We arrived in Airlie beach at 9am the next morning...checked into Waterfront backpackers.. for the record-fantastic hostel! like a big appartment! after exploring Airlie we went to woolworths to get groceries and spent the evening chilling around ours with John and Odette!

The next morning we spent time on the internet and preparing for our whitsundays trip! we were so excited and had to make sure we had enough drinks to last us 3 days! That night Mike and Eric were also in town so 6 of our 11 Fraser Family came to our place and John made homemade pizzas for us all..! compliments to the chef! Played drinking games and ended up at The Beeches bar.

The next day we boarded the Clipper at 2.30pm with around 50 other backpackers all up for a good few days sailing! We sailed to a bay had dinner and got to know our fellow sailors over a few beers etc.. funnily enough there werent many women on our boat.. whoop whoop! we swear 50% of the lads were from Ireland, a few Canadians (thats a given) and only a handful of women...

QAll was going great until we went down to our cabin...on the way we came across a hysterical Spanish guy who had found bedbugs! yes BED BUGS!!! we have gotten nearly all the way up the east coast without having to deal with this problem.. so we decided to sleep on the benches in the bar area. We couldnt deal with bugs thank you very much! woke up to the deckhand making breakfast and a terrible sickness (also known as a hangover).. we spent the morning at Whitehaven Beach ... it is amazing! and it has been the closest thing we have seen to Fiji! The afternoon was spent in the hot tub - well luke warm tub on the boat...yes our boat had a hot tub we werent quite on the budget boat..shhhhhh!!!

We watched the sunset from a coral beach where we had an encounter with a tree kangaroo who our mate Ross from London tried to tame with dog commands such as..away! sit! get back! ..hahahaha pretty amusing! the sunset was lovely and we were ready for dinner and drinks in the luke warm tub, only getting out when everyone shouted us to look at the shark circling our boat!..A great evening was had and we finally got to bed (in a new room by the staff cabins) around 3am..

The next day the best hangover cure was in use! the waterslide that comes off of the side of the boat.. yeah!!!! we donned the beautiful stinger suits and off we went.. Jayne nearly crying as the shark might still be ther (she thought).. Lisa convinced Jayne to go down holding on to her waist.. Lisa importantly noted to Jayne to let go of her waist at the end of the slide as not to hit each other.. we figure Jayne was more scared than we thought and could not let go of Lisa's waist causing her to sit on her head under the water!!! Lisa swallowed around 5 gallons of water ..well that might be a slight exaggeration.. the slide was fab and there were no shark attacks!

We sailed back to Airlie beach and prepared our livers once again for the afterparty!!! We went to Magnums, the irish bar and Mama Africas.. such a good evening and a chance to say goodbye to the crew and our fellow sailors!!

an amazing 3 days we will never forget..