Since my last entry I have been pretty busy. After my birthday I spent a day chilling out in Cairns recovering before getting the Greyhound bus with my travelling companion Karolina down to Airlie Beach on the Friday (30th). There’s no much to do in Airlie really as it’s just a street with a few bars and shops etc. It was strange tho as within the space of 5 minutes I bumped in to a Scottish guy I met in Cairns and 4 women I’d met in Port Douglas, then after I came back from the boat trip I bumped into 2 Swedish girls I had met in Cairns.
Anyway, we left for a 3 day/3 night sailing trip on the Sunday. It was really good, so relaxing and peaceful. We didn’t have to worry about money or food or accommodation for 3 days and our biggest trouble was deciding which beach to go to next or where to moor the boat for the night. There was 12 of us on the trip and 2 crew members and we all got on really well which always makes things easier. When I woke up on the first day I was amazed at how flat the sea was, it was like glass (see the pictures page). On the first full day we went to a place called Whitehaven beach and it had the finest sand I’ve ever seen, it trapped air in it when the tide came in so that if you walked in the shallow water there was a constant stream of bubbles coming to the surface. I did a couple of dives from the top of the boat which was great fun. There was also a lookout over the beach which was pretty spectacular (again see the pictures page, although the camera doesn’t do it justice). The rest of our time was mainly spent snorkelling the reef which was nearly as good as diving (most of the marine life is in the first 5m from the surface anyway). I was surprised at the diversity and sheer numbers of the marine life as I don’t think there was nearly as many when I went diving off of Cairns. We saw Parrot Fish (in shoals munching at the coral), Clown Fish, Turtles, weird eel things and these huge black meat-eating fish which the captain fed while we were in the water with them. I saw so many fish and even with the fish guide book struggled to identify most of them. On the last day on the way back we saw a humpback whale and calf swim near the boat, as with the rainforest canopy the sight of such awesome creatures took my breath away. I don’t think any of the passengers on the boat stopped smiling for about an hour. The wind picked up on the last day aswell so we got a chance to unfurl the sails and ride the wind back to Airlie. I can definitely see the attraction in spending a lot of time at sea.
After returning to Airlie we sneaked in to one of the hostels for a hot shower (no proper shower on the boat) before getting pretty much straight on the Greyhound to go to Rainbow Beach, we travelled from 6PM until 10AM the next day and I must have had all of 20 minutes sleep which was pretty tough going, specially as we couldn’t check in to the hostel until 11 – rubbish!
At Rainbow Beach we stayed at a place called Dingo’s which is where we paid for the 4WD drive package (hire of tents, vehicles and they provide food) to a hire a wagon to drive around Fraser Island for 3 days and 2 nights. Fraser Island is the worlds biggest sand island at 120Km long and 30Km wide at it’s widest point. That night we met the rest of our team who we would be driving round Fraser island with, there was 2 Swedish girls, 4 Irish girls and an Irish bloke. Only me and Karolina had a driving license which was pretty cool so we got to do more driving than the other groups who had as many as 5 drivers per car. Unfortunately we were not blessed with the most motivated individuals in our group and I spent most of the 3 days unpacking stuff, packing stuff or waiting around for lazy people to get out of bed so we could go and see things. We couldn’t drive on the beach 2 hours either side of high tide and as high tide was around midday it was obviously easier to get off early in the morning if you wanted to travel anywhere. This fact seemed to sink in easier with some people than others and on the 2nd night 2 of the group were up till well after 12 (despite huge bloody signs saying no noise after half 9) which was just annoying, especially as we couldn’t get them up the next day. Most of the time people were moaning about sand being everywhere and how dirty they felt (not sure what they expected from camping on beaches) and at one point someone said “I want an ice cream, can we go to the shop?” regardless of the fact we were on a single lane track which was 15Km from anywhere (to travel 15Km on the roads would have taken the best part of an hour). Despite the subtle genius of my travelling companions we still managed to see a fair chunk of the island. There’s a freshwater lake with a beach called Lake Mackenzie which was really nice to swim in, as well as “champagne pools” which is at the North of the island and consisted of a natural rocky seawater pool type thing. On the first night we slept next to another of the groups from the hostel which was nice as there was so many of us and I could avoid the less desirable members of our crew. On our first morning waking up on the island we found an absolutely huge spider in the car (right next to the drivers seat), luckily it was found before I set off otherwise I could have had an accident. Not sure what it was but it was a sandy grey colour and was pretty big. I was given extra tuna as I said I didn’t eat red meat but when we went to open the tins we found the tin opener was broken. On the last day we had to be at the barge to get off of the island for 3PM but accidentally took the wrong way (the signs on the island were rubbish) and ended up at a barge on the west side of the island (we were there for 3PM tho) so had to make our way back to the east side of the island and then down the beach, luckily the tide was out so we just zipped along the beach but still ended up nearly 2 hours late back to the hostel. When we got back to the hostel we were informed that we had broken one of the rear springs and had to cough up $350 between us. The Irish guys argued the toss for fecking ages before coughing up, they didn’t seem to understand that the hostel had a credit card authorisation from them so they were getting the money whatever. They also helpfully suggested getting another mechanic out for a second opinion on whether the spring was broken until I pointed out that we would then be stuck with an $80 callout charge for telling us something we already knew. I also managed to hit a post when turning round in a campsite on the second night and this bent the bumper a bit, luckily as we came back when it was dark no-one noticed and I got away with it.
By the time I got to Rainbow Beach I had spent all of my money and thought it would be easy enough to change my travellers cheques. But there’s no banks in Rainbow beach and I was unable to change my cheques in the hostel or post office as they were visa cheques and in Sterling. As a result I had no money to do anything and had to borrow some from Karolina, the credit had run out on my phone aswell so I couldn’t even send a text home to let people know that I was still alive, doh.
Anyway we spent a day at Dingo’s hostel to chill out for a bit before heading 5 hours down the coast to Brisbane which is where I am now. We had a nose about the city yesterday and took a ride on the City Cat which is like a public transport catamaran that run you up and down the river, pretty cool. I think we are going to stay here until tomorrow before heading down the coast again to Surfers Paradise as I know a couple of people there so should be able to party it up a bit this weekend.
