Heading out for my last leg before an 11 week break from the trip (Home for christmas and then Carina's engagement party on my Jan break). Landed in Townsville at 9:30 and jumped in a cab to Lavrak Barracks (army Barracks where Mullet, a mate from boarding school, lives). Mullet being the lazy b***** he is met me at the gate and took a good bit of arm twisting to get out on the town. Of course being the imbocile that he is mullet has lost his wallet, and hence ID, several weeks earlier on an army piss-up. This limited our options fairly severly. After the first bar we went to closed we managed to talk our way into a bar on the main strip in townsville, however by that stage of the night it was fairly dead so we just sat in the corner sinking rums and catching up on life.

The next morning after a ridiculously uncomfortable sleep on mullets floor I headed out with the civilised army folk for brunch.

Later that afternoon I had booked a 3 Day, 2 Night cruise around the whitsundays. Knowing I didnt need to be on the boat until 3pm and it was a 3 hour drive I took my time hanging out with Mullet and his mates. Checking my voice messages at 11am I listened to the lovely lady from the cruise asking me to just drop by and check in to the boat (assuming I was already in Airlie Beach). A quick farewell to the army crew I jumped into the Cruiser and started my mad dash to Airlie Beach, Not an easy feat in Martha who is really limited to 90km/hr.

After rushing the whole way down to Airlie I scrambled into the boat company shop and told the lady I wanted to check in, I waited patiently while she took a phone call, Once she was finished she calmyl asked me which boat I was on, "The one that leaves in 15mins" changed her facial expression rather promptly. The quick breeze through the paperwork and an even quicker swing through the bottle shop and I was on my way to the Marina. After spending 10 minutes trying to get the parking maching to work I wandered around to the meeting spot.

Looking rather dishevelled I wandered towards a rather large crowd of travellers who looked like they were waiting for something. Of course the whole boat of 50+ people were waiting for me to arrive, great introduction to my crewmates for the next three days,

After a little bit of an intro from the crew we marched down the jetty to our new home for the next few days. The Clipper was exactly that, an old clipper that was used as a freight ship in the 40's.

First night on the clipper was a rather casual affair. We dropped anchor in a nice little sheltered bay and had dinner and a few drinks (of course the music was pumping for a fair bit of the night) then bed for most. I tried to sleep on the bean bags on the deck but at about 4am I was too cold so I retired to my bunk, where of course I sweated my way through the rest of the night.

Day 2 of our escapades started with a trip to Whitehaven beach. If you have ever seen a photo of the whitsundays I would say there is a 50/50 chance it was a photo of Whitehaven beach (The photo for this blog is Whitehaven). The sand it like walking in flour and just as white... and the water is a shallow almost lagoon like beach so the water is more green than blue. Later that afternoon we slunk underwater to explore the world beneath the waves. The Scuba dive master took a bottle of fish food with her which attracted a huge Maori Wrasse named Elvis (You can actually google him, he is that famous). Elvis casually swam between the 4 of us knocking us out of the way if he felt we were getting too comfortable in his domain.

Night 2 was where the clipper earned its reputation as a party boat. We started off with the typical backpacker games and as the night went on the games go more riskea and by the time the games finished we were all pretty well hammered. I would go into details but "Whats happens on the Clipper, Stays on the Clipper".

Day 3 was a rather hugover affair with everyone relaxing as we crusied our way back to land. That night most of the people from the boat met at a bar to have a drink with the Crew members (Who were not allowed to drink on the boat). Cheap drinks made for a rather excessive night which was a great close out of our time together.

After a lazy morning at the man-made lagoon in Airlie I said farewell to the Clipper crew and headed back to the Marina to jump on a Ferry over to Hamilton Island. Once I was checked into my room (Which had an amazing view of the beach and Islands across the bay) I headed downstairs to grab a drink with a friend from my time in Canada who was working on the Island.

A casual morning of lying on Hamilton Island before the return Ferry ride to the mainland. The regrettable ride back to Townsville to drop the car at the Army barracks and a quick nights sleep before the ridiculously early flight back to work.

Fingers crossed the resumption of my trip will be as exciting as the last leg before the break.