G'day

Alright all again, hope your well.

So I get to Airlee beach and the Schoolies are in town (17/18 year olds) tearing the place to pieces. Not a good start. The hostel I check into is a bit of a hole but its better than my room on Pi Pi Island. The reason I'm at Airlie Beah is to do my Witsunday Island boating trip. The next day i have to meet the rest of the boat crew and the people doing the same trip as me. In total there is about 35 of us and we set sail like Del, Rodney and Albert on there way to Amsterdam. The boat is called the New Horizon and its a nice old boat. The crew are nice and its a good mixture of people on the boat. I have under my arm a 4 litre box of Goon which it Leamans terms means the cheapest wine you can get. ts aso 4 litres of the worsttasting wine you n get but for 8 quid i dont care wht it tastes like as long as it gets me where I want to go. We anchor up after 1 and a half hours and watch the sun go down (wet !) and then have dinner and get stuck into some drinking games and I go to bed about 12ish. The next day we go to Witsundays Island. The beach there is 97% Silica and it about as fine as flour. When lightening strikes the beach it turns the place it strikes into glass as the sand it vertually powdered crystal. We get to the beach and have to put out attractive singer suits on and head into the sea. These suits aren't much use if you get stung on the foot or the face but I put that to the back of my mind. The sea is crystal clear and there are huge stingrays swiming past us. We finish the swim then play football against a load of Swedish lads. We get stuffed !! Moving quickly on we head to another beach later in the day and do some snorkelling then its back to the boat. By now I know everyone on the boat to have a laugh and a joke with apart from the Germans. Now i have nothing against Ze Germans but the tend to keep themselves to themselves and just talk in there own langauge...bit rude if you ask me. Anyway thats me little rant out the way. Everyone else gets stuck into the beers and then the Goon makes an apperence and as dark falls I have everyone playing Ace 1,2,3,4 (card game) and there are a few early casualties. At about 10 ish we are lucky enough to be joined just off the edge of a boat by a 3 metre Dolphin who seems very happy just to entertain us by chasing all the fish and messing around. We all go a bed at 12 again cos thats lights out time on the boat cos the crew need some sleep. Last day and I'm up early and preparing fro my 11th dive of my holiday. There is only me another lad and the dive master. Its a great dive and its one of my best. We bump into a huge (Napolien) Maori Rasse called Elvis. He is about a good Metre long and very friendly. He followed us for about 20 minutes and we could stoke him which was good. Then back on the boat and the head for home. What a good trip.

Onto a town called 1770 the next day. Only there for one day and then I get the bus at 6am in the morning to Rainbow Beach and My Fraiser Island Trip. Before i go though i spend the day riding a 50cc motorbike that has been converted into a mini looking Harley Davidson. There are about 50 of us all cruising the highways of 1770 and its a great experience. There are wild kangeroos bouncing all around us and the whole trip takes a good 3 hours.

Rainbow beach and I meet up with a 3 lads and a girl i met on my Witsunday Boat. We got on so well that we agreed to do the Fraiser Island trip together. We manage to get on the same Jeep together with 6 other people. We have a great jeep as there are 3 other english girls two lads from Scotland and a German girl. We all get on well and we drink into the night but have to be up at 6am cos we have a briefing of what this trip entails. 6am and we get woken up and meet a bloke called Allen in the carpark of the hotel. Our jeep is there aswell as 5 other jeeps so in total 66 people going to Fraiser at the same time. Alan isn't feeling the best and nor he should as we worked out the night before that he is a chain smoking Alchoholic who has the shakes and a row of teeth like a row of bombed houses !! He gives us our Itinerary and then lets us loose once we have taken the ferry over to the biggest sand Island in the world. In the jeep is 4 tents, cooking equipment, enough food to last us 3 days and more probably. i cant begin to tell you the amount of food we had. Tons of water and more importantly a massive coolbox filled with 5 - 4 litre bags of goon and over 100 cans of beer. Ours had the most booze in it by a mile but we was going for a good time...what can I say. First day we go to Lake Mckenzie. Beautiful fresh water lake and its 33 degrees, a dip is just what we need. We spend about an our there then get back in the jeeps to go back down the most hazzardous of roads. no wonder we needed a 4x4. We then drive along the beach to our first campsite. The lads set up all the tents and the girls wated to cook the dinner. That suited us lads and so the beers come out cos it was a long day driving and the sun is going down. The night comes in and the dingo's appear. Its an weird feeling knowing they our there and the can see us but we cant see them. They start hanging around and we have to chase them off. They dont seem to worried though cos we are never going to catch them as we are all staggering messes! I'm driving in the morning so I go to bed at 12 and a few of the lads go to see if they can get some more goon off another one of the jeeps. I say get I really mean steal. I hear them come back and its mission accomplished. I hear them say that they are going back to see if the can get some more. In the middle of the night i'm caught short. i wake one of the boys up and tell them I need a piss. So does he. (you cant go out the tent alone cos of the dingos, 12 of them chased a bloke into the sea a few months back and he had to shout for help. I wasnt taking that chance) Any way we finish and then go back to sleep. Then i get really caught short and need a tom tit. There are no toilets about and you have to take a shovel and a toilet roll into a bush. Not ideal but you have no choice. Again Tom has to spot for me and is not happy as its only 10 mins since we went to the loo earlier. There are dingos everywhere and i re-appear from the bush to find that Tom couldnt be any closer to our tent and he is officially the worst look out man ever. Anyway i survive and get back to sleep. I wake up in the morning to find that the lads just hadn't stolen one more box of Goon but a whole coolbox of the stuff!!! I said someone might notice that and they took it back !! hahaha Now i'm driving and you cant go too fast as there are fresh water washouts that carve big channels in the sand. You are going at 60 kpm and if you hit one of these at that speed then you flip. I let all the jeep know in a reassuring fashion that i use to be a profesional taxi driver and they were in safe hands. There was a long silence and i think a few of them starting crying through fear. So I carried on regrdless. We go to Indian head which is a big look out over the ocean and spot a huge group of Stingray swimming past aswell as a Manta Ray and a pod of Dolphins. We stop off at the ship wreck then again onto our next camp site. We set up camp and the other jeeps join us. One camp isnt to happy as someone nicked a cool box of theres.....not sure who that was !!!! We walk down the beach to a fresh water stream then back and cook dinner again the beers and goon come out and more drinking games. We are having such a good time that some poeple come over to join in. Me and the lads take a wander but no one really wants to join us as we havent really made a lot of friend but we didnt care. Each of the other jeeps were having in jeep arguments and not getting but ours was quality and was having the best time so we didnt give a monkeys, their problem. Also it was nice to wind them up cos one jeep had left there food coolbox on the floor then gone for a walk and then the ranger came over and fined them 300 Aussie Dollars on the spot......big shame. hahaha Next day we drive to Lake Wabby Wabby which is a massive sand dune with a lake in te middle of it. After that we head back to the ferry. We drop the jeep back to Boozy Alan and he still looks rough.....big shock !! We get away with a slight cracked fuel tank but luckily we dont have to pay for it cos we probably done this on the ay up to Lake Mckenzie on that s*** road. None of us have had showers for the days so we all get cleaned up and head out for food and have a great laugh with good food. What an experience and met some fantastic people which I would keep bumping into all the way down to Sydney.

next day i'm of to Noosa. Lovely little town which reminds me of a seaside town back home. Not a lot happens in Noosa. There is a bit of surfing but i dont get involved. I catch up with some other people i have met on my way down the coast and everyone from my Fraiser Island are there apart from the Scotish lads and Ze German girl. I spend 4 days there and then off to Brisbane

I will write a new one soon as you lot are probably bored reading this one now.

Speak to you soon.
Ben