Day 31

So day 31 begins with an emotional goodbye to Tom, Dicky and Carla who are off on their whitsundays boat today! its only for 3 days but still i'lll miss them! luckily there is still ryan and robbie kicking around so i chill out with them down at the lagoon for the day and we get pissed at night... nothing much to tell here...

Day 32

Day 32 begins with a bit of a sore head after the night with the lads the night before so we decide to head down for some breakfast at the restaurant at the hostel! After a while of sitting we meet Steph (barbados connection from magnetic island), she joins us for some breakfast! In this part of the hostel in the restaurant, there are two millitant kookaburras that swoop down and steal your food from of your plate! One of them swoops down and flies head on towards me trying to grab my sausages! I bat it away, but he sticks around and gives me evil looks, they're quite scary looking birds when they look you directly in the eye! We finish up our breakfasts and head down to the lagoon to chill for a while, we have a bit of a swim in the pool and a sunbathe and meet some of the lads that we've been seeing a bit down the coast, they've come to be colloquially as Big Dave and the Boys. So we chat with them for a while and this is where i do a classic will and put my foot in it! There is a young German girl who has been in my room for the past couple of nights and all she does is sit indoors and read her book, i tell the lads about this in a taking the mickey kind of way... surprise surprise she's sitting right next to us... Nice one d*** head! Needless to say we make a swift exit! We head back to the hostel for a bit of a chill before we get on the beers! That night we headed next door to where robbie was staying and we have way too many drinks and were a little bit worse for wear, especially robbie!! Anyway, thats enough of the drinking for a night!

Day 33

Day 33 isn't much of an exciting day, I pretty much just just hung out at the lagoon with Robbie, Ryan and Steph! We have a great meal in beaches (robbies hostel) and have a few drinks before calling it an early night because Steph and I have our respective boat trips early the next morning!

Day 34

Here we go, real happenings! So i have to be up early on day 34 for my boat briefing/check in at 8.30! After this I have a bit of a chill out back at magnums with Tom, Dicky and Carla who were back off the boat that i'm due to get on! I have a short walk down to the airlie marina and we're on the boat!! I'm extremely excited about this trip! At first everyone on the boat is a bit quiet and not really chatty and i notice a distinct lack of english people!! We head out towards the whitsundays to our first snorkelling spot! Its a bit murky but theres some good views of the coral and a few fish!! Lovely! I get back onto the boat and get chatting to Leigh and Ben who are from guernsey, technically english, we also chat to Jeff who's from Berwick! I've found the english people!! We get chatting on the way to the next snorkelling spot and break into the beers and the goon... you can see where this is going!!! We sail to the place where we were anchoring for the night, we have a delicious meal of Spag bol with garlic bread!! Then the fun really begins!! Being the english on the boat we're the ones to start the drinking games... we play s and p's which is where you play word association and every time you use a word beginning with an s or a p you must consume your entire beverage, then we play a bit of never ever have i ever, which goes well for most people as theres not many things that have been done so not many people drink with this one! the other game however gets people rather drunk! anyway we sit up on the deck until about 3 in the morning ahead of a 4.30am wake up call to watch the sunrise...

Day 35

So we're woken up at 4.30 by the boats engines to tell us that its time to watch the sunrise which is gorgeous!! After this we have some cereal upon deck before we head to the hill inlet which is at the bottom end of whitehaven beach! When we moored up at a rather unpleasant hour, there was on thing that instantly took away the bleary eyes and that was the sea turtles surfacing every few minutes for air! What a sight this was!! Then we get the tender over to the shore to walk upto the hill inlet viewpoint! Its a bit of a trek up here but boy is it worth it!! Of all the views ive seen on my trip so far this is the best by far! Simply beautiful!!! Next we head down to the beach which again is amazingly beautiful, the sand is just like i remember it, pure white and squeaks when you walk on it! We had an interesting fact from the skipper on the boat. This is that the sand on the beach is the purest silica in the world so they used it to make the glass for the hubble telescope lenses! Not sure if its true but interesting all the same! We spend a bit of time really messing around on the beach because we're all still drunk from the night before which isn't ideal but we don't care because of the location! We walk amongst the stingrays for a while and do a bit more messing about then head back to the boat! Since we were up so early and we've been on the beach for about 4 hours, it feels like its 4 in the afternoon but it hasn't even hit 11am yet! The boat heads to our first snorkelling spot of the day next, there is a strange oil slick looking substance in the water which the aussies call coral spore. The next spot is covered in this stuff but luckily there is a bit of a clear bit that we go to in the tender! Another good bit of a do here with some good coral and fish but i'm still not particularly WOWED! We get back on the boat and heat to our next spot, on this trip there are a few sea eagles around and we throw them some meat up into the air and the catch it in their talons!! This was very cool! We arrive at our next snorkelling spot which is spectacular!! Now i'm WOWED, the sea is clear, the coral is really alive with life and the fish are awesome!! Best spot yet! We're mooring for the night here and we have our tea of roast beef and mash with gravy which is delicious! Its amazing what our host can do in a kitchen thats smaller than the average public loo!! After tea we break out the goon, we have a quieter night but with Ben, Leigh and Jeff its not really saying much!! Anyway we get a bit merry and rowdy and we're the last people up again! I head to bed ahead of a long morning of sailing back to airlie!!

Day 36

Day 36 begins with a fairly early morning to see our last snorkelling spot, i dont get in here because its cold and i'm a bit delicate... we head back to airlie at about 10.30 and we all arrange to meet up for lunch at noon, but we're all filthy and salty after not showering for nearly 3 days... so we get presentable first and meet at magnums ahead of going up to have a nice meal before we part ways! We have a giant meal and go back to beaches to have a few drinks. Tom, Dicky, Carla, Robbie, Steph and i are all booked onto the same fraser island trip so we've got a night bus out of airlie to hervey bay at 6.55pm doesn't stop us getting rather merry before getting on... in fact it helps! I say goodbye to Ben, Leigh and Jeff and i'm hoping to meet up with them at some point, regardless of what it might do to my liver... Also say goodbye to Ryan, but he's only an hour or so away from home so i'll probably visit at some point! So we get on the bus ahead of a 13 hour overnight journey down to Hervey Bay for fraser island!!

Thanks for reading!

Will