Sometime during the night it began to rain. When we woke it was still rainy and windy. We figured we were in for a rough boat ride back to Gladstone. This is fortunately ok for the three of us but I imagine most of the rest of the passengers will not be feeling well. We went to breakfast and then packed our stuff. We had to check out of our room by 10am but the boat did not leave until 2pm. We headed down to the main pavilion to hang out. I needed to catch up o...

We walked down the beach after breakfast this morning to find a school of stingrays right on the waters edge. We stood in the shallow water and watched them move around our legs. Whenever a shark came into view the rays would move off as a group and when the coast was clear they would move back in close to shore again. We started today with a swim at the gantry. It is amazing how many thousands of fish we could see all at once. Every once in a while a shark wou...

We managed to mostly sleep through the night, thanks to earplugs and the ceiling fans. We still got up pretty early and went to breakfast. After sufficient coffee and some food we grabbed our snorkel gear and headed to Shark Bay to see some fish. Maybe we should have thought a little bit more about the title "Shark Bay." I am not sure what I expected but it probably wasn't standing in knee deep water and having several three to four foot sharks circle my legs. ...

We had our first early morning in ages. We woke at 5am and left Daphne and Trevor's at 5:30 to drive 289K to Gladstone to catch our boat out to Heron Island. Heron Island is a tiny island 89K off the East Coast. The Island is a 42 acre coral cay within the Capricorn Island group and sits just south of the Tropic of Capricorn. It is located in the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef. The waters surrounding the island support around 900 of the 1,500 fish specie...

We said our goodbye to the A's – Angela, Andrew, Austin and April and hit the road. Our destination today is Hervey Bay which is 300k North of Brisbane. We did not have any sights marked on our route today so we were just to see what we could see on the way. We are staying with Lesley's Sister and her Husband this evening who I understand are unique and interesting people. Our first stop was the Etamagah Pub. This is a wacky building designed after a buil...