THE GREAT BARRIER REEF

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Fistly, congratulations to AC Milan for winning the Champions League and wish i was around to see the tears flowing from all my Scouse-wannabee mates. You may think this is harsh but i bet they were cheering on Seville when Spurs made an exit. Don't get stressed lads and lasses, as your motto goes........."calm down....calm down"!!!

Ok, enough ribbing.



The Barrier Reef, it all started on my Whitsundays cruise which lasted 3 days and ended with a chopper ride in Cairns but i'll start from the beginning.

I certainly travelled the east coast in the correct order, Noosa everglades was pretty physical, Fraser was a few walks here and there and the Whitsundays was basically lie on deck in the searing sun, snorkell arouind parts of the reef and make my way through the crate of Tooheys i'd purchased before boarding. If it sounds like heaven then it was.

My first glimpse of the reef was on the first day where we moored up to get in the water; the amusing part was everyone getting fitted with their 'Stinger' suits as killer jelly fish were lurking in the waters below. I couldn't quite understand the theory behind them though. Every part of your body gets covered except your head, hands and feet; surely my nut has got the most sensitive components in but they must know otherwise.


First impressions were good but was sort of expecting more, after liasing with the captain he said this part gets damged alot due to people like me kicking the coral with my fins (flippers for all non-scuba divers). Fair comment, but i knew i'd be doing a Scuba dive before i left the east coast so wasn't that dissapointed. We saw a Pod of Dolphins later in the day also so that made up for unevntful coral.
The problem with coral being damaged is that it takes about 15 years to grow an inch so you can imagine with the amount of tourists visiting this thing is deteriotating (OUCH) at a rate of knots. Some parts of the Reef are now unaccessable due to these reasons and giving the coral time to flourish again. (until some lanky travellers decide to stamp all over it again that is).




The evening was spent playing drinking games and me losing most of them, it really isn't a problem though, i sort of wanna lose because it means i get to drink the fatal cocktails that everyone conjours up. Four of us decided it was a good idea to sleep on deck that evening as the moon and stars were an amazing sight but 5am shivering i'm sure it wasn't such a great idea but couldn't be bothered to crawl downstairs into the cabin so just curled myself into a ball and chattered my teeth to send me back to sleep!!!!



The following day was the highlight for me; Whitehaven Beach...........it's another "WOW" explanation and i'll leave it there for you to check out da photos. A game of beach cricket aswell here was a great way to sweat out some Tooheys.


Another afternoon of snorkelling and having to be picked up by the little dinghy boat cos my right leg decided it would be funny to cramp up when i was chasing a turtle and that was my swimming over. What else to do but lie flat on my back with my factor 25 and ask random people to pass me a cold one out of the 'Eski' and that was about my whitsundays trip wrapped up.

Well, nearly. There was only two of us who decided to brave the cold again the second night by kipping on deck and i must admit this night was a tad hazier than the first. I awoke to the captain and crew waking me up cos i had wrapped myself into a cocoon using the sail at the front of the boat, i thought this was wierd enough until the crew started singing and mimicing a drunken voice. "Karl mate what the hell were u doing singing and shouting in your sleep last night, you woke the whole boat up and had us in fits of laughter" oh shite, i remember me rents saying thay heard me singing in my sleep a couple of years ago but again thought that was a one off occassion. After glowing a shade of cherry red and a few apologies it was time to head back to land.

The Whitsunday Islands are made up of a group of 74 islands in total but am sure we only saw one because they all look the same!!


Safely on shore we'd arranged for a boat reunion at one of the bars in Airlie Beach, i was chatting to a couple i met on the boat at my hostel about what time we were guna meet up when i heard the sound of running footsteps from behind me and a dutch accent of "OH MY GOD...........KARL" ahhhhh wkd, it was Babette (dutchee of course) who i'd met in NZ in february, i basically gave my boat crew a bit of a cold shoulder and went clubbing with Babette and her mate so apologies to you lot but just for the record i had a wkd eve!!!!





Next stop up the cast was Magnetic Island, i wanted to do some Scuba diving here and there was also a full moon party the night i arrived. Unfortunately i was struck down with the killer bug MAN-FLU so didn't do either. It was also a bank holiday weekend in Queensland so had my first experience of a loada 'Aussie W@#nkers'. "Go to bed early little boys if you can't handle your stubbies instead of trying to fight anything with a pulse." That gave me the hump so Magnetic island although was beautiful, was also a crap two days. You'll be glad to here i made a full recovery from the life threating man-flu and was on the ball again in Cairns...



I arrived here late at night and straight away spoke to reception about scuba diving the reef the following day. A phone call later and i was headed for bed as i was getting picked up in 6 hours to catch a boat. The day was wkd, i managed to survive a dive lasting 42mins without cramping up and without using all my air halfway through (i'd experienced running out of air in Sydney 16 meters deep and this was not an experience i wished to repeat, sort of put me off diving for a bit but i'm well back into it now, think i'd gone through too many Marlboros @ xmas time that's all).

There was a bbq on the boat also and there's nothing better than stuffing yourself stoopid after experiencing coming face to face with a huge turtle just hanging around on the reef without a care in the world and also saw a few Nemo's hiding in the coral. Saw loads of other alien type life forms but am not guna pretend i know the names of all of them.



Just chilling on the boat towards the end of the day when i was approached saying do i want a half hour helicopter ride over the Reef and back to Cairns. There was one space left out of four and he said i could have the seat for $120 whereas the other people had paid $220, give me five mins to think about it mate and then get back to me. Five mins later, "ok mate, i've worked that out to be 24 Scooners tonight so i'm guna blow it out" ok, $90 and the choppers leaving now, "Deal, lets do it" tight ass strikes again.

This was puka, it picked us up at a heli-pad in the middle of the ocean and was great to see one of the seven wonders of the world from a few meters below sea level and a couple of hundred meters above it.
Expensive day of course especially as i met up with another of my NZ Dutch Strays that night and we went partying in Cairns.


I was flying out at midday the next day to Alice Springs to meet with Daz so i knew i wouldn't exactly be chilling out when i got there.



It was surreal meeting up with Daz after 4 months and exchanging stories at the Bojangles bar in Alice. My god have we got some blogging to do.

We are now in Singapore but leaving to travel to Tioman island in Malaysia that has been voted in the top ten islands in the world tommorow after trips to Ayers Rock (ULURU), three days camping on the way to Darwin and a couple of nights in Barmy Bali. So much to tell ya but not enough internet credit to do it in so you'll have to wait until we come across the world wide web again.....we're off to explore some temples so we'll send your luv to Alla

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Photos

Whitehaven Beach
Beats Hunstanton

Magnetic Island
Great view form hostel, just full of w@#kers ;-)

2 Studs Back in Town
"UH-OH"

Comments

[DAZZA]

Just a quickie to remind every one back home there IS an option to leave a comment after reading a blog!(Karl is very upset,hes been crying for days now,it aint pretty)Luv u all, Daz x