Sand, sea and not many fish!

4 years on and yes we are still posting about our Travels!!

We landed in the beach town of Noosa, a little deflated from the backpacker experiences of Brisbane, but intent none the less to enjoy ourselves, and enjoy ourselves we did!!

We arrived at the fantastic Noosa youth hostel and were faced with a stunning view out to the Ocean. We spent our time Body Boarding and taking walks through the rain forest, baulked at the price of a bowl of pasta in town ($37!!) and ate fish and chips as the sun went down.  We were sad to leave but the greater beaches of Fraser Island and the Whitsundays beckoned.





We arrived at Hervey Bay, the main leaping point for Fraser Island, and travelled to the optimistic name of Flashpackers.  It appears all you have to do is build a dark room and put a big TV in it along with a few comfy seats and you can advertise yourself as luxury, I mean forget about AC, or even windows that open in the bedrooms, that is just too much to ask!!

Anyway, after an extremely warm night we left for Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world, on a 4x4 bus along with 20 other people.  We negotiated soft sand dunes, swam in crystal clear waters and stood by as our driver bush engineered our broken bus back to life on the beach.  We took the obligatory sunrise photo and spent the afternoon floating down Eri Creek, it's a tough old life, and made our way back to our overnight bus to Airlie Beach.












Ahhhh, the Whitsunday Islands!!  Images come to mind of sand so white that you can polish jewellery with (or use to create the lens for the hubble space telescope...which they did), azure blue waters teeming with neon colours fish and you, sitting back with a cool beer on the deck of a huge yacht watching the sun set.

Hmmm...... well I'm sure that the above is possible but not for us!!  We ended up on a large yacht, we saw fine white sand, and watched the sun set.  We also did it with about 20 other people on a boat, who all seemed to be concentrating on their tans and stealing our food!! Ok, maybe not stealing but they took it away and never brought it back.  Sometimes we don't like the politeness we were born with being from the UK!!

We began to realise that although we enjoyed travelling we were not enjoying the gap year/I'm 18 and I want to go mad type of travelling which usually involved sweaty cramped conditions with not a lot to do.  In short we were generally the oldest around and were feeling it!





Moan over we had forest walks which included eating ants bums, snorkelling (without fins because they are a threat to the environment?!?) and many more food stealing incidents!  Sailing back to another overnight bus we were starting to look forward to diving the great barrier reef!


We arrived in Cairns, our last bus trip of the whole year as it turned out, and this was really a moment for celebration.  Not because we had reached as far north as we were going to go, or that it was the a dream for either of us to be there.  No, it was the end of a 9 month journey that had involved many churning, queazy stomachs and all in the name the measly but mighty mosquito.  Yes it was the last doxycyclin tablet which to be honest we had been looking forward too for a long time!

Apart from that we had a really relaxing time awaiting our dive trip the famous great barrier reef.  This had been in the diary to do for a long time since Louise started to dive so we were looking forward to this a lot.  We headed out to sea along with about 20 learners and a fair few fellow divers and anchored off our first site.  Now, before we go any further we should say that we had not dived without a dive guide before and Louise and I were sent out on our own and, well, shall we say that we had a domestic at 12m below the surface!  We worked on our own communication signals and all was well, because Louise took the lead......and Louise likes to lead.

Unfortunately although we saw lots of things there was a distinct thing lacking on our dives, and that was fish!  The coral was amazing and what you would expect, but there where hardly any fish, a sign of the times.  It will probably be attributed to global warming or declining fish stocks but it was quite sad to see, or not.

We returned to shore and headed to the airport, destination Melbourne and the beginning of our 4 wheeled adventures in a camper van!!