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So after a brilliant experience in asia the travellers pressed on with their life experience to oz. After a short stop in Singapore we managed to pick up a new recruit to the banter boys as Ms Stephanie Cook joined us. After an eventfull jetstar experience (jet star- bad day) we arrived in cairns and made our way to the hostel. After a bit of r&r we headed into town for some food and a few drinks to celebrate the arrival of ms cook and the oz experience. To our delight we chanced upon the woolshed which for those in the know is a bit like pantiles but there are no 16 year olds in there (Al thorn will be most dissapointed) described in most guide books as australias easiest place to pull and biggest meat market. . After a while the pace picked up and to our delight gold fish racing was introduced not only this but the host paid a striking resemblence to matt sparow and had a similar level of strange banter about him... tremendous. A goldfish brought for 80 dollars being the eventfull winner. The rest of the evening is a blur of table dancing (surprisingly erotic from jakey) and messy shenanigans.
We then decided to head up north and check out the daintree rainforrest, cape tribulation and port douglas. For this we booked a short tour and the drivce up to and through the rainforrest was awesome. We then went on a boat up and down the daintree river in search of some crocs, unfortunatel due to the season we did not spot any big ones but we did manage to spot a 2metre one called lucky. Only a week before on a similar boat trip a genius belgium bloke decided to prod the croc with a stick and paddle in to the river for that kodak moment, apparently he was a tad shocked when the croc bit his knee off........burke. We then headed up to cape tribulation which is where the rainforrest meets the barrier reef. We were staying right on the beach in a lively resort which was all good value.
After a few treks round the rainforrest we were informed of a local bird called the cassowary. This we thought nothing of until we were informed that this bird had an extremly large chunk of bone on the top of its bonce which is incredibly strong and would run head first through the jungle at 40km per hour bulldozing through anything. As if this was not bad enough we were then informed that this cassowary bird had a claw which was delicately named the "disembowelling claw". After we decided to rename the bird "that b****** bird" we were even more delighted to learn that there was a cassowary warning as they were seen in the area being b******s or something similar to that. This we had to contend with including killer snakes/spiders and leafs which if you rub against is like having boiling water poured over you, the pain can last up to 6 months and can be fatal. When i get back i will inform you about the true story of the german women (r.i.p.) who decided to have a late night piss and reached into the foliage for something to wipe with............. !!!!!!!(what a way to go)
After all this activity it was back to the camp where a combination of cheap jugs of beer, mad irish lads and lassies and a drinking game involving a ho and a barn (dont ask) meant that the next day we all felt s***e. The hangover was immedietly cured when we went for a swim in mossman gorge which is a beautifull aborigine owned gorge where we had a swim in the freash water lakes. After this we went to the beautifull harbour town of Port Douglas before heading back to cairns.
The next few days for dsw were particularly unfortunate as his cut up and battered foot (see full moon episode) turnes sceptic and the poor fellar had to spend a few days in bed feeling like cack. In the mean time jakey and steph did some snorkelling on the reef which was awesome where steph saw a turtle and then was promptly sea sick ahhh.
Next on the adgenda was the town of townsville where we would catch the ferry over to magnetic island but more importantly where we would gain our 4th member Ms Gemma Curtis dsws other half. After settling into our quality hostel we had a reasonably chilled out evening having some wine and food all catching up when we were spotted by the irish lot which then meant our sophistacted evening of wine and chat degenerated into more boozing stupidity. The next few days on magnetic were superb we went on a few quality walks in the bush looking for koalas around this stunning coastline, we also went sea kayaking where we spotted turtles, rock wallabies and a couple of dolphins, we also watched the sunset and our instructor kindly produced a bottle of bubbly, he obviously knew thats how we roll so we settled down to watch the sunset in style....next. One of the highlights though was the hiring of our little car which steph and gemma sorted out, after telling dsw that they were off to get a manly 4x4 they produced a bloody pink barbie car (see pics). Still it was good fun shooting round the coast in the dale winton mobile. The rest of the evenings on magnetic were really nice and chilled drinking wine listening to live accoustic music and dsw trying to persuade steph and gems to consider becoming lesbians for the night.... they declined....lovely.
After Magnetic island we headed down to airlie beach where we would be sailing round the whitsundays for a few nights. Due to various reasons (availability,dsw gammy foot etc) the team was split up with jake and steph heading out on the eventfull clipper and dsw and gems going out on the broomstick, which is a whitbread class racing yacht.
After myself and gems got loaded with the what we come to know and love as "goon" basically cheap boxes of wine which give dsw a lot of wind, we headed to our vessel the good ship broomstick. As you all know dsw and gems sailing experince is limited to none for gemma (any jokes about her going down like the belgrano will not be tolerated..:- ref max and paddy) and dsws commandeering of dingy in newquay and trying unsuccessfully to sail from the harbour to the beach with 4 sheffield lads and 2 crates of lager.After sorting out our bunks and the chilling of our goon we met the awesome crew and our ship. As our yacht is a racing yacht we would be doing some racing and we had to help so we were shown how to do all that sailing business before we set off. The Whitsundays are loads of stunning islands by the barrier reef which we sailed round in clear blue sunshine in crystal clear waters, not a bad life. The sailing was brilliant as we had one of the faster boats we were absolutely bombing it round the place tilting right over and trying to help out with the sails and all that. As well as the sailing we would stop off for some snorkelling, one of my highlights was seeing a reef shark of which i promptly shat myself and needed to change my wet suit. Although these dont eat you i was told that it was only a small one only 2m long, well im nearly 2m and that is not small especially through a mask, although i was a bit nervous it was amazing as they are beautifull creatures and move through the water so quickly. As well as this we saw plenty of tyrtles, loads of nemo type fish, stingrays etc all brilliantly vivid colours and the amazing reef.
We also stopped off at Whitehaven beach which is awesome. The pics show how quality it is and we had a swim there and saw loads of tiger sharks and manta rays which was cool. In the evenings on the boat was quality as the guys would cook up some quality grub and we would then drink our goon under the stars until we fell asleep, as there is no light pollution we looked up to see loads of shooting stars and satellites, comets etc so it was quite special, the guys on the ship were grat value and had a right good laugh bantering most of the night. The whitsundays for all of us was a massive highlight of the whole trip.
I would have liked to have spent longer at sea but we had to come back to land and Airlee beach. Luckily however i was looking forward to catching up with the cricket after being at sea for the first 3 days. After getting depressed about the cricket almost exactly 34 seconds after stepping off the boat we all met up again in Airlie before heading down on a night bus to the brilliant Agnes Water/1770 beach where are next entry will continue.
enjoy...
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