Left Airlie Beach in the afternoon facing a 14 hour bus trip through the night down to Rainbow Beach. This dark world of the night bus is weird and could realistically be used as endurance training for the SAS, as far as i'm concerned. The time passes much more slowly than in the day and there's nothing to watch out the window obviously but they showed a Steve Irwin video which i really enjoyed! Crikey she's a beauty! Luckily no-one was sat next to me for the most part, so i was able to try out every conceivable position in my quest for comfort. All possibillities were exhausted before midnight though - i even tried lying upsaide-down with my legs up the window.

So after little sleep, I was not really in the mood for any niceties when i stepped off the coach at 7am, only to be accosted by a hostel hawker. They're always very irritating and tend to be from the party hostels, with free drink vouchers etc. So i was a bit rude but she persevered bless her. In the end i agreed and she led me to the nicest, cleanest and cheapest hostel i've ever stayed in! Marvellous.

Rainbow Beach is dinky and seaside-ish and quiet. Thought i was over the whole beach thing but this one is stunning and goes on forever. Nearby is Tin Can Bay, famous for the dolphins that visit there and out of everything on the East Coast, this was the one thing i had hoped to get the chance to visit. So i booked myself onto the little ferry that goes over there for all of $15. The dolphins were already there on a little beach by the wharf, surrounded by a crowd of holidaymakers and children. The dolphins presence here and the fact that they are fed has been quite controversial and attracted lots of publicity. The Dept of Conservation oversee the whole thing though and no-one profits from the feeding, except maybe the tiny cafe on the wharf.

The dolphins are Indo-Pacific Humpback Dolphins and very rare and shy. They are an esturary species and never go out to sea. They don't do all the normal dolphin stuff like porpoising or bow-riding. They're just chilled out i suppose! In 1990 a female was injured by a fishing boat and the skipper brought her in and nursed her back to health, naming her Scarry. Afterwards she'd return to visit and get the odd bit of fish from the locals. Eventually she appeared with her calf who they called Mystique and it is he that now returns every day 13 years later. Scarry died 2 years ago but in recent months Mystique appeared with a mate, Patch. They're not sure if Patch is male or female but judging by all the flirting and rolling around they were doing today, they're in love either way.

So every morning any time from 6.30 Mystique will come up to the wharf and in the organised chaos that ensues, he and Patch are fed a total 3kg of fish each by the public. You queue up and are given one fish in a bucket and then everyone takes it in turns to go into the water and feed the waiting dolphins. This amount of fish is a mere fraction of the 30kg the dolphins must eat every day and the volunteers who run the feeding session say this is only a cup of tea and some cake to them! They don't survive on this alone and by the time they've done the 30km round trip to Tin Can from where they live, they will have burnt it off anyway. So there's no fear that they are relying on this activity or "losing" their wildness. I suppose like other places in the world, they just like visiting and get a treat into the bargain.

Before the feeding session, you are free to stand in the water and interact with them (no touching), which i tried but couldn't really cope with all the elbowing and whiney kids. After the frenzy of the feeding, however, the dolphins swam off and so all the people ambled away. Quitters! There was an hour before the ferry went back so i just hung around and watched. Sure enough they reappeared and carried on swimming up and down the little beach, this time with only a few people in the water. They put on a great show, rolling around in the water, showing us their very pink bellies and opening their mouths and blowing bubbles. No-one had any fish but they stayed for the rest of the hour. They even followed the ferry out into the esturary as well! What a great morning i've had!

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