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New south Wales that is!
So when we last left you we were on the way to Whitsunday’s.... we stayed at Airlie beach which is the main town where everything goes to Whitsunday’s. We contacted our mate Hannah who worked on one of the islands.. she came over for the day to our campsite (town was closed because of ANZACS day) we had a chilled out day swimming, playing crazy golf and had a BBQ, really good to see her! We were going to go out to the islands but due to costs we decided to save our money so we could go and see Fraser Island. We stayed there for a few days before we moved on to Rockhampton where we just stopped for night before going to Hervey Bay.
Hervey Bay was really nice chilled out place with loads to do even have a free gym on the beach... On first day we just explored town and its beaches, also has a massive bat colony huge things literally hundreds in this one area.. quite cool but very smelly. The next day we had singed up to do our first organised tour.. we wanted to do it
ourselves but was too expensive. The tour to Fraser island was really good... we got picked up at 6 am driven to a catamaran which took about 40 mins to get to the island... from there we got on a huge 4 x 4 coach thing... the island is all sand and has lots of hills and valleys so the roads if you can call them that are a nightmare to drive on... even our coach had a few stuck moments... saw lots of other people who were stuck! We first drove across the island although only something like 10km took quite a while because of the roads but was really nice as you are going through a rain forest. Once on the other side of the island we drove up the beach which is officially a Queensland highway, has a speed limit and police to enforce it apparently. Our first stop was Eli Creek which is a creek pumping fresh drinkable water into the sea, you can swim in it and walk up it... we then when to the colour rocks which is a rock face of compressed sand with all different colours.. on route back down the beach
we stopped at a impressive shipwreck which had a long story but can not be bothered to type it up! After that we went for lunch on route to the central station where they used to cut the trees down for export.. not done anymore as it is a world heritage site.. we did a rainforest walk there and were explained about the different trees and animals... out last stop before we left was lake McKenzie which is a massive freshwater lake.. and due to the sand filtering it it is bright blue with white sand beach area! When swimming you are meant to rub the sand into your skin and jewellery and the water is slightly acidic (same as skin) and the sand is soft and around it exfoliates your skins and makes you jewellery shiny! After that we drove back to the catamaran to head back. On route back saw a snake and the couple we were chatting to saw it and he kicked the floor near Mel saying it was the snake and made Mel jump out of her skin! very funny!
We did not get back till about 630 pm, so spent the next day
relaxing and in the evening we played cards with a couple we had previously met and another couple which was really good fun... an oz bloke tried to teach us some other not so interesting card games with spoons but we stuck to shit head! After a latish night we left and headed for Brisbane stopping at the legend that is Steve Irwin's zoo. Spent 6 hours in the zoo and was really good got to stroke a croc, saw croc show, fed elephants, saw agro (anyone like me who used to watch crocodile hunter will know Agro, was always on the show, huge croc) generally really good zoo has lizards runny about everywhere and loads of chances to interact with animals for no extra cost! That night we stayed just north of Brisbane.
Next day, after another visit to doc's due to me having another allergic reaction to a bite, we went through Brisbane and down through the gold coast including surfers paradise... there are loads of theme parks on route and high rise buildings and nice beaches but not really our bag and was all expensive. That night we crossed into New south Wales and stayed at
Hastings point.. lots of really nice scenery on route. Today we left there stopping off at Byron Bay really nice place great views... on top of the look out is amazing and we were lucky enough to see about 20 dolphins swimming about!
We are now in Coffs harbour which looks really nice but will let you know more about that on the next update... sorry this is so long but is not always easy to find somewhere you can plug a camera in!
Let us know how you are all doing!
Chris and Mel
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Richard and Lila
non-member comment
If only Wales was that far away.
From the news and pictures the trip seems to be getting better and better. We would have loved the tour on the 4 wheel drive and to see the dolphins. May have given stroking a croc a miss. Hate to think what seeing a snake would have done to Lila. She trod on one the other day when out for a walk and is still recovering from the shock. (and it was dead anyway ! ! )