Again, I have got a lot of Blog writing to catch up on! We have been so busy doing various trips, that catching up has had to take a backseat. I doubt i'll have time to get fully up to date in one go, but i'll try my best!
We made our way to the harbour just before 7o'clock on Tuesday evening to board Anaconda 3, our home for the next 3 days. The boat itself was huge and Leanne and I were pleased to find that we had our own cabin. Small as it was, we weren't sharing a room with anyone for the first time in over 2 weeks. We set sail into the darkness heading for White Haven beach. We spent the evening on deck, having a couple of drinks and chatting to crew and other guests on the boat - who all seemed to be really nice. It's strange how being on a boat, drinking Champagne can come so naturally to someone who has never done it before. I could quite get used to it!
The following morning we were woken by the breakfast bell at 6:45. We clambered upstairs to find we were moored just off of Whitehaven Beach. It was stunning and made being up at that time much easier. We were told that the sand here is world famous for being fine and soft. It can clean jewellery, exfoliate and whiten teeth! (I exfoliated but couldn't quite bring myself to put it in my mouth!) Leanne went off to do a dive and I, along with the others were taken over to the beach. I walked and sunbathed until I was called over to do my 10 minute dive introduction. It was a free service the dive instructor offered if you've never done a dive before and were interested in doing one on the trip. It was useful to get used to the equipment and practice a few basic skills and hand signals. The first few times I went under the water I had to keep reminding myself to breathe. It sounds strange but your head tells you that you are under water so you have to hold your breath. You just have to remember that you have got a huge tank strapped to your back and a regulator in your mouth! I really liked the feeling of being able to stay under water though and decided that I definately wanted to do a dive. Once back on the boat, we set off for the reef and had some lunch. It was so nice to be fed again!
When we arrived at the reef the first time divers were taught some more skills and hand signals and were put into small groups. Joey (the girl I was put with) and I were the last two to go, so we went off for a quick snorkel first. When it was time for us to go for our dive we donned our BCD jackets which, with a tank attached to the back were extremely heavy out of the water. Leanne had to pull me out of my seat because I couldn't get up!
We were taken out by a smaller boat and had to do a backwards roll off the side. Me being me, rolled off and got tangled in the rope that was attached to the side of the boat and ended up just hanging there, while everyone else started to swim off. Of course the crew found it hilarious and i'm sure it looked very funny, I was just confused as to what was going on and why I couldn't swim away from the boat!
To make descent easier we had to pull ourselves down a rope that was attached to a crate at the bottom of the sea. I had trouble with my ears at first - I think I was going down too fast and therefore unable to "equalise" (pop my ears as I went down). I soon sorted it out and began to swim around. I found it difficult to steer myself at times and crashed a couple of times, but I was more worried about damaging the coral then myself.
I enjoyed every minute though. We saw a huge variety of fish but I was more amazed at the size of the coral. It looks big from above when you're snorkelling but when you're down there next to it, it's huge! We were down there for about 25 minutes and once I got the hang of it, I loved every minute.
We woke up the following morning in the middle of nowhere. It was amazing just being able to see miles and miles of deep blue sea. I decided that I wanted to do another dive, as we were now on the actual Great Barrier Reef and the visibility was much better. We were the first ones in the water - a great way to wake up! I loved my first dive, but this one was 10 times better. You could see about 3 times as far and the amount of different fish and coral we saw was unbelievable. As everyone in the group had done at least one dive by now, there was less hanging around and we were able to just swim at our own pace. Towards the end of the dive we saw a small Leopard Shark, which Harry got particularly excited about as apparently they're quite rare. Coming up from this dive was really dissapointing - I could have stayed down there forever. I wished that I had signed up to do my open water qualification like Leanne. Oh well, that'll be another day and another trip....
After lunch we sailed to a different part of the reef where we went snorkelling. Again, even though we were on the surface, the things we saw were incredible - my personal favourite being a White-Tipped Reef Shark. It swam right beneath me. I was shocked at first but then just amazed.
The following morning we woke again at a different spot - Blue Pearl Bay. We snorkelled here after breakfast. For a small bay there were a huge amount of fish. We saw a Moon Wrasse and a Coral trout, both of which were absolutely huge, along with other brightly coloured scholls.
After our swim it was time to start heading back to shore. We'd had such a good time we didn't want to go back to dry land. Leanne and I tried to find placed to hide on the boat, but we were told it was searched thouroughly before it set sail again. Shame, I could have got used to that life..
It was back to Airlie Beach for us though. We had a night out with some of the people on our boat on friday evening and then it was finally time to move on. It felt like we had been in Airlie for a long time, so we were ready to see something different. We boarded an overnight bus to 1770 on saturday evening. We finally arrived in the sleepy beach town of Agnes Water just after 8am. There are no hostels or shops or anything really in the actual town of 1770 (so called as it was where Captin Cook landed in 1770), just a population of 30 and a few holiday homes. We spent a couple of days here relaxing on the beach and in the hostel. The Hostel we stayed in was very chilled out and did $5 meals in the evening!
Our Greyhound bus on Tuesday morning was at 6:45, so we had an early start to travel to Rainbow beach.
We arrived in yet another quiet beach town just before lunchtime, ready for our briefing meeting for our Fraser Island trip which we were going on the following day. Fraser Island is a sand island just off the coach and we had booked onto a self drive camping trip for 3 days - meaning we were given a 4 wheel drive and camping equipment and sent off with a map for 3 days. We had a group of 11, all girls apart from Ali - a guy we had met in 1770 who was doing the same route as us down the east coast, and Max - a quiet German guy. Luckily, Ali had experience in driving 4 x 4's, so he understood all instructions about when to use 4 wheel drive etc - they went completely over my head! We left our hostel just after 11am with Ali at the wheel and headed for the Ferry crossing.
The first stop on our itinerary was a short pit stop at Eurong, a small village on Fraser, before heading to Lake Wobby. Leanne took over the driving at Eurong and did extremely well when we took a wrong turn which lead to some unnecessary off-roading. We hadn't realised that we had to park on the beach and walk inland to the lake. We did realise by this point though that there was a communication problem between different members of the group. We finally found the car park and trekked for 40 minutes to get to the lake. The lake was beautiful - a huge sand dune surrounded by forest that led down into cold fresh water - however due to our unfortunate detour we could only spend 45minutes here before having to trek back through the sand to the car. Because the majority of the driving was done on the beach we had to ensure that we were at particular destinations by certain times so that we didn't get caught out by the tide. We decided to camp on the beach that night, so drove along the beach to a campsite and found a spot to set up camp just as a big black cloud came over. I couldn't believe that I had been in Australia for over 3 weeks and not seen a spot of rain until we were camping! Typical. The rain came down as we haphazardly set up our tents - there were only a couple of experienced campers amoung us so setting up camp took a lot longer than it should have! Luckily, the rain only lasted half an hour and we were able to start cooking our BBQ. We sat around the camp fire for the rest of the evening chatting and drinking Goon (cheap wine!)
The following day we planned to spend the day at Lake Mackenzie. The drive was pretty tough and we ended up getting stuck a couple of times. Ali took over the driving and managed to get us to the car park safely. The lake was absolutely stunning. The water was completely clear and so blue and it was surrounded by the whitest sand. It was a really hot day, so swimming in the lake was perfect.
We stayed here for the majority of the day until we had to set off to find our camp for the night. We were staying in Camp K'gari, an aboriginal run camp just off the beach. It was nice to be staying in a place that had proper toilets and a camp fire to sit around. After eating dinner we were joined by Jay, an aboriginal guy who worked there who told us about different weapons and instruments they used and played his Didgeridoo. It was really insteresting to get a small insight into aboriginal way of lfe.
The following morning our first port of call was a shipwreck on the beach just 5 minutes from the campsight. We stopped just to take photo's before heading off to our next stop, Eli Creek. As I hadn't had a go at driving I volunteered myself that morning. It took me a while to get into it, especially driving on soft sand - it's like driving on ice! There was a bit of a hairy moment before we arrived at the creek where Ali took over the driving as we had to go through a huge wash out, but other than that it was ok. The weather wasn't that great - cloudy and very windy, so we sat reading until it was time to pack up and head to the ferry port. I drove again as I hadn't driven for very long that morning and it wasn't long before I came across my first hurdle. The tide wasn't as far out as we thought it would be so I had to follow some other cars through the edge of the surf and then up an inland bypass. It was pretty bumpy but it was going ok until we came across a huge traffic jam - obviously everyone else had the same idea and there was a big tour bus trying to get up the hill that we were trying to go down. There were 4x4's and trailers lined up on the side of the road and men out of their cars trying to decide what to do. I ended up having to reverse back up the hill and squeeze into a tight gap to let the bus past. I was sweaty and tense, not helped by the girls in the back who screamed everytime we went over the smallest bump. Luckily, I had Leanne beside me calming me down and telling the girls to button it, and Ali in the back guiding me into the space. We finally managed to get back on the beach and had a slighty bumpy, but less stressful ride back to Eurong where Leanne took over the driving. There was a point on the way back to the ferry when we didn't think we were going to make it, but thankfully Leannes speedy driving ensured we were there with 10minutes to spare. We arrived back at the hostel extremley dirty, after not having showered for 3 days, and tired but pleased we'd made it back in one piece. The car was also in one piece too which was a great relief - backpackers can't afford car repairs!
We spent the following day at the hostel, watching films and relaxing. Joey, the girl we'd met on the Whitsunday's trip had arrived in Rainbow Beach that day, so she came to our hostel for a few drinks in the evening. We were up at 5:30 on Sunday morning as we were booked onto do a Dolphin Kayaking trip. Unfortunately when we met the guy at 6 o'clock we were told that it was too windy to go out. It was such a shame because we were both looking forward to it (and we'd got up early for no reason!) and had booked our bus to leave that afternoon, so we didn't get another opportunity to do it.
I'm going to have to finish this entry here....I'm sure i've taken up enough of your valuable time already. Hopefully it wont be long until the next installment!!
