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Published: March 19th 2007
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Turtle on the beach
we went to this place on helen's birthday to watch a massive turtle lay her eggs on the beach. Hello people, sorry its been so long since the last blog, but unfortunately part 2 of the journey, between Allice and the Whitsundays is missing. We seemed to have lost the photos, but we have learned that it is a silly idea to keep photos on a tiny memory stick, especially when you've got holes in the pockets of most of your clothes. Maybe they will turn up eventually but in the meantime I'll just have to tell you what happened after flying out of Allice.
We landed in Cairns and stayed there for a few days and did some planning and little bit of scuba diving on the reef as you do. It was pretty good to do a dive and not be students because they made everything so easy, you didn't even have to set your gear up, just like tourists actually. The reef was very nice and colourful, although we didn't see anything big which was a bit disappointing. After Cairns we took the first of many trips down the coast, our first stop being, Magnetic Island where you're supposed to see Koalas but we didn't, largely due to laziness. The island kind of reminded me of
relocating the eggs
they had to move the eggs because they were too close to the sea. Silly turtle! there was 106 i think those greek islands, very picturesque and relaxing, but with more australians.
After Maggie we got on the bus again and i think we stopped next at 1770, one of the nicest little towns we've been to, its not overdeveloped like the others and it had a very laid back feel, also it had amazing views and a great beach. It was here that we decided to take the scooteroo tour, where you get on mini harleys or scooters and drive around the town in a massive convey looking for hopping creatures. The theory was if you could ride a bike you could ride a scooter, unfortunately this was not the case for Helen (although i haven't seen her on too many bikes). Unfortunately Helen came off her scooter on a very straight road, and suffered a very bruised knee for a couple of weeks, she has vowed never to get on a motorised bike again. I also discovered that Helen is the worst pillion passneger, trying to straighten us up in corners and randomly screaming, although the 30 or so other mental riders didn't help, think they were mostly Germans! Anyway, other than our little miss hap it was
a good tour and we did get to see lots of kangaroos, even some giant ones (at least 8ft i reckon). The next day we were on the move once again to airlie beach, the jumping off point for the Whitsunday islands.
It is very unfortunate we don't have any photos, because it was difficult to describe how amazing the whitsunday islands were, even the sand, it was bright white and felt like walking on warm snow. We got to sail around the islands on the good ship boomerang, a racing yacht that went pretty fast and tipped 45 degrees when the wind blew. We basically just spent a lazy couple of days sunbathing, drinking, swimming and snorkelling around the islands. One of the highlights was to see a big Maori wrasse (1.5m) which would let you touch him. Once we had gotten off the boat we had to spend 12 hrs on the bus down to Bundaberg, where they make rum and you can watch turtles lay their eggs on the beach. Bundaberg was a bit rubbish but was worth the visit just so we could watch a turtle lay a whole load of eggs on the beach.
Fraser Island jeaps
going over on the ferry to the worlds largest sand island. Next stop was rainbow beach, the jumping off point for Fraser island.
The tour of fraser we had booked involved getting in a group with 8 random strangers, being given a load of camping equipment and food and a massive 4x4 to drive ourselves over the world's biggest sand island. We wished we had a younger group, with less nervous passengers, who thought we were going to roll the jeap or burn out its clutch, but it was still a lot of fun, and the lakes we visited were amazing. Once we had got back from Fraser we stayed at rainbow beach and did some dolphin kayaking, which did not involve dolphins or any wildlife. The very funny dutch and German people on our group made it entertaining though, my favorite bit being when one guy says to his friend in the same kayak, (this works better if you imagine dutch accents) "hey man you can shee right to the bottom here" then they both look over the same side of the kayak and tip over. Then there's a lot of swearing a difficulty in getting back in. After not seeing any dolphins we got shown how to kayak
Lake Mackenzie
one of the first stops, definitely the best lake I've ever swam in! surf back to shore. It was very unsuccessful and i mainly turned us into the waves which meant when the wave broke we would get rolled over every time.
After speeding down the coast via Brisbane and Byron Bay we got to Coffs Harbour where we hired bikes and took in the culture as you can see from the photos. Then we had our final long bus journey to Sydney which is where i'll finish this. I'll put some photos up from sydney soon, and also in the next episode we nearly die! oooo!
take care everyone.
we will be home on the 7th of May so will look forward to seeing you all soon!
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