After arriving in Airlie Beach that morning on the coach I FINALLY got to check into my hostel after having to sit around for 5 hours! Ridiculous! After having a shower and doing some washing I sat chatting in the room emjoying the air con and sorting my stuff out for the Whitsundays trip the following day. The rest of the day was pretty lazy and after enjoying a proper Sunday dinner, Yorkshire pudding and all I had an early night!

Sailing trip - DAY 1 18/1/10

Got up bright and early that morning, no thanks to someone's alarm in the room going off at 6am for about half an hour before they turned the bloody thing off! Didn't have to be at the Marina to check in for the trip until 12.30 so chilled out before meeting Louise and walking to the Marina. When we arrived there we met the other people sailing with us on Wings II before being signed in by the 2 dive instructors, Duncan and Rich. After that we got taken aboard Wings II where we got to meet the other 2, and some may say most important crew members, our skipper, Thommo, and our hostie, Sophie. While we were having a briefing we set sail, on what was a beautifully hot sunny day, out to explore The Whitsunday Islands. After the briefing, finding out where we were sleeping (a very small cabin with 7 people in it!) and a couple of hours at sea we got to our first dive site where we geared up ready to go Scuba diving. There were 24 of us on the boat, 5 of us qualified divers, and for once Thommo informed us that every person tried diving at least once. Our group was the first to go out and it was so nice to be back underwater, having not dived since I left Fiji a month or so before. On that dive we got to meet Priscilla, the humpheaded Maori Wrasse, who used to be a girl but is now a boy! Apparently Elvis, the dominant Maori Wrasse disappeared or died one day, and so poor Priscilla as the largest female, became a man! Managed to do some snorkelling after the dive and finally got a chance to dig out the disposable underwater camera I had found in Melbourne! That night I got to do my first NIGHT DIVE, which was very exciting, but which I was also very nervous about considering all you have to see with is a little torch and some glow sticks on your buddys tank so you can see where they are! Saying that, the dive was AWESOME, and actually suprisingly relaxing. When we got back we were all starving and luckily Sophie had been whipping up a storm in the galley and had dinner ready for us. Over the whole trip we all ate ridiculously well, there were meals, snacks and snacks on snacks! That first night everyone was pretty tired so it was early to bed with all of us. It might just have been because I was so tired but I got a very good nights sleep!

DAY 2 - Up bright and early, awoken by the sounds of the anchor being pulled up and we set sail for our first dive site of the day. Another beautiful day and we went diving in the hopes of seeing a turtle or two while we were down there. Alas, no luck and sods law meant that as soon as we got back up the snorkellers who were near by had seen....a turtle! I think that was probably the only time anyone saw one the whole trip! We sailed round to our next spot for our last dive that day before heading to Hamilton Island where we were going to Whitehaven beach. We were warned before we got to the island that we would not want to be taking our cameras with us, as they would die a sandy death from the ridiculously fine sand on the island. Apparently the sand on the beach is 98% silica, meaning it doesn't get too hot to walk on in the sun, although it gets everywhere! Fact of the day from Thommo for us was that the mirrors on the Hubble Telescope are made from the sand on Whitehaven beach. Luckily for us Sophie had her camera with her and got some stunning photos for us. They're all on a disk I have, but it hasn't seemed worth everyone on the boat uploading the same photos so if you want to see them look through the ones I'm tagged in from Louise's album. I can see why Whitehaven beach is named one of, if not the best beach in the world. It is absolutely stunning, and we all enjoyed a few hours relaxing in the water, even if we did have to wear our terribly attractive stinger suits at all times! When we got back to the boat we all had to get hosed down, and were still warned we would wake up with sand in our bedsd the next morning! After that we set sail for our mooring for the night where we had dinner and played a few games dreamt up by Thommo with a few drinks. It was a really good night, and the sunset was STUNNING. Definately the best sunset I have seen while I've been in Australia.

LAST MORNING - We were up even brighter and earlier the next morning for our final dive, which was supposed to be THE dive to see turtles! Unfortunately they're crafty b*****s and someone must have warned them that we were coming because they'd all disappeared before we got there! This was definately my favourite dive of the trip, although over all I had been slightly disappointed with the diving in general, controversial I think it was better in Fiji! However this dive was pretty damn cool, it was a drift dive, which means you get carried by the tide from one end of the dive to the next, and means you hardly have to do any kicking! After that it was time to head back to Airlie Beach, unfortunately, although we did FINALLY get to sail, for all of 15 minutes on the way back. When we got back we said our goodbyes and agreed to meet for drinks that night before a group of us all headed back and hung out for the day before they made use of my shower and we headed to the bar to get our free drinks! Sadly the majority of the guys I'd met on the boat were all leaving on the overnight bus for Cairns that night so we managed a quick drink before they have to leave. Although every cloud has a silver lining and all that, more free alcohol for me!!

The next morning was my turn on the coach and I left Airlie Beach for a looooooong coach ride up to Cairns where I arrived that night. To rain. Brilliant! I'd chosen to stay at Northern Greenhouse, which is an AMAZING hostel! The next morning I woke up to find, more rain, and was informed my some of the girls in my room that it was in fact cyclone season. Brilliant, no-one had decided to warn me of this before I got there! Spent a day relaxing and went for a walk to the mall with Fanny, one of the girls from the room, which is over the next few days, where I spent most of my time. That and the bar at the hostel! I'd decided to go out on one of the dive boats while I was in Cairns and eventually decided that I was going to complete my Advance Open Water scuba diving qualification. Fair enough, the only problem was that the weather meant that most activities, especially any involving boats were getting cancelled! Luckily Northern Greenhouse is a very cool hostel to just hang around in, and there was an awesome group of people there to do nothing with. I didn't really want to do any other activities in Cairns, and I didn't have the money too either, so a couple of days were spent just waiting around for the weather to clear and the boats to be going out again. There were a couple of very good nights out in this time, no better than when we took Bob, the toy alien from the bar, out on the town with us. It was even funnier when we teased Nicole, Bob's guardian, the next day that she had lost him before finally owning up that we had been pulling her leg all along. Sorry Nicole!!

On Australia Day I finally got told that I would be able to go out on a dive boat the following morning. Brilliant, although that did mean an early night with no drinking for me. Or not! I did have a couple of drinks early in the evening, ended up in the hostel pool during a thunder storm fully clothed with my friends from the hostel before we ventured out to The Woolshed. I had stopped drinking by this point although I still somehow managed to stay up all night, have 3 hours sleep and then head out to get picked up at the dive shop at 6.20am the next day. To say I was tired is putting it mildly! Luckily when we got on the boat breakfast had been made for us and after out briefing we got a few hours rest while we sailed out to our first dive spot of the day! Over the course of the next 3 days we were going to be doing 11 dives, 4 each on the first 2 days and then 3 the last morning. It might not seem like it, but this is a lot and scuba diving is suprisingly tiring. Luckily we were kept well fuelled and fed by Katha, the marvellous cook for our 3 days. There was breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, evening snack and there was always tea and biscuits hould you decide that somehow all of that wasn't quite enough food for you! This dive trip was the first time I had ever dived without an instructor leading us, and on the first dive, myself and my buddy Patrick were slightly apprehensive of going off on our own. We were always given really detailed briefings before we dove and told that if all else failed, surface, find the boat and get a compass bearing and then you can dive back down again on your way back to the boat. I soon found out that diving without a guide is pretty awesome, and over the 3 days there weren't many times that we had to surface to try and find out where we were! Over the 3 days, 5 of the dives that we did were also part of of my Advanced course. The modules I did were; Underwater Navigation, Night Dive, Deep Dive, Underwater Naturalist (not Naturist!!) and Underwater Photography. This course is more about enhancing your skills as a diver and learning better techniques instead of the Open Water which is teaching you the basics of diving. That night we went off for our night dive with our instructor, Dave, very exciting, and as it turned out, very funny! Dave signalled to us to put our torches against our chest to create a blackout and then wave our hands infront of our faces to activate the chemiluminescent plankton in the water. One of our group didn't quite get this and ended up flashing the torch in his eyes! Our second night dive the following day also ended up being very funny, although this time it was because we got to go off on our own with our buddy and the 4 of us that went off together ended up getting completely lost! You can see the lights from the boat underwater but you can't tell where it is. We surfaced, found out we were too far infront of the bow, completely the wrong direction, swam back and finally found where we should have been. However, we then started going the wrong way again and ended up nearly heading too deep. I recognised the spot from earlier in the day and after a lot of torch flashing managed to signal to the rest of the group that we were going too deep and needed to turn back.

The first dive of the last day turned out to be the best one of the whole trip. Patrick and I saw so much when we were down there and for once managed to navigate back to the boat without any hassle at all! We saw a group of bumpheaded parrotfish sitting off the back of the boat as we descended and then heading round the coral wall saw a couple of white tipped reef sharks and hundreds of other varieties of fish. When we got round to what was our reference point, the golf ball, we saw.....TURTLES!! 3 of them in fact. I was on such a high when we got back to the boat, it was AMAZING! The next 2 dives we did at the same spot, although heading in slightly different directions, and on these 2 I got to take one of the underwater cameras with me. Unluckily the turtles had all b*****ed off by this point, but I did manage to get a picture of a shark and there are hundreds of photos of the coral and of fish, even a Nemo! When we got back that night we all met up for drinks, and all found out that we couldn't stop rocking/swaying to the movement of the boat. Luckily a few pints of beer soon sorted that out!

The last couple of days in Cairns were spent sorting flights out for me to get to NZ and again just relaxing round the hostel. I met up with Uncle Sue and Aunty Pete while they were still in Cairns and they took video proof for Mutti that I am indeed, alive and well! Last night in Cairns ended up spent in the bar at the hostel having a few drinks and saying goodbyes. The next morning I spent a couple of hours waiting round the hostel before I set off for the airpot to catch my flight to Sydney, and in turn the next day to Christchurch NZ. I'm still too annoyed to even go into how much of a hassle it has been to get here, so that I'm afraid will have to wait for next time!