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So after nearly 3 weeks of serene beauty, we landed in Brisbane with one heck of a bang, raining, cold, expensive and minus one bag after Qantas decided transporting both our bags really wasn't worth it, we spent a miserable first 24 hours in Oz. Thankfully the bag turned up, as did the weather and after a great night with John's old housemates, Marty and Perry featuring Australia's answer to the premier league (featuring Robbie Fowler, 5 goals and 3 red cards in a near empty stadium) plus lots of nice food and drink in Perry's bar, The Lark, the whole inspiration for our grand adventure began: The Ashes.
As you're reading this England are (at least?!) one nil up in the series and the Ashes are appearing like this great arse-kicking adventure, but in Brisbane, during the first days of the first test it was a very different story. John had spent day one on the boundary line, surrounded by Aussie Fanatics (barmy army equivalent) watching England battle for a mere 260 all out. I joined on Day Two and with some trepidation entered the Gabba for my first ever cricket match, unsure whether I was going to survive the day, the 30 degree heat, the fans, the boredom… turns out I had nothing to worry about on those accounts; the atmosphere was electric and it was totally exhilarating to be one of sweating 40,000 people, all so passionate about their teams endeavours, whichever team that maybe, they barely recognise the searing heat. But watching England, as they attempted to bowl Australia out, while Hussey was busy racking up near 200 runs, was a stomach-churning, heart-wrenching, blood boiling experience I wasn't prepared for. Within seconds I found myself an uber fan, worthy of any semi-racist Barmy Army tee-shirt - screaming as Cook and Prior dropped catches (catches win matches), cheering and jeering at the top of my voice when they finally got a wicket. Sadly my second day, day three was the heart-wrenching bit, as Australia went 200 runs ahead and England dropped catch after catch until the very end of the day. By then though the damage was done, I had experienced both the highs and lows of being an England fan and the seeds were sown for my cricket-loving future.
At the time, it seemed more then fortunate that we had to pick a campervan up on Day Four and weren't able to witness what we suspected would be England's demise. How wrong we were! Day four turned out brilliantly as Cook scored a double century and England went on to secure a draw; their first at the Gabba (a notoriously Aussie-friendly ground) since ww2.
Anyway, enough cricket for now, more when we get to Melbourne and Test 4…
Back to the campervan: So when I said picked up our campervan, I meant more van and very much less camping. We have a 'Hippie' Van which is a white-van-man's cast off from 1998, slightly adapted for some naïve tourists like us who are too risk adverse/old to camp under canvas with Australia's many creepy crawlies, but refuse to pay the very inflated prices for a normal sized campervan. Comfortable it isn't but as our home for over 3 weeks we have grown to love it. From Brisbane we drove just 30 miles up the coast to Scarborough, a gorgeous, if tiny, cove at the beginning of our East Coast trek. Cairns and beyond, here we come…
After one night adjusting to our new home in Sacrborough, we headed further up the coast to Moolooluba and the very beginnings of Queensland's sometimes dubiously named, sunshine coast. Moolooluba is a dangerously near perfect seaside town, and we stayed in a fab campsite, 10 metres from the most beautiful beach and had a lovely few days swimming in the sea, getting burnt (English stylely) and eating fish and drinking wine with Marty and his girlfriend Gemma.
It was with some effort that we gathered enough energy to move, but finally we drove the 500km north to the Hervey Bay on the Fraser Coast, named after Fraser Island. Everyone we spoke to at home and on the trip told us to do two things on the east coast… Fraser Island and the Whitsundays. We'll come to the latter later, but even after all the hype, Fraser Island didn't disappoint. First, we managed to find a campsite even closer to the beach than Hervey Bay and had a magical evening, standing knee deep in the sea, whilst the rain poured down, jumping the waves and drinking red wine. Then, after a particularly joyful day watching England bowl out the Aussies in the second test (3 for 2 anyone?!), we took a day trip to Fraser Island, hoping it wouldn't rain (Sunshine coast really isn't a truthful name for Queensland in December it seems. From 7.15am when we were picked up to 5pm at night it absolutely bucketed it down, but Fraser Island is brilliant enough that it didn't really matter. We trekked through the rainforest (rainforest in the rain!) at Central Station and discovered that cagoules are about as effective as chocolate teapots in tropical downpours, saw the amazing 75 mile beach that is used as a highway pretty much, with buses and 4x4 whizzing up and down through the surf. Walked through the gorgeous Eli creek and swam in Lake McKenzie, a magical lake in the middle of the rainforest which is like something out of Lost, easily one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. So in summary, everyone was right: Fraser Island rocks, even in the rain.
Again, with masses amount of effort we eventually managed to pull ourselves away from Hervey Bay and began the long, 1000KM drive up to Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday islands. The drive took us through the Tropic of Capricorn and up into northern Queensland and with that came the sub-tropical weather. Heat, heat, heat, even with no sun, and the kind of heat that makes you gasp as you can't quite get enough air because of the most suffocating humidity and of course even more rain, and as it goes flash flooding. Thankfully we managed to beat the floods, close enough that the national radio were announcing natural disaster zones in places we drove through 90 minutes previously, so it was very thankfully, that after a sticky night in Yeppon we finally made to Airlie Beach and the Whitsundays.
Our campsite in Airlie Beach was like little pockets of rainforest with the most incredible bugs and birds minding their own business in huge palms and drooping canopy trees. I think my over-riding memory of will be climbing in to bed sweating at 11.30pm because the heat still hadn't subsided and then getting up to go swimming at 6am because it was just too hot, even at that time in the morning.
The key 'sight' at Airlie Beach is the WhitSundays, a collection of 74 islands, mostly uninhabited just off the coast, all stunningly beautiful with rainforest covered peaks and the whitest of sandy beaches. We set off on a boat tour that took us to WhitSunday island itself, one of the furthest away islands meaning we got to sail past all the rest and tale in their sheer beauty. The highlight of WhitSunday island is Whitehaven beach, a 6 mile stretch of fine, white sand, shallow, bright blue waters and lovely breezes to take the edge of the heat. It was kind of like the Bounty advert beach - but more stunning and because of it's remoteness all then more magical as it was pretty much empty bar a couple of touring boats like ours.
Before Whitehaven, we stopped at Border Island to go snorkelling - in my naivety, I thought the snorkelling would be just off the beach and relatively comfortable for John who's still honing his swimming skills - I was very wrong! The boat pulls up about 300 metres from the land, which is just a sheer rock face and you just launch yourself in to the sea and get on with it- complete with mask and snorkel of course. John did amazingly well and after one false start where I think the whole boat was panicking at the throw-yourself-over-the-edge bit, not to mention 'wear these suits so you don't get stung by lethal jelly fish too small to see but will probably kill you' part, and we were off!
The snorkelling certainly made up for the initial panic, the coral underneath us seemed at the time amazing but has since been trumped by the great barrier reef (more on that later!) We snorkelled for 90 minutes and it felt like 10 - there was so much to see.
Our final WhitSunday visit was a 30 minute walk through a rainforest to a lookout point where you can soak in the whole of Whitehaven beach and attempt to take pictures that match all the ones you see advertising Aus with the full beauty of the WhitSundays all in one shot. Almost as good for me was the rainforest walk on the way, because the sounds were incredible - so noisy they sounded like the fake tropical noises that are piped in at zoos or museums! You had to remind yourself this was the real thing, it was very surreal.
From Airlie Beach and the WhitSunday islands we moved further north towards our final destinations in the van; Cairns and Port Douglas - about 2000KM from Brisbane where we first set off. This part of the country is very much croc-land and the beaches and rivers are all lined with signs warning you not to swim for fear of the crocs - as if jellyfish in the sea weren't enough of a reason to stick to the pool! Many of the beaches along this stretch of the coast have a swimming-pool sized net within which you can swim and keep out the way of all the nasties hovering to munch on your legs mid-swim. We stopped at Mission Beach overnight on the way up which as well as croc invested was also frog infested, we must have seen 50 in our campsite in one night. Finally, we beat more floods and landed in Port Douglas, 80KM north of Cairns and one of the last major stops on the Queensland coast.
Port Douglas is another lovely seaside town, quite gentrified (we assume the weekend hideaway for posh cairns-based businessmen) but with a great beach and tantalisingly good access to the great barrier reef. It's more tropical in scenery and climate than anywhere else we have been, there are the most amazing thunder and lightening storms ever day. The lightening especially is incredible, it lasts for several hours lighting up the whole sky. It rains about 5-7cm each night and then the rain passes and the humidity is more bearable for about 30minutes, before it heats right up again. We have a mini section of rainforest right next to our pitch on the campsite (see flickr!) and fall asleep listening to those crazily noisy rainforest sounds. It's between this site and Hervey Bay, but this probably just pips it as the nicest campsite/pitch/town yet.
The main activity in Port Douglas is to get out on the water and marvel the Great Barrier Reef, we took a boat to the outer reef, about 50KM from the shore where we got to snorkel in three different places over the reef. The whole experience was incredible - the coral was more intricate, colourful and vast than what we had seen in Airlie Beach and the scale is hard to get your head around, its like a whole other world living just a metre or two under the sea. We saw some amazing fish and creatures too - sea cucumbers, tiny shoals of flying fish that all leap out the water together, turtles, reef sharks in the shadows of the seabed , enormous 2 metre clams and millions and millions of colourful, vibrant fish. The coral itself you could look at for hours, we were much closer to it this time, sometimes you had to physically hold your legs up so they didn't touch it as you swam. Parts look like giant boulders until you swim too close and they move or tiny parts of them dive back in holes. Other areas look like dried flowers till you notice they are pulsing, breathing. There are metres and metres of large round discs that look like giant flower heads and when you get close you see that each disc has a million other little discs inside it. Other parts look like a giant mess of antler horns, but in blue or bright white. When you have your head in the water you can hear this tiny, constant scratching sound which is the sound of the fish nibbling the coral. The whole experience was magical and was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. The very first jump out the boat to go snorkelling was also breath-taking in a slightly terrifying way, because yet again we'd been slightly naïve in not considering that the barrier reef is in the middle of the ocean, there is nothing around it, no beach or land in sight…barely even on the horizon. You literally jump in to a huge expanse of open water, with nothing around you but the boat, which once you've snorkelled a while is a good 200 metres away. It's a good job the coral is so amazing because it totally distracts you from this fact and with your head down in the water it feels like you are surrounded by life, it's only when you lift your head up that your heart skips a beat slightly taking in miles and miles of water before you finally spin around and set eyes on the boat!
Check out the pictures, there are some very very cool ones on flickr, including some of me looking somewhat fierce in a snorkel mask - it really is very hard to smile in those things!
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