Quickie update about Agnes Waters as it was a bit of a whistle stop tour of the smallest place i've been to yet. The town Agnes Water and 1770, which is nearby, have only recently appeared on the backpacker map as they have pretty nice beaches and good surfing. Plus it's a good pit stop between Whitsundays and Fraser Island if the 16 hour bus journey is too long for you!
After arriving at about 10am (raining yet again), the hostel picked me up as it was a bit of a walk from the main town. Which by the way consisted of around 10 shops! Once i had ditched my bags and checked in i decided to head back into town on the shuttle bus to pick up some shopping. My internet and phone haven't been working on my way down the coast which is just a bit of a pain but i managed to find a really nice little coffee shop which gave you free internet if you bought a drink so that kept me busy until the next shuttle bus came back (like 2 hours later). I had a bit of a wasted day as it was raining and had siesta time from around 3-6pm. I totally needed to catch up on sleep as the 6.30am wake ups had started to take their toll on me!
In the evening the hostel was pretty busy as there's only one pub in the town and hardly anywhere to eat so everyone cooks their own food and then heads out later. I ended up just watching a couple of DVDs and was in bed for 10 again haha loser! But i had decided to get up early for a surfing lesson the next morning so i wanted to be on form!
The next day i headed back into town at 10am to join the $17 surf lesson (a complete bargain as further down the coast they are $50 and upwards!). There were 34 of us which meant sharing a board, but i was quite thankful of that once i realised how tiring it actually was! After 15 minutes of being given some pointers on how to surf, we were pretty much told to get into the water and try it out. I was in group 2 so had to sit and watch the first group jump in and look like they were drowning because there was a really strong rip tide and it totally wasn't beginner conditions (so we were told haha!). I was quite scared when i seen people getting sucked under the bigger waves because i don't really like putting my head under the water..but funnily enough i was completely fine once i was out there in the sea and got used to it. I managed to stand up on my second or third attempt (i can't remember now) but that was pretty quick for a beginner so i think my gymnastics background gave me a big advantage and made it easier to jump up onto the board. All in all we surfed for about an hour with 15 minute breaks in between so i was completely shattered by the end of it and felt like i got a proper workout. I'm definitely going to be trying it again on my way down the coast but need to try and find some people with boards to have a practice cos it costs a fortune to hire them per hour! I have a feeling i'll be doing it quite lot when i get to Bondi so i'm quite excited, i think i've found something to keep me fit in Oz!
Anyway all of that hard work was ruined as i ended up going for a burger & chips with some girls from my hostel who had surfed too then we managed to take advantage of some free internet in one of the travel shops. It was pretty much a chilled evening again and i watched Finding Nemo for the first time in AGES..aww i love that film so much and it's even better when you're actually travelling the same direction as Nemo's dad did to find him.
Ok i'm talking rubbish now, i realise, i've been drinking goon tonight so my head is a bit fussy..
Heading out to Fraser Island tomorrow on a 4x4 so that should be good fun provided the weather stays dry, we were put into our groups today and we have 7 people in total - 3 Scots, 2 Canadians and 2 Israelis. Should be interesting because the supermarket trip to buy supplies was the hardest thing ever. Some people are fussy B%&*&^%$..
