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17th May - Rich gave us a lift to Clump point boat jetty so we could get the Calypso II boat for our diving trip, first we headed out across the bay to Dunk Island, then travelled out to Eddy's reef.The weather was perfect, the winds had dropped so the sea was like a pond and also Mission Beach has the closest reef.I managed to get there without even feeling queasy - a feat in itself!The boat anchored up in the middle of the reef that was horseshoe shaped.The coral almost stuck out of the water it was beautiful.We had two dives, both fairly shallow which helps with the air supply and we had dives of over 40 minutes which was excellent.The corals, fish etc were very similar to what we had seen on our previous dive trip, there were more small fish here, lots of feather stars and so many small clams.The Christmas tree worms were out in abundance it was a very beautiful dive site.Lots of the people on the boat were snorkelling, which unfortunately we didn't get time to do.I would recommend this trip to others whether they snorkelled or wanted to dive.Rich and Sue met us on the jetty at the end of our day.
They had been shown the local area by Sheila and we all had an invite to a 50th Birthday party that evening.We headed back to our rooms, showered and headed back out to meet up with Sheila and go to Ann's birthday party.Party Australian style - Karaoke, outdoor BBQ, BYO drinks (bring your own), etc.It was loud very brash, and the locals were commenting on how 'Cameron ' had dressed up for the occasion as he had put on some shoes!!Although he had a new woman in tow so maybe the shoes were in honour of her presence!We met miners, fishermen and a herdsman, who happened to be a Scottish lady called Jeanie, it was great fun.We woke up with fuzzy heads - Rob and I blamed the nitrogen from our diving!Sunday was market day in Mission Beach so we headed off to have a quick look around and meet up with Sheila, who then took us on a visit to Jeanie's stud farm, then back to Ann and Ferdies 'shed' for breakfast.Breakfast was a huge egg, bacon, sausage, toast, fried onions & fried potato mixture.It set us up beautifully and also helped with the nitrogen haze!Ann and Ferdie are currently having a house built at the front of their land, for the last year they have been living in a shed - we would call it a barn, but the Aussies said no it was definitely called a shed!It is all open fronted, amazing to think you could survive like this all summer and winter.Jeanie also lives in a shed, as the cyclone took her house out two years ago and they haven't yet got around to fixing it up, the wonderful laid back lifestyle here is something to savour, especially when you get the chance to compare how stressful life seems to be back home in the UK.After breakfast, we still needed to visit Rob, another ex pat who has built a balanese style home.Everyone was very friendly we had a fantastic time meeting and hearing about the lives of so many people, it was a totally different aspect to Australian life.We had a walk along Bingali beach in the afternoon, then in the evening met a few more locals who Sheila had introduced us to in the pub.Monday arrived and time to move on.We made a complaint to the reception at the Mission Beach resort, as the sugar ants had never been cleaned up during our 3 nights stay, I took a photo and said it was the dirtiest place we had stayed in, they gave us a free nights accommodation for our troubles!We headed south towards Townsville stopping for an hour or so at Balgal beach which was stunning.We only have one night here, but plan to check out the town before we move further south towards Mackay.The night of 19th May was spent in Townsville at a nice little 2 roomed apartment one street off The Strand which is the beachside.Rob and I went and had dinner over looking the sea, it was really attractive.The next morning we went to visit the local aquarium called Reef HQ, which houses the biggest collection of natural reef and coral.All the displays are of live coral, it was lovely to be able to identify some of the marine life we had been coming face to face with whilst diving.We continued our journey south calling in at Horseshoe Bay at Bowen just to break the trip but carried on down to Mackay.After a couple of bad motoring decisions (trying to find accommodation slightly off the beaten track) we headed to the main road where the motels were, by now it was dark and around 7pm, it was a bit of a concern when every motel/hotel had no vacancy signs up - it looked for a while that we may have to sleep in the car!Eventually we stopped at a hotel who called someone they knew at a caravan park and the lady agreed to let us stay for a couple of nights in a couple of cabins usually kept for long stay guests. We discovered that as mining is such big business around this area all accommodation is taken up by mine employees, or now owned outright by mining companies, we have been warned that we should expect similar problems further down the coast.Maybe it will be prudent to book ahead.The day before we went off on our island retreat, was spent lying on a virtually deserted beach reading, Sue went shell hunting, and we left the boys on the breakwater fishing from the rocks.Rob managed to slip over grazing his arm and leg(only minor cuts so nothing to worry about), he also dropped and jammed his reel up but they still managed to catch lots of reef fish so came away happy!
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