Whitewater Rafting

Hey,


I arrived in Cairns on Sunday evening to some dry weather and an amazing Hostel, Gilligan's. It is like a hotel!!


On Monday I got picked up bright and early to go whitewater rafting on the river Tully. When I got on the bus though I thought it was the wrong one. It was full of Japanese people and all the girls had their little mirrors and make-up kits out and were putting on their make-up!! Not one of them could speak English, I started to wonder if they realised what they were letting themselves in for!! Anyway, we then met another bus and thankfully there were some English speaking people on it!! On the bus on the way to the river we were shown a video on safety. When I saw what kind of rapids I was letting myself in for, the nerves started to arrive. Once on the river though I had a great time. It was a brilliant day. It did rain nearly much all day but we were wet anyway so that didn't really matter.

Yesterday I got to know Cairns a bit more by wandering around the shops. I also handed my CV into a few places as I might try and work here for a month. I am not going to do the outback work now as there does not seem to be many suitable jobs going about. In the afternoon I relaxed next to the pool and managed to top my tan up. Haven't been able to do that for a few weeks now! I met 2 lovely girls, Hannah and Clair and we went out for a Chinese meal last night. Hannah is planning to do the same trip as me from here to Adelaide via Uluru and is leaving a week on Sat so I might join her and head to Melbourne to work instead. As you can see I am having another of my weeks where I can't decide what to do!!


Meeting up with Richard here on Friday and going to be doing Cape Tribulation together so looking forward to that.


Speak to you all soon,
xxx

Magnetic Island

After getting off the Condor on Thursday I got the afternoon bus to Townsville and then the ferry from there to Magnetic Island. Yesterday it was a gorgeous sunny day and silly Louise decided it would be a good idea to walk from Nelly Bay to Horseshoe Bay on the other side of the Island. 2.5hours later she eventually arrives very dehydrated - thank goodness for the pub there!! The island is lovely and I am glad I walked it as I saw so many views you do not see on the bus.

I then was sensible enough to get a bus back here and chilled out at the hostel in the afternoon and evening.

Today I did a 3.5hr horse ride. It was the best ride I have done - other than when riding my own horses that is!! We spent an hour walking, trotting and cantering through the bush. We then went down onto the beach and got into our stinger suits, got rid of our hats and jumped bareback onto the horses for a ride in the sea. It was great fun. We then stopped half way along and stood on our horses backs!! After this we then went back through the bush and had another ride along the beach before heading back to the stables. It was so much fun and the horses were brilliant. It just makes me want to come home and ride Talis more though.

This afternoon I walked to Picnic Bay and went to a lookout point there.

The island is a lovely relaxing island and the I have been very lucky with the island. Wish I was staying longer to explore more of it. Off to Cairns tomorrow though for the last week of my travels. I have booked whitewater rafting on the Tully river for Monday so that will be fun.

Miss you all
xx

Whitsunday Islands

I'm not sure how much you all know about the weather out here in Queensland at the moment but a couple of weeks ago a cyclone hit the north coast of Queensland. This resulted in a lot of flooding and people being unable to leave places north of Airlie Beach. Since then it has been raining quite a bit up here, thankfully the floods have gone though! :) Mind you it is rainy season up here so I should have expected rain - I just forgot how frustrating rain can be lol.

Anyway, back to my Whitsundays Sailing experience. I arrived in Airlie Beach at 6.10am on Monday 19th Feb to pouring rain. I then went to book into the Koalas hostel to be greeted by the rats in the kitchen. At this point I decided it was time to change hostels and so moved up to Magnums further up the road - a lot cleaner than Koalas!! Unfortunately I could not check-in until 11am here and so I had to spend the morning walking round Airlie Beach feeling all horrible and smelly after my overnight bus journey - lovely eh!?! Once you have walked the 5min walk down the main street of Airlie Beach there is not much to see of do here other than go to the Lagoon. The sea is not safe to swim in this far north due to the stingers. I went for a walk to the Lagoon but it wasn't really the weather for swimming although I am sure it would be lovely on a nice warm day!

Anyway having got over my depression of the rain and horrible hostels, on Tuesday morning I headed off to find my home for the next 2 days, The Condor sailing boat:

The Condor has won a number of races, such highlights as the Sydney to Hobart, Fastnet, Bermuda Cup, World Maxi Championship, Porto Cervo Maxi Series and Antigua Race Week just to name a few. Condor is 81’6” in length, was designed by Ron Holland and built in Penryn, Cornwall in the United Kingdom.

On my way to the boat I bumped into a number of my Fraser Island group who informed me that the weather had been rubbish for them. Thankfully this was not the case for our trip! :) I think I was lucky! I am glad that I was not able to get the date I had originally wanted (Saturday 17 Feb) as they were delayed a day in leaving due to the weather.

By 1pm I had met a number of my sailing crew and we were on board the lovely Condor. We left the harbour and the sails were put up. When this boat was being raced it required 24 crew.We had 3 crew plus the 25 of us and so we were all to help with the sailing tasks. It rained slightly that afternoon but this just made the sailing more fun. As we were sailing the boat leans on it's side.

While this was the case we all had to sit on the high side with our legs over the edge - the closer to the front the wetter you got from the waves. :)

That afternoon we stopped at Hayman Island and I went snorkeling for the first time. We had to wear lovely sexy stinger suits - at least mine matched the colour of my towel!:

The snorkeling was great fun, I saw lots of colourful fish but I did not manage to find Nemo. :( After snorkeling we headed to round to Nara Inlet where we anchored up for the night. That evening we got a lovely meal from our chef Glen:

There was a clear sky that night and the stars were amazing - even better than when I was in the outback!! Our skipper Ash was great at pointing out constellations.

Thankfully it stayed a clear night except for the few showers early in the morning. The next morning we got up bright and early and sailed round to Whitehaven Beach. Again the weather was kind to us while sailing round and I got the chance to steer the boat - great fun. We got dropped off and walked up to the lookout point to see Whitehaven Beach. Here are some pictures on a clear day:

And here is what it looked like when we were there:

Not quite the same but still lovely. We then headed down to the beach for awhile but it was cut short by an hour due to the heavens deciding to soak us all again. So we ran back to where we were getting picked up and had an early lunch on the boat.

That afternoon we had an amazing sailing experience. It was pouring with rain and to be honest when I looked in front of us I thought I was back home as all I could see was mist and rain! But the wind got up (and the rain got heavy) and the Condor was flying!! We were even surfing the waves at times! It was great to see the Condor going so fast and this was without us trying to sail fast!! I would love to have seen the boat in action back in it's day. No wonder it won so many races. Our next stop was Luncheon Bay where we stopped for some snorkeling again. Although it was raining this was better than the first day as the colours of the coral were lovely and it was a lot clearer. When sailing round to Stonehaven where we anchored for the night, we saw a lovely sunset:

Glen cooked us a brilliant steak on the BBQ that evening and then everyone stayed up drinking and chatting. The weather was not so great that night and so everyone slept downstairs rather than some sleeping on deck like the previous night. The next morning we sailed back to Airlie Beach and arrived back about 10.30am. The sail back on the Thursday morning was lovely. The sun was out and I managed to top my tan up a bit. It has got a bit pale the last couple of weeks due to the lack of sun I have seen! Below is a picture to show where we sailed:

The trip was an amazing experience and was a great laugh. The people on out boat were fantastic and good fun. Thanks everyone!

xx

Up-date

Hi everyone,

I have eventually found a computer where I could add photos to my posts and so here are a few posts to up-date you a bit. Thankfully the weather improved a bit for the Whitsundays trip and we got some sun, and some rain! My Whitsundays post will come another day when I haven't spent 1.5hrs already on the internet!! Have had a great day today walking round Magnetic Island. Off horse riding tomorrow so that should be fun.

Hope you are all well and everything is good back home. Will be in touch soon and sorry for the delay of the last few posts.

Love you all
xx

The Flight

On Sunday I managed to get the last spot on the flying tour. It was so much fun. I even got to fly the plane:

The views were amazing. The pilot also did a number of stunts and filmed us as he did them! Unfotunately the files are too big to put on here. :( We landed on a beach on some island. It was a lovely quiet beach. The pilot caught some sand crabs which we got to hold and then watch them bury themselves in the sand. After taking some photos: we then went for a walk over to the rocks where we found oysters. I wasn't brave enough to try them though as I didn't fancy being ill when I had an overnight bus that night!! I then went for a quick paddle and then noticed a shark!! Yup there were sharks about a metre long there!! We then decided it was safer to watch them from the rocks!! Unfortunately Bryony did not like the stunts and so we had a very quiet journey back. The upsetting part of the journey was that when we left we were told to leave our thongs (flip-flops) outside the plane. However, when I returned I found that mine had been attacked by dingos!! So it was goodbye to my first pair of Havaiana thongs!! :( However I did buy new ones in Airlie Beach and have realised how worn mine had actually got!!

Agnes Waters was a great place and the Cool Bananas Hostel was so much fun, even though they spread stinking fertiliser on our second night - grr!! ;)

Next post will be about the Whitsundays. Lets hope the weather clears up!!

xxx

Agnes Waters and Town 1770

G'day,

My next stop after Fraser Island was Agnes Waters and Town 1770. These are 2 tiny little towns which are side by side. Town 1770 was found by Captain Cook in May 1770, hence the name of the town. For being such small towns there are lots to do and all the activities are a fraction of the price. Surf lessons for $16.50 instead of $60 down south, Flying for $65 instead of $200 odd down south and you get twice as long up here! On Saturday morning I went on the free tour round both the towns. We first went up to Town 1770 (population of 80!) and we were taken to the plot below:

This property has not running water inside it. The shower is round the back and is a tank that you open a valve on and then stand underneath it. The toilet was outside in a corrugated shed. It overlooked the ocean:This plot is up for sale at the moment, guess the price........................................................................... .........................................................................................................................................................................

$2.2m is the asking price! Apparently it is so high because they know that once developers hear about the site they will be straight in there.

We then went up a hill to look down on Agnes Waters, it is so small:That afternoon I went on a Scooterroo tour. It was so much fun even though it did pour with rain. We drove our scooters and choppers round the countryside and saw wild kangaroos:We stopped at a kangaroo sign to get the following photo, plus others (will see them when I come home), taken:The next stop on this tour was the local pun where we got potato wedges and a beer and sat on the rocks by the sea to watch sunset. It was a great tour and the choppers were great fun. I even managed to reach about 78km/hr!!

Sundays activities will be on my next post as there are too many photos for this post!!

xx

Fraser Island

Hey, sorry for the delay in this post. Either I have not been able to get this website to work or I have not been able to put photos up online!!

Well I have survived camping in the rain on Fraser Island. It just reminded me of Duke of Edinburgh Hikes except this time we had a 4WD we could hide in to dry out lol.

Last Tuesday we had a meeting at 7am to tell us about safe driving and camping on Fraser Island. It was at this point we were split up into out groups. I had 8 others in my group and we had a good time together. We headed down to the camp shed where we were given our 4WD vehicle and equipment. The next stop was Woolworths (the supermarket!) where we stocked up on food and drink for the 3 days. After getting our team back together and into the vehicle we were off to the ferry.

Once on the island our first stop was Lake McKenzie. It has lovely fine sand and the clearest water I have ever seen. It was lovely.However after 30mins of swimming there the rain came on! :( The rain continued until after we had the camp set up! Due to the weather we missed out the other attractions and headed straight to the beach to find a camping area. This drive along the beach was rather scary as we had the rain to put up with and the tide was coming in. I was driving at this point and was scarred of getting us stuck in the sand. We found our spot for the night and set up camp in our swimmers - no point getting our clothes wet! As the BBQ was being prepared, Lee and Cat performed a 'No Rain Dance' to try and stop the rain. Surprisingly this worked, and more than once over the trip!! We managed to dry off slightly during our meal and sat around chatting and drinking the rest of the evening.The first nights sleep was not the best I have had! When we got up in the morning we found paw prints from dingos, thankfully they didn't attack the tents! ;) After breakfast and packing up we headed to Eli Creek. Here you can walk up a boardwalk and then jump into the creek and let the current float you down the creek. However we seemed to be walking on our hands more than floating lol. It was fun though and a great way to clean ourselves up a bit!The next stop along the beach was the S. S. Maheno shipwreck, a ship that had been built in Scotland:After this we then visited the coloured sand cliffs. They did remind me a lot of Rainbow Beach (my first stop back at the beginning of November!).We then had the 30km drive up the beach to Indian Head. Here we could climb on the rocks and spot sharks, turtles etc in the ocean. I only say a stingray but others in the group spotted some sharks. On our way up to the top we did spot a dingo though:

Our final tourist spot for the day was the Champagne Pools. This is the only salt water that is safe to enter on Fraser Island. The sea is too unsafe due to the currents, rips and sharks!! Unfortunately the rain was pouring down on us when we reached here so we just had a look at them. It definitely was not the weather to take the camera out!! After this we headed back down the beach and stopped at one of the camping resorts to fill up with drinking water and to buy sweets and ice-creams!

We managed to find a more sheltered spot to camp for our second night. Thankfully by the time we got there the rain had stopped and stayed off until we got back to the hostel on the Thursday. We had a lovely pasta dish for tea and then some of the group went down to the beach to drink while some of us stayed and played cards.On our final day we parked on the beach and made the 2km walk through the forest to Lake Wabby. This was a lovely green coloured lake beside a huge sand blow. It was lovely and so refreshing. We stayed here quite a while and played ball games in the lake.Thankfully we had enough time to head back to Lake McKenzie to see it under clearer skies! It was lovely and we managed to spend quite a bit of time here.The final part was the drive back to the ferry which we made with an hour to spare. The trip was great fun and I met lots of lovely people while on the trip. I must say it did remind me how frustrating the rain can be so all of you back in Scotland have my sympathy again. I had started to forget how it can spoil your plans.

xxx

Noosa

G'day,


I have had a good time back here in Noosa. I have met quite a few Australians in our hostel which has been good fun, normally we only meet Europeans!! On Thursday I went on a cruise along the Noosa River and stopped at Henry's Hut for a lovely big BBQ lunch. It was a lovely relaxing day and I'm glad that there was quite a bit of cloud cover! We also passed Richard Branson' $2.9m, 23acre private island.

Apparently they pay a guy a very reasonable sum of money just to live in the house and keep an eye on it! He bought the Island back in 2003 I think it was and since then has only visited it 5 times. Although they did have a wedding there last month apparently.

Yesterday I went to Australia Zoo. It was really good fun. I got my photo taken with a huge snake wrapped round me, unfortunately it is not on my camera so cannot put it up here. However I did see a number of animals and I think the tigers had to be my favourite.

This is the alligator, Agro, which Steve Irwin was convinced was out there just to kill him! He is supposedly about 18m long. I would not like to meet him down by a river!

Today I woke up early and so decided to go for a jog through Noosa National Park which was really nice. I then went and lay on the beach for about 30mins before it started to spit with rain. At that point I though I may as well come and inform you all of my safety and activities. I have met up with Amy again for today and we are going to have a nice relaxing day I think. Tomorrow I am off to Hervey Bay for my Fraser Island trip. Therefore I will not be online until the end of next week and probably will not have phone reception there.

Speak to you all soon.

xx

Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary

Hi everyone,

I have had a fun day today. I went to the Loan Pine Koala Sanctuary with Victoria, my room mate here in Brisbane. While we were there we hugged a koala:Also see http://www.koala.net/photo/0602019198en.htm for a photo of me, for some reason it doesn't want to load here!!

We also fed some kangaroos, including one while it was carrying it's joey!It was really good fun and great to be able to get so close to all the animals.

Going to have a quiet night tonight before heading to my next destination, Noosa, tomorrow.

Not much else to tell for now so will just leave you with the above photos!

Take care
xxxx