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Hi all,
So we have been having a whale of a time over the past couple of weeks. Since our last blog, we've been to Surfer's Paradise, Byron Bay, Brisbane, Fraser Island and the Whitsundays!! So I'll start at the beginning in filling you all in as it just keeps getting better and better!!
This is a whopper of a blog, so I hope you're on the sofa with a cup of tea!
So first off was Surfers Paradise, and as you can imagine, people surf a lot there!! It is supposed to have some of the best waves in Australia for surfing and the place is covered in surf lesson schools. So what else were we to do but indulge in the local culture and sign up to a surf lesson!! To be honest, there wasn't much of anything else to be doing! So off we went to our 2 hour lesson, convinced we would be master surfers by the end of it, but…….surfing is hard!!!! Our coach was really good, but it is so hard to stand up on the board, at the most I got to my knees and did it that way but apparently it's surf sin so nobody applauded what I thought was achievement of the week!!! Matt had a lot of falling off his board for the first hour and a half but then he started to get it and eventually could stand up on his! It wasn't quite surfing but it was the closest either of us was getting to it in the 2 hour time frame, so well done him for being one of only 2 people in the group who could stand on their board! Also, it wasn't just the standing that knocked the wind out of you, it was the constant falling and chasing your surf board and fighting against the waves to get back out and try again. At the start, you fell off a LOT, which meant a LOT of chasing your surfboard the whole way back to the beach only to battle your way back out to a decent wave, it was hard work but it was really fun! At least we get to say we had a surfing lesson in Surfers Paradise!!
Next was Byron Bay! This place was very unlike any other town we visited as it seemed to be stuck somewhere between the 70's and modern times. It was very laid back and really small, which made it easy to get around. The weather wasn't great during our time here although we got one nice day, so we decided to go to the beach and Matt rented a surfboard from the hostel so he could keep practising surfing. The surfboard was knackered and didn't have any wax on it so there was no grip for your hands or feet, which meant Matt just fell off at every attempt for about 2 hours!! Other than bumming around the beach, there wasn't much else going on in the lazy town of Byron Bay. We did take a walk for a couple of hours up to the lighthouse in Byron, which is actually the most easterly point in the whole of Australia! There were some lovely sights during the walk, including 10 minute stretch where there was nothing but ocean for as far as the eye could see. I forgot my camera that day so sorry guys, there's no pics!! There is also a town near Byron called Noosa, where apparently people still fully live as hippies on communes and openly take the drugs of the 70's. Most people that come to Byron Bay visit Noosa but Matt and I had had our fair share of hippy dippy's so we decided to give it a miss!! We actually walked past 2 people in the street having an argument and their friend said "I'm getting really negative energy from you guys!"
Between that and the copious amounts of thai dye in all the shops, we were ready to roll on to the next destination: Brisbane!
We had a really good feeling about Brisbane and what we would see and do there! On our first day we took the walking map from the tourist book and went around the city centre sights; mostly they were government buildings and some cool old ones. Then on the way home we passed a travel agents that was advertising cheap trips to Fraser Island and the Whitsundays, so we went in to enquire and came out feeling very poor!! We booked and paid for both the trips in a spur of the moment decision so we were unprepared to hand out so much money at once, but at least everything was paid for and we were ready to rock!! 3 days and 2 nights on Fraser Island, travelling round it in a 4x4 with 6 other people and 2 days, 2 nights sailing round the Whitsundays. We were so excited to get back out and see some breathtaking scenery again!! While we enjoyed Brisbane and its atmosphere, we were ready for some luxury (we had a guy in our dorm room, who had some serious foot fungus issues and a room of our own on a catamaran in the Whitsundays sounded perfect!).
When we booked the trip, the agent asked if I wanted to be a driver in our group on Fraser Island. I thought, why not!! I'll get to drive a 4x4!! I didn't realise that we would be driving on the beach and through soft sand dunes the whole time!! I soon found this out when it came to my turn to drive. Of course, as soon as I take the wheel our convoy turns off road onto some deep soft sand jungle track!! Although I must say, I didn't get stuck once but it was some driving. Driving on the beach was like driving on ice, which I have never done but so the other drivers said. Driving on soft sand was very strange, it was so easy to get stuck in but it was a lot of fun!! It was hard to fully enjoy it though as any damage to the vehicle was being charged to us all so we were all worried in case something happened. Both our nights on Fraser Island would be spent camping without showers or toilets (we had a very conspicuous and bright orange 's*** shovel' which we had to use when we felt the need). We had also all received a very serious talk on dingoes and how to be careful not to attract them, like locking all food up and keeping nothing edible in your tent, including toothpaste which they will eat through your tent to get. Our guide told us one story of a girl who got drunk when camping, vomited in her tent and woke up a couple of hours later nose to nose with a dingo who had bitten through her tent after smelling the vomit!!!
So everything was packed away safely that night, but despite this we woke up to find that a loaf of bread had been set against the inside of the cage for the food and some dingoes had scrabbled at it so we had to throw it out! At this point I hadn't seen a dingo yet but I did think I heard them snuffling about outside the tents!
We stopped off at some lovely lagoons on Fraser including a gorgeous cool, green freshwater lagoon. It was heaven after not having a shower that morning! We also visited a shipwreck that had beached; it was an old Chinese warship that had been bombed during the war and the Chinese had since reclaimed it and were tugging it back to China, past Fraser Island when a massive cyclone storm hit and severed the tow, leaving the wreck washed up on the island, where it remained and actually became target practise for fighter pilots in the next war!! It was completely rusted and ready to fall to pieces but it looked class when the waves washed in and battered all around it, I tried to get a picture of it happening, and hopefully you can see! Then came our second night camping, which was not as successful as the first! During dinner, a dingo came out of nowhere and tried to steal a bag of rubbish, right beside me!! So I jumped up and shouted 'Ya" at him, which is supposed to get them to leave and it actually worked, leaving me thinking I was some sort of Dog Whisperer!! However, other camp members weren't quite on top of dingo precautions and after they proceeded to get absolutely ruined on goon, (I had gone to bed early,'I' notice, not we!) had left the food cage open and the leaders jeep door open!! I got up the next morning and there were only a few people up at this time, one of them being the leader, and he was not happy!! He got up at 4am to do his checks during the night only to find 5 dingoes feasting on all our food and one with his head in the girls pee bucket as the pop up toilet door had been left opened too!! Dingoes are very dangerous animals when you are challenging them to food and especially when they are in a pack so when the leader tried to chase the dingoes away, the 5 of them started circling him as he was blocking their food. He tried to shoo them off using the usual methods but apparently the pack has a new, very dominant and aggressive alpha who was not backing down and actually went for him and nipped his foot, so he had to grab a tent pole from the marquee and fight the 5 of them off!!!! So safe to say, he was not pleased. That day we headed off to see the sand blow and another lagoon. It was a lovely big green lagoon half surrounded by forest and the sand blow on the other half. Then we headed back to the boat and back to our hostel to get the bus to Airlie Beach and the Whitsundays the next day, but not before a very messy night out with all the ones from Fraser Island. There are quite a few pictures of that night up, and as you can see, everybody had a little too much and was very green about the gills the next morning checking out at 10am. We had to wait for our overnight bus at 7pm, so as least we had the day to try to shake it off, or drink it off as 'some' of us thought was a better idea. We were dreading the overnight bus as it was 14 hours long but the bonus of getting the overnight bus is you save on accommodation for the night!!
When we got to Airlie Beach the next morning, we had to go straight to check in for the boat. We met our entire group as we got on the boat and everyone was really quiet, us included as we were still a little hung over and I was seasick as a dog when we set sail!! We had decided beforehand that we wanted to do a dive on the boat, so the first stop we made, we suited up and dove in!! However, it was a bit disappointing as visibility was really poor, about 2m, and we didn't see very much! We were a bit annoyed as the instructor knew the visibility was poor before we did the dive so we don't think she should have taken us down. Also she was not as efficient as our instructor in Thailand, she didn't ask us to do any of the checks we should have done before we went down and she didn't give us the appropriate weights we needed. I was carrying the same weights as Matt was, which were too heavy for me. I didn't know this until we were down and I couldn't control my buoyancy and kept hitting the coral, which was breaking it!!
So we were really pissed off about that and decided not to do any more dives on the boat and just do the free snorkelling instead, which turned out to be much more of a success anyway as I seen a turtle!!
Everybody was snorkelling in the sea and I lifted my head above water because I got water in my snorkel and heard somebody shout 'turtle', so I swam as fast as I could and there he was!! A big green, male turtle only about 1m below us!! So I started swimming beside him, and he let us for about 10 minutes, which is really unusual and especially unusual as some selfish people were trying to touch it and basically wreck it for everyone else!
He was class looking and he was so close, I actually could have reached out and touched him! I could even see his eyes turning and looking at me, checking me out, it was brilliant. When we got back on the boat, it turned out that nobody from our boat had seen it, including Matt. I thought I had been swimming with our boat, but it was people from another boat, so I was the only one on our boat to see it!! If only I'd had an underwater camera!! But I don't think I'll be forgetting that anytime soon!
When we anchored for the night, it was always in a sheltered cove so the boat wasn't rocking, which made going below decks to sleep so much easier! The next day we sailed to Whitehaven beach, which is the big famous one that everyone has photos of, including us! Although, we didn't realise beforehand that nobody is allowed onto Whitehaven except really rich people on private yachts; so we viewed it from Betty's Beach right beside it. Unfortunately, we didn't have great weather so the photos don't do the place any justice but trust me, it was absolutely beautiful!! We managed to get a little sunshine on the beach so there are a couple of sunny photos which give you a better idea! The sand on these beaches is white sand and is 98% silicone, so it the purest and finest sand in the world. When you stepped on it, you just sank into it!! It's really valuable too as it's so rare so you are not allowed to take any of it. Years ago, they imposed a $7,000 fine for anyone who took some of the sand; enough to make someone like me think twice about nicking a pinch as a souvenir but not enough for some American entrepreneur who pulled up in a giant tanker and filled his boots, sold it off for millions of dollars and paid his $7,000 fine!!lol So they changed it to a $50 million fine for taking the sand lol. The only people who are allowed to remove sand from the beach are NASA, who use the sand to make the lenses for their telescopes and other things! After here, we went to a few more snorkelling sights, which were pretty cool, despite the poor visibility again but this didn't matter as much as the coral was so shallow. We have never seen so many different colours and shapes of coral, plants and fish ever!! It was really beautiful, massive purple coral beside vibrant red furry plants and hundreds of different colours of fish swimming through it! There were also some small fish who weren't bothered by us in the water and swam right beside us, under us and even swam right up to your goggles! When we were sailing back to land, it started to lash and didn't stop for 3 days!! So you can imagine that our time on Airlie Beach was pretty non eventful, even with St Patricks Day there.
We were both knackered after all our adventures so we decided not to go out until the evening to the Irish bar next door. When we did go, we found out that they don't play Irish music in the pubs on St Patricks Day!!! Major letdown! There was some overweight, middle age rocker on stage belting out covers; everybody seemed to be enjoying it but they were all trollied! So it wasn't really like St Patricks Day at all, you can't have it without Irish music!! So we just had a couple of drinks and went home, a very quiet end to what should have been a very messy day!! All in all though, it was great seeing Fraser Island, the Whitsundays and meeting new people and another 2 things were ticked off our list!
So we flew back to Brisbane yesterday and we are here for 4 days until we fly to New Zealand to do Milford Sound!!!! Absolutely cannot wait, super excited and fully expecting to come home absolutely wowed!! We are taking it easy for these few days but we are going to squeeze in Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo tomorrow, which will kick off the next blog. Then it's all about finding fruit-picking work or other regional work to get the 2nd year visa. Our initial plans to fruit-pick in Queensland have been scuppered with the rain up there, so we are starting to panic a little bit, as our time is very tight!! Any suggestions are very welcome! Until then guys, hope we've left you enough to be green with!!
Lots of love
Nicola & Matt x
- comments
Helano! Another fantastic blog Nic. I can't believe you weren't allowedon to Whotehaven beach. That must be a new law as we got to chill out on it for a few hours in the baking heat!!! I remember complaining I was too hot (looking back now I was lucky to get on the Island it seems). Can't wait for your next update x