Saturday 29th August

I had realtime, proper-job, salty tangy MARMITE with peanut butter on toast for my brekky this morning :D courtesy of the recent presence of Chloe and Andrea, and it was so damn GOOD!

After spending the last month or so with a mental image of them gradually getting closer and closer, they finally arrived on Wednesday and came into Peterpans to surprise me at work, which was excellent! Unfotunately I had to work all day 10-6, then the eve 6-10 both days but we managed to have a couple hours of drinks after I finished work both days. I'm usually tired after work and can't be bothered to socialise, and it was fantastic to have them here, with whom I don't HAVE to make an effort or anything, it's just easy and comfortable and great. Yesterday we did a day sailing trip out to the Whitsundays on a catamaran called Camira; we chose it for it's chilled-outness, with big nets accross the front and loads of deckspace to sunbathe on, oh and free alcohol! So after a horrendously early pickup at 7.10am, we sailed at 8am, it was already really warm, to pick up people from Daydream island, through channels between other rocky islands, some apparently deserted, a few with resorts but many refreshingly natural looking, with no building and unspoilt, deserted beaches. You can say some bad things about aussies, but they DO know a thing or two about preserving natural beauty and they really take their national parks and habitat stuff seriously.

First stop was snorkelling point at hook bay, at the south of Hook Island. The snorkelling was great! The corals were amazing and really varied, and mostly very shallow so easy to see from the surface. Saw some massive fish, and for once, I was really buoyant, so could just float spreadeagled and watch what was going on (normally I sink immediately and find it vey hard to keep afloat! Suspect my buoyancy is due to ice cream and fat cells but nevermind). The water was a bit murky, think because there were about a million people snorkelling there, the boat guys had to keep yelling out to people not to stand on the coral, I mean, how stupid can you be?? Sometimes is WAS difficult, as the reef was so shallow, several times I felt my flipper touch something, and was scared I'd hit it on the coral, they are so fragile. It was pretty easy to see the bleaching, huge areas that just looked dead and dried out, kindof sad, but can see from the intact bits how amazing the whole thing must have been. The water was WARM, too! I didn't even need a wetsuit! Amazing!

After snorkelling we had coffee then sailed on to Whitehaven Beach (98% pure silica, so fine and powdery and white) where we played football and vollyball in the sea for a couple of hours, and chloe tested the silver-cleaning properties of the sand on her watch, with little result (although I suspect she did it wrong)! Back on the boat for a stupendous lunch with loads of lovely salads and BBQ. Free wine, lalala, and lots of relaxing, then I made it to work at 6.30pm, a bit pink from sun and wine, but it was a good day :) Sad to say goodbye to clo and andrea, I have to admit I cried a little bit after they left, I've been looking forward to them coming for about 4months, and now it's over... right then, WHO'S COMING TO SEE ME NEXT?? Get booking your tickets!

I'm so glad I've finally gone sailing; Airlie Beach is SO about sailing, it's one of the sailing capitals of the world, half the regulars in the pub own boats, like racing boats and yachts, and a lot of them actually LIVE on boats permenantly, they come into land every morning in a little 'tender' boat, then back out in the evening. I even bought a pair of cheapy 'sailing style' sunnies, because I feel like they are the proper thing to wear here! I'd like to go again before my wings trip, but don't think I'll have the time. Although I only work low hours per week, they are infuriatingly split between 3-hour shifts every day, which is just inconvenient for going anywhere out of airlie or doing any overnight trips.

Work was ok, but another 2.5 hour shift which is shockingly short and not nearly enough to inch me towards a decent number of hours for this week... Leonie seems to give hours to other people over me, leaving me with like 23/wk, which is NOT ENOUGH! In fact, I think I may be lucky to get even that this week. I'm going to give it a couple of days then go and crack the s***s at her again, in the hope of getting her to give me a few more. I'm fedup of hoggies, am SO looking forward to being able to tell them where to stick their job. The annoying thing is that much as I would like to tell Leonie EXACTLY what I think of her and her employer shortcomings and the way she treats her staff, I still want to be able to put Hog's Breath on my CV, and in order to do that, I need to not risk her giving me a bad reference if a future employer rings her for one (which they might, if it's my last place of work, and which I have no doubt she WILL if I tell her how badly I think she runs her staffing, she's very unprofessional like that).

One good thing is that the guy I was in contact with about the room, Tim, has got in touch and said that one girl is leaving from his flat sometime in the next week, so I am going to move in there. I actually am at the point now where I don't really care if it might be better to be in a hostel, rent there will only be $100/wk. I just really need to be able to save a little bit to edge my bank balance up, I am desparate to leave Airlie having broken even overall, and have only three weeks to get to that point. I think the extra $89 a week I will save might just be enough to allow me to get to that point.

I think living in his flat might be nice anyway, there are three other girls that live there, all seem really nice. He is nice and friendly and often has bbqs and stuff, I might find it a LITTLE suffocating, in a 2-bed flat with 4other people (my room will be shared with one other and is really just a partitioned-off section of the lounge, it has proper walls but they are very very thin and keep no noise out, but I can put up with that. I just need to not live in a hostel for a few weeks, it will be nice to be in a proper flat. I'm not sociable at the hostel anyway, I work most eves and when I get in from work I'm always tired and can never be bothered to talk to anyone so I avoid them, and the daytimes I jsut spend sunbathing and reading when I'm not at work. I will miss the hostel garden most, but hello, airlie beach lagoon is there for the taking, so I will just have to take advantage of that instead.

Have been planning my onward travels, too, that always picks my mood up! I'm doing my 2day2night sailing trip on Sept 20th, then leaving airlie on 25thSept to go onwards and upwards then dive and fly and trek and all sorts of brilliant stuff. October is planned to be such a good month full of cool stuff, I am looking forward to it, and only having three weeks left in airlie makes hoggies all that much more bearable. If I can only get enough hours each week to break even for the next three weeks, then it will all be ok *crosses fingers without a great deal of hope*...