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Published: January 12th 2007
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Well hello again. Since the last time I wrote I have been up to quite a bit. Me and mum flew up to the Whitsunday coast, to a place called Airlie Beach. This was quite a unique place. It was just before new years and the place was full of drunk men. Well I say men but there mean age was probably about 19. I also found out that men out numbered women 6:1!!! It was a very strange sight to see so many guys in one place. Airlie has a man made lagoon as you cant swim in the sea. There were about 3 girls in it and the rest guys. All they seemed to do was drink all day and night and party. This would have been fine except our accommodtion wasn’t that great. This meant that we heard all the partying first hand. Also it was cockroach infested. Unfortunately me and mum are both totally pathetic and couldn’t bring ourselves to actually kill them. So we started our own cockroach relocation programme, well mum did. I couldn’t even bring myself to trap them.
On Dec 30th we got on our boat and started our 3 day trip. We
I can still dive
Toshy will be very proud that I can still tuck dive! Also that is a stinger suit I am wearing. So that I don't get maimed by a deadly box jellyfish. sailed all around the Whitsundays. On the first day we did some snorkelling and saw some amazing coral. I couldn’t stay out of the water. It is the most amazing thing you have ever seen. The colours are so bright. The fish are almost neon. The coral is so bright. It is just like you see in the pics. On the second day we went to Whithaven beach. This is the beach you always see on postcards and the TV. It has silica sand that is so fine it is like flour. The sea is clear as a bell and beautiful turquoise.
Later that day I did a dive. I really enjoyed it. I saw turtles and stingrays and held a sea cucumber, pretty mad. That was new years eve. Me and mum celebrated new years on the boat. We moored up near the mainland so we could see the fireworks. This would have been a perfect plan, except it was pouring so hard visibility was about 10m! We got soaked. Being on a boat in the rain is not very fun. Everywhere was damp. We were sharing a boat with 23 other people and only allowed a one minute
shower at night. If we ran out of water we had to go back to the harbour. So everyone was very diligent with the water restrictions. That is except one couple. A Swiss-German guy and his Korean mail order bride. Now this may be a terrible assumption but he was over 30yrs her senior. Anyway they decided they could shower whenever and for however long they decided. So the result was we ran out of water on our last day, which mean everyone was dying of thirst by the time we got back.
After our boat trip we stayed in Airlie Beach for one more night, this time in a very nice air conditioned hotel. Which was a very good thing as mum got heatstroke and was really ill. The next day we got a 16 hour overnight coach to Noosa. I got bitten by something during the day and my right calf swelled up. By the time I got off the coach both my ankles were swollen, esp the right one. I looked like an old lady with LVF. I’m a complete hypochondriac when it comes to stuff like this. You’ll be pleased to hear I recovered from
New Years Eve
We were pretty wet! Just like home. my heart failure and my ankles went down by the next day. Although my bite was pretty impressive because it bruised really badly, mum even took a photo.
Noosa is a really nice place. I got totally smashed in the sea, the waves were huge. After 10 mins I’d had enough of my face being dragged along the sea bed so had to get out.
We then took a trip to Fraser Island. Fraser Island is 122km long and made purely out of sand. It supports a whole ecosystem though, it is totally amazing. I had to get over my sand phobia pretty quickly, had no choice really. There are no roads as such, you can drive wherever you like. You have to drive 4×4 as you are driving over sand. We had a really great tour guide. He was very energetic and had us constantly getting in and out of our monster truck thing to show us how to dig up worms, or point out a bird or tree. We went to lake mckenzie, which is a very famous freshwater lake. We went back to Noosa for one night where mum and me met up with Jill and Bob.
We shared a lovely hostel dorm together and I had a good night drinking quite a bit of wine and catching up.
So by the time we had packed all this into about a week and a half we only had 2 days left in Sydney. We met up with Hilda and Arwa, who are old family friends and just so happened to be in Sydney at the same time as us. We had a good day together going round and round on the monorail (I can just think of the Simpsons episode when I was on it -Toshy you will remember!). Monorails really aren’t as exciting as they should be. But we bought a day ticket so had to get our moneys worth!
Mum then left last mon, very sad to say goodbye again. So in other news, I have a flat lined up. My friend Rob is leaving Sydney and I am going to take over his room on the 22nd hopefully. It is in Bondi, about halfway between the beach and the junction. It is a really nice flat, I’m sharing with one other girl. No backpackers in sight, thank god. Although Bondi’s population seems
to be entirely made up of Irish. I cant wait to get my own flat, it is very strange not having your own place to live. This was made painfully evident just before xmas. I met up with Janet for about 3 hrs, I hadn’t seen her for 2 weeks. We had a very boozy xmas lunch with her friend Will before she had to get to the airport to go back to NZ. So imagine this. It was 3pm. I was totally pissed and had to go back to Janet’s flat to get my stuff as her flatmate had his family arriving for xmas and I needed to vacate the area. Janet went to the airport and I got left to make polite conversation when I could hardly stand up. So I had to get out of the flat asap. I then realised that I didn’t have a clue what to do. I wasn’t meeting my friend til 5.30 so had about 2 hours to kill. So what do you do when you are drunk, with your bags, in the middle of the day and no home? Answer is you find a nice park bench to go to sleep
Fraser Island 2
This is a typical view from Fraser Island. Miles of beach. on. My backpack made a very good pillow! I feel I had reached a certain low point in my life, but I had a good sleep and woke up an hour later with a hangover, nice. So you can see why I really want my own house again.
I have been to my new hospital too. Everyone seems very nice (although not a patch on haem/onc-of course!). They seem very laid back here, I think I will get on fine. The manager said that he expects people to take their 10 days sick leave a year, he is a believer in ‘mental health days’, but just be careful not to use them all up in case you break your toe or something!! Not quite the NHS mentality. There are not many haematology patients though. Out of the 34 beds they seem to be mainly oncology and quite a lot of palliative care. Not quite what I expected. They still do transplants and stuff, but not as many as they usually do. They have got 2 new haem consultants starting in March after they had some staff recently leave so services should go back to full capacity. I start on
Me surfing!
The proof I stood up! I just need to do it again now to prove it wasn't a fluke. the 29th, so making the most of my remaining time to be a layabout!
I’m off to Canberra then Melbourne (to see Tash) next week, so very much looking forward to that.
Ok, sorry for this being such a mammoth blog. But as usual I had a lot to say!
Hope everyone is well. xxx
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Dad
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Just spoke to your mother...
...but she didn't tell me half as much as your blog, tho we had a good chat. She's safely back home and on arriving Weds am early after a 17 hour journey went straight into work all day, like you do (if you're Angela!). Me, I'm back in Suffolk after a few days in Abingdon. Sounds like you've had a very active holiday the both of you. Respect!