bit more. We'd been warned to watch out for crocs on the edges of the road as the flooding had made them 'wander about a bit'. Fan-bl**dy-tastic.
After a day of watching the rain and half an hour before we were due to sail around the Whitsundays for 3 days our trip got cancelled...cylcone warnings again! After much debate (about 10 mins) we thought s*d this and caught the first flight out of Airlie back down to Brisbane....our favourite place. Not. But it was the one place that wasn't raining on the east coast! Unfortunately that meant we never made it to Mission Beach or Magnetic Island...bummer.
So we spent a few unplanned days in Brisbane....or rather we booked ourselves into a fab island resort about an hours catamaran ride from Brisbane, called Moreton Island...hey we needed cheering up!!! Spent our time playing tennis, being hopeless at archery, quad biking (I LOVED that!), swimming and sand tabogganing...ace fun until you fell off and swallow buckets loads of sand (and yes I did that...I had sand in places I never
Milking the cow!
By the way these aren't our clothes..we borrowed them from the farm! knew existed!)! But the highlight was hand feeding the wild dolphins that came into the bay each night...totally amazing! Such beautiful creatures.
We then made a decision to try and follow the sunshine as best we could and headed back up to Surfers Paradise which is only an hours train ride from Brisbane. Still feeling a tad peeved at missing out part of our trip we booked into a lovely little apartment over looking a place called Mermaid Beach which is about 10 mins bus ride from the centre of Surfers...no more god awful hostels for us! Hurrah!
Great week spent in Surfers...and of course we had to give it a go so we learnt to surf! When in Rome and all that..well when I say we 'learnt to surf', we had a surf board and we were in the sea. That's about as far as it got. And I swallowed bucket loads of salt water and threw a huff after about 2 hours. The salt water mixed nicely with all that sand from the previous week......I think it made sand castles in my stomach....
However the highlight of our stay in Surfers was on the last
day when we went sky diving and jumped out of a plane at 12000 ft (Mum - I thought I wouldn't tell you before hand!). The most scariest, heart stopping, clammy handed, sweaty pits, vomit inducing thing I have EVER done. And then I did it again just to make sure it really was THAT terrifying. And I can confirm it is. But JUST INCREDIBLE. Words cannot adequately describe the feeling you have when your feet are dangling over the edge of an open door at 12000ft. On my first jump the instructor had to prize my hands off the door way much to Helen's amusement!
We have a lovely dvd of both of our jumps (and the look on our faces perfectly describes the feeling of being on the edge of that open door!!!!). Funnily enough there's a little bit of swearing in mine. Hmm.... there's a shocker. I think we might be able to get the dvd's on line so watch this space! Although they are the most unflattering video's ever...really, free falling plays hovoc with the flab on your face and I swear he got shots up my nose on purpose. I don't have a sky
Making brekkie over the fire...
..I was champion cheest toastie maker...! I've found my talent in life!! diving profile. Helen looks lovely on her's though. Humph.
Back in Brisbane now for a couple of days and then flying up to Cairns on Weds where we're meeting up with Helen's sister and her friend for a week. Its then my favourite part of the trip....swag bags at Ayres Rock....oh joy! :-(
Anyway will blog again soon!
Love to you all!
Sxxx
ps We went to a place called Bundaberg at some point but I'll be damned if I can remember when! Anyway the purpose of our visit was to see the turtles that come onto the beach after sun set and lay their eggs, hence the picture! Apparently David Attenborough did a programme on them from that very beach. So there you go.
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Samanthas Dad
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Doing it with cowboys!
I can relate to the sky diving, but "Getting down and dirty with the cowboys"...............? No wonder I have grey hair! Seriously though, sounds like a great holiday. We are going to West Yorkshire, Birmingham and Cornwall over the next few weeks. Somehow it does not have the same ring to it as Surfers Paradise etc.