02/02/09

Managed to get about an hours sleep, we had to pick up some people on the way that the previous greyhound had just dropped off in the middle of nowhere at 2am because it couldn't continue due to flooding. They all seemed a little pissed off, but we finally arrived in Airlie Beach at about half 6, thus missing the free shuttle bus ride to the Koala hostel at 0615, so we had to walk all the way to the hostel, which to be fair wasn't a long walk, but we had to walk it in the pouring rain, so we were all soaked through when we arrived. We then had to wait for an hour for the reception to open before we could put our bags into storage until we could check in at 1400 because the room were being cleaned. I used the time to clean my teeth into the bin outside. The reception floor was crazy, they have it tiled, and backpackers with flip-flops and wet tiled floors do not mix, everyone nearly stacked it on their back as they walked through, and they had no caution sign for it.

We now had 6 hours to waste in the middle of a cyclone before we could check in. The first choice was to top up the global gossip and use the phones to phone the UK while it was still so early and people were awake. Then we stopped at McDonalds to use the free wi-fi, unfortunately they had no wi-fi, so I ended up buying a strawberry shake and a cake, Burns went the whole hog and got some rank looking burger. We'd managed to waste a fair bit of time by now, so we went for a strole round the shops, Pat and I went to Global Gossip to use the internet, the others used the Koalas internet. I couldn't actually sit in the cafe because it was like a fridge inside, so had to sit outside on the bench on the laptop. I had flied constantly mating on my leg the entire time, they just wouldn't give it a rest. After a while we all got bored so asked what there was to do in town at the tourist info place, they said theres nothing to do but wait for it to get dark and then drink. So off we went to the pub, it was about 11 when Burns Pat and I got in 2 pitchers of XXXX, and sat around playing poker for 5c pieces, followed by drinking scrabble. It was raining so hard the roads had flooded again. It got to about 1300 and we were getting rather sick of the rain, so we decided to go to the hostel and use the kitchen to make beans on toast, which soon turned into beans on bread when we realised there was no toaster. The only thing in the kitchen were 8 hobs, 3 of which worked.

We checked in at 1400 and saw Ben and Jen whom we met on Fraser then went straight to the room. As we opened the door we were smacked in the face by a wall of piss. It was almost as bad as the room of a certain person I used to be responsible for. Whilst we were all moaning about the stench Coops had checked out the toilet, it was full of piss and s***, then a familiar voice sounded at the door, it was Si from the Fraser trip, he heard us moaning about the smell and told us that his rooom next door was exactly the same, he thinks the cleaning ladies mop up with buckets of piss. Sat around outside the room for a while chatting with Ben, Jen and Si, then picked up our things from storage. We saw some foreign cleaners moping around outside, struggling in the rain with some kind of pram they had to push the mops and hoovers around on. We asked if she was going to clean our room and she had to go ask her boss, she quickly returned and gave it a 'clean' if you can call it that. We all had a nap for a few hours as none of us had had much sleep on the night bus.

When we woke up we were all hungry so decided to go get a frying pan from the reception to cook with, had to put a $10 deposit on it! While I was there the receptionist was handing out free meal vouchers to all the new check-ins, so I asked why we didn't get one and she promptly gave me 5 of them, they only had 15 minutes before they expired though so I rushed back and got everyone ready to go to the bar and get a free meal. On the way I saw a giant Toad on the pavement, it must have been like 20cm long. Got to the bar and got in the queue for food. The only free meal left was risotto so Rich, Coops and I got one of those each, Pat and Helen got some giant burgers. The girls went back to the room to get some juice rather than pay for a drink, on the way the giant toad jumped on Coops foot, as she screamed and shook it off it jumped on the other one. We then went back to the room and attempted to watch The Usual Suspects with Ben and Jen, it was far too quiet though so we ended up watching the family guy movie instead, which I couldn't keep my eyes open for and ended up falling asleep at some point.

03/02/09

We woke up at about 9 and it wasn't raining, I was quite excited by this so quickly got dressed and used the oppertunity to go to the shop and buy some museli and milk. Walked around the rest of town and found a PeterPans so got some free internet access, then went home. By this time everyone was up and we went back out around the shops, I ended up getting some shorts with some pockets! When we met back in the room we decided to go back out round town and book a night in the hostel down the road for the day we get back from our trip so we could have a urine free night, then paid our reef tax and all went back on the internet in global gossip because it had started pummeling down again. I went to PeterPans instead and spent hours tagging people in photos as I was that bored and had nothing better to do. Went back to the room and spent hours doing exercises, the girls went to some town about 5 minutes drive away so Coops could buy a new camera because hers had overheated and broken. When they got back, they had bought us all bars of chocolate because they were on special offer, so I scoffed mine, then we got ready to go for a free Didgery Doo lesson. None of us could stop laughing to begin with so we were pretty unsuccessful playing it, after a while we got a little better, I don't think any of us are destined to be a doo player though. It was sloshing it down again on the way back and we couldn't think of anything else to do so we went to the shop and bought a Sarah Lee cake and went back to the room and cooked Pasta with mince ans sauce. We had no sieve/collander so we carried the pots back to the room when we finished, which watered down the mince and sauce a little bit and drained the pasta slowly in the sink. There is nothing to do round here so we sat in the room and watched the simmpsons, neighbours, the hills and gossip girl on TV whilst reading books etc. Ended up trying to go to sleep really early because there was nowt to do, I was wide awake, as were Helen and Coops, so Coops decided to tell a bed-time story.

04/02/09

We were up at 9, I rushed over to check everyone out before the mass exodus at 10, and we stayed in the room with it on the latch for as long as poss. As we were leaving, we bumped in to Dale and Adam again so we let them sit in our room as they couldn't check in until 2. We all spent a bit of time on the net and booked our greyhound ticket to go to Townsville on the morning of the 7th. We then went to reception to hire out our stinger suits and go for the briefing before getting on the Pride of Airlie trip. While we were waiting Dale and Adam showed up complaining that the room was full of bugs, stank of piss and the bed I was sleeping in had ants all over it.

For some reason they told us to be at the jetty by 1430 but the boat didn't show until 1530 so we were all hanging around in the heat for an hour, a lot of people were getting rather pissed off, but I was just glad it wasn't raining. We all hopped on the boat and sailed straight to the resort on South Mollie Island, about 2 hours away.

We got there and were issued with keys for 6 bed dorms, we had our cling-on with us, Emma, as she is now called. We got key 614 and went to the room, on the way the tour operator was shouting to get everyone back as she had dished out the wrong keys. So we all handed our keys back and waited for 15 minutes for her to return with the right keys, when she got back she told us we could use room 614, then proceeded to give another group of 6 all keys for room 614 as well, what a tard. When we had settled down we went to use the Olympic sized swimming pool they had raved about, which turned out to be rather small, and spent an hour or so splashing around and doing a few backslappers.

We went down to the bar to get a couple of jugs in before dinner, another boat had just returned from their full day sailing, Ben, Jen, Si and his mates were on this one. Dinner was surprisingly good, we each had a nice piece of chicken and were dished up some salad. The only problem was the woman dishing out the coleslaw, I got my chicken then 3/4 of a plate heaped of coleslaw so I only had room for 2 spuds. After dinner the deck hands from the two ships organised some drinking games. They set up all the tables in the bar in to one long line so we had 2 lines of people facing each other sat boy girl boy girl. The first drinking game was called pass the penis, a long packet of plastic cups, we had to skull our drinks then pump the person next to us three times then pass it on for them to do the same. All good clean fun. The second game was rather more amusing, it was skull your drink then swap top with the person next to you. Rich and Emma swapped, emma looked ok in Rich's T, but Rich rather gay in a nice frilly yellow top. Pat and Jen swapped, he looked rather fetching in a white wifebeater, a bit weird with the rug popping out the top. Coops swapped with some guy and ended up with a giant looking tank top that completely swamped her. Helen and I had to swap, she looked ridiculous in my polo shirt which looks small on me but seems massive on her, and I managed to squeeze in to a nice purple vest top. Ben lucked out and managed to swap with another guy but Si was by far the worst, he had a full on purple dress. Needless to say we all looked rather stupid.

We continued drinking for as long as possible. It didn't take long for Ben and Emma to start pole dancing together, and soon enough everyone was at it. Si and his mates literally pushed me in to it, so I had to get some revenge, and managed to get them to help me get Pat on it, well funny. Later in the night Burns was forced in to it as well. Si ended up getting battered as he had smuggled goon on to the island, at one point he was sitting on the table looking really glum, so Burns went over to ask what was wrong, turns out he'd just run out of beer, so he gave him a top up and he was away again. The deck hand from our boat got wasted and was attempting to shove his tongue down pretty much everyones throat, I don't think Coops was too pleased when he tried his luck with her.

Went back to the room at about midnight, Emma and Coops were there, the fire alarm kept beeping ever few seconds so I had a go at taking the battery out, did it a bit forcefully though and ended up ripping it off the ceiling. Then we had a conversation about how Clamydia would be such a good name for a baby girl if it weren't already taken.

05/02/09

We had to be up for breakfast in the bar at 0630. I got down there as soon as possible to get some food in me to soak up the beer. Ended up having 2 bowls of cereal and 2 giant egg and bacon sandwiches. The best part of the entire trip by far were the Rainbow Lorikeets that literally swarmed the bar while we were eating in the morning. They were so friendly, hundreds of them were just hopping along the table trying to peck at whatever they could find. Coops went over to one of them and managed to get it to hop on her arm by teasing it with a piece of bread. We also saw some bat fish on the walk down the jetty on the way to the boat.

No one on the entire boat had any energy in the morning, we attempted sitting outside listening to Burns coming up with stupid would you rathers and Coops told us that the noise a frog made was a gribbit so we all mocked her for that. I ended up laying inside attempting to sleep for the 3 hour journey. We finally made it to the island and we all managed to get on the first dingy ride to shore. We walked to the lookout and saw the most photographed beach in the world. On the walk to the beach some weird bug started flying round my head, it wouldn't give it a rest, no matter how many times I swatted it away it just came back to fly around my ears, it stayed for about 5 minutes before I managed to pass it on to Coops who somehow got rid of it straight away. When we got to the beach we just layed down and tried to nap, more of those bugs started flying around our heads again so I eventually managed to get the energy to go for a walk across the sand flat, it reaked of rotten eggs. Burns and I had a competition to see how deep we could jump in to the sand, for some reason I always ended up jumping and getting some really hard sand and smashing my heels on the ground and Burns would land in nice squishy stuff and go knee deep in it. We were told to be back on the other side of the island to be picked up at 1200, so we got there for about 5 to. Dave the deck hand must have passed out because he didn't pick us up until about half past, in that time I had found some more sand flies on me which means I'm gonna get very itchy in a few days.


Got back on the boat and they had a make your own sandwich buffet on the go so I stacked as much meat in between 2 slices of bread as is humanly possible and then struggled to get my chops round it. The next stop was a snorkeling spot. We had the enjoyment of all putting on stinger suits which are basically full body leotards, we all looked awesome. Rich and Coops didn't go in, probably a good idea as the snorkeling wasn't all that, there weren't half as many fish around as in Thailand and there was the risk of being stung by a jelly. I'd had enough so just spent some time diving off the boat, which was really fun until Pat pointed out that my toe was bleeding everywhere, haven't got a clue how I did it but I thought I'd better stop and clean it up a bit.

Sailed home and showered off when we got back. It was only at this point that we realised how burnt everyone was, Pat was just about as bad as Langkawi again, Helen had crazy bikini lines, Emma was just red all over, Burns face and neck were red, my nose and the top of my head were red but Coops seemed to have avoided all the sun somehow. We hung around in the room until 7 before going to the bar to get dinner. It was steak this time, similar situation as yesterday but this time I had the knowledge to ask for only a small amount of coleslaw, so I managed to get s*** loads of spuds on my plate. I think its the first time I've eaten steak with a plastic knife and fork. I ended up eating everyones remaining salad that no one liked. Hung around in the bar for a while chatting to some Swiss blokes and some Italian guy that was attempting to chat me up, which I found rather amusing.

06/02/09

Breakfast was 0730 this time, they had the standard bacon and eggs again, so I was chuffed. The Lorikeets seemed to have become 10x tamer over night. They were gathering in groups and hopping right up next to peoples plates while they were still eating and trying to pinch their bread. As I was eating my bacon and egg sanie one flew right at my face trying to take the whole thing at once and ended up landing on top of my head. It really hurt, its tallons were scraping my sun burnt scalp, so I necked the sandwich as quick as possible and then got it off my head. They were so tame we were holding plastic knives to their necks and they weren't even flinching, they wouldn't even flinch when we wen to push them away, you could actually have picked them up. On then walked right over one guys breakfast and was waddling around with a cornflake on its foot for a while. They were quite annoying but definately the best part of the trip, they were awesome.

We set sail at about 8am and went towards another snorkeling spot. When we got there we all had to don our stinger suits again and we were then told about a huge fish called Elvis to look out for. Pat managed to see him the moment he jumped in but must have scared him away because I never managed to find him. There were a lot more fish around here than the spot yesterday but still not as good as the fish on Bamboo Island in Thailand. Nick ended up getting stung on his lips by a jelly, he was giving the international distress signal and a guy in a dingy drove up to hiim, realised that he wasn't part of his group and just left him there for Dave to pick up. He ended up having to wash his face in vinegar. When we were done they put on another sandwich buffet, so it was the same deal again, stacking them as high as we could. There were loads of Bat fish hanging about around the boat so we all started feeding them bread, salad and meats. They were pretty cool, Jaquiline dropped an entire slice of bread in and one fat b****** swam up and sucked the entire thing down in one gulp. We were lucky with the weather for the whole trip, we only had a few showers but halfway back to Airlie Beach the rain really started coming down so everyone piled in to the cabin which stank of wet socks. The water here was so salty, when I'd dried out I had salt deposited all over my body, it really wasn't helping with the pain of a sunburnt head.

When we got back on to land we went on the internet to try to find accomodation in Townsville for when we arrive tomorrow, when I phoned the hostel we found out that all the Greyhounds further north were cancelled due to flodding. Airlie Beach is now the farthest north they go, so we deecided to check in to Magnums for the night and spent the afternoon attempting to make a decision about what to do. We came to the conclusion that the best course of action was to use up our greyhound miles and travel back south and get on the connecting flight from Brisbane on the 28th. So we now wont be seing Magnetic Island, Mission Beach, Cairns, Port Douglas and Cape Tribulation. After hours of phoning various travel companies we decided we'd had enough of pissing about so we went to use our free meal voucher at Koalas and then we met up with everyone else from our boat trip and went started on the jugs. Happy hour soon arrived so we were getting 2 pints, actual pints for once, for $6. We played pool for a while with Paul, the constantly drinking Irish bloke, and Emma and I decided we were going to get battered. We ended up going to a bar called Beaches, then some Irish bar and apparently a club called Africa which I don't remember. Emma went for a McDonalds and we went back to Koalas.

07/02/09

I woke up on the kitchen surface in Emmas room at Koalas at about 5am, took me a while to remember we had checked in to Magnums. I had such rancid morning breath it felt like someone had actaully taken a s*** in my mouth. As I was leaving some nice girl gave me a boomberang. It was pissing it down outside but I was starving so went outside and asked a bin man if there was anywhere that did hot food, he said Mc and I stopped him and asked if there was anything else. He told me about Dominos down the road, so off I went, it closed at 5 am, I was 10 minutes late, so I waited for Brumbys to open at 6 and got 2 pies. Staggered back to Magnums at about 9 and attempted sleeping again, it didn't work so I scrubbed my teeth and went to PeterPans to use the internet, $2 for 2 and a half hours, what a bargain. While I was there I counted my money to see the damage of the night. I went out with at no more than $650 in my pocket as I'd used the cash machine earlier in the day, I spent at least $30 in the first bar we were at, I'd had 2 pies in the morning and don't know what I spent at the other places and now I had $670 in my wallet.

Caught Burns stuffing his face with a Subway meal deal on the way back from the internet so I had to join him. It was still raining, so everyone just layed back in bed and slept all day. Lounged around reading and trying to think of activities to keep ourselves amused, we couldn't think of anything. At some point during the day the guys phoned greyhound and managed to get us all on a bus to 1770 on thenight of the 9th. In the evening we went to the shop to try to find something to eat, they had pretty much nothing to offer us. So all evening we were debating the best course of action food wise, in the end Coops, Rich and I ended up getting Dominos. I ate mine on the way home while Helen went for some McDonalds meal. The girls ate their meals in one of the spare beds in the room and ended up getting pizza and tomato sauce all over the sheets. The girls and I all fell asleep while reading later, while the lads were out watching some aussie football game.

08/02/09

Managed to wake up really late, about 10am, which was a bonus. I think I spent the morning at PeterPans again, although I can not really remember very clearly as the days seem to have merged in to one giant blur of rain and doing nothing. We deided to make the effort to go to the cinema so I asked the bloke at the tourist info place, he told me the only busses that went near a cinema were the greyhounds, one 1 hour north and one 2 hours south, but there was no guarante that we would be able to get back if we got there because of the rain, so we decided not to go. In the end the best idea we had was to get a bus to go to the Whitsundays Shopping Centre, all the shops were shut other than Coles because it was a Sunday, so we spent 2 hours walking around Coles, reading magazines, I read a New Scientist from cover to cover, and we bought food to keep us going until we could get the bus out of here. After 2 hours we got the bus back home. Played scrabble in the room, then everyone went to cook pies that had been bought earlier, I wasn't hungry so decided to go out and have a few drinks.

Got to Beaches and got a pint of Carlton in. Ended up sitting at a random table of travellers that had just got back from a sailing trip. They were all friendly and chatty. The first person I started talking to, Sam, also does gymnastics which was pretty random, so we were chatting away all night. At midnight some bloke just started shouting 'Everyone Skull... time to go' and with that literally everyone skulled their drinks and left. I went and got a pie and tried to sleep, couldn't get to sleep so went back out, went to Paddy's Shenannigans, and bumped in to Emmas mate Tim, then found Pat and Rich there watching the football, so we stayed there until it shut and I ended up getting another pie on the way back at about 3.

09/02/09

Was woken up by one of the French guys in the room at 6am, couldn't get back to sleep because it was so hot and humid. I'd had enough of trying to sleep again at 8 so went out to use the phone, caught Rich phoning the Greyhound, turns out that we weren't actually booked on the Greyhound for tonight so we had to book another for tomorrow night. So we now have another 2 days to waste around here. I went and waited for PeterPans to open at 9, I was the first one in and spent 2 and a half hours on the net. Went back and had a shower then the girls and I had a cup of tea at the kitchen. Sat around in the room later and ended up playing scrabble again. Couldn't think of anything to do so the lads and I went and had beans on toast. I had a cheese and bean toastie, didn't work very well, beans were popping and going everywhere, and the cheese didn't even melt. Got back to the room and struggled with things to do again. The girls went for another wander around town, the lads went back to the internet. We spent the rest of the day in the room, the girls started to watch The Departed on the laptop, Helen only lasted about half an hour before falling asleep and at the end it turns out Coops had already seen it. We then went out to play cards in the Magnums bar and had a jug while listening to some live music.

10/02/09

Woke up at 9.30 with hope that we would be finally leaving. Checked out and put our stuff in storage then went to use the internet again, pretty much run out of things to do on the internet now so that didn't keep us amused for long. Went to the kitchen, on the way there were s*** loads of baby frogs hopping around our feet, literally hundreds of them. When we got there we found a free food bag on the side, spent about an hour going through it and eating stuff that we couldn't be bothered to take with us. It was like christmas, there were loads of cup-a-soups, nice ready-meals for one 3 tins of Heinz baked beans and plenty more. Before we left we noticed a group of ants teaming up on a baby frog and carrying it all the way up a tree. Played scrabble at Magnums bar and am currently wasting time in Global Gossip until the bus turns up at midnight.