Monday 18 July 2011

Dido, Diving, Beaches and Lagoons

We awoke on the morning of our first day in Cairns (after only a few hours sleep) to the sound of Dido coming from the reception area beneath our room (this was to become a bit of a pattern as no-one could or would change the morning playlist). Fortunately things very quickly improved. After a week or so in Melbourne we were rather sick of the cold, wet weather which was far too much like home and so it was great to finally have some sun and warmth. Tropic Days, the hostel we were staying at, is a nice family-run place a little way out of the centre with a great atmosphere. They have a swimming pool, hammocks and a great bunch of people, so much so that it was very easy to spend days not really doing anything in particular. We would spend our time lounging around by the lagoon (which is basically just a big outdoor public swimming pool) down on the waterfront in the sunshine or relaxing on hammocks reading books (I have in fact managed to spend quite a bit of money on books after getting hooked on a series) followed by a spot of socialising in the evening.

We did actually try and do some interesting things as well though, on Monday we walked all the way over to the Botanic Gardens and back which was quite nice and invigorating as well as interesting followed by a BBQ night at the hostel organised by the legend Gabe. We had plenty to eat including kangaroo, emu and crocodile. Afterwards we headed in to town for a great night out. I think what really made Cairns such a fantastic experience were the people we met there, like Pontus, Eddie, Eva, Emma, Tom and Vicky, they were all so lovely and we had a great time getting to know them.

We had both really been looking forward to Wednesday when we boarded a boat with our new friend Pontus and headed out to the Great Barrier Reef. It certainly started off pretty well with the sun out and not a cloud in the sky! I went scuba diving for the first time (and enjoyed it so much that I did a second dive) and loved it. It was amazing and I loved getting up close and personal with some of the marine life. We stopped at 3 different sites during the day doing a mixture of diving and snorkelling around and had a fantastic lunch in between. We saw all sorts of exciting things from a sea turtle to reef sharks. It was quite nervewracking diving for the first time, but on my second dive I had relaxed a lot and it felt a lot more natural. I think I'd definitely like to go diving again, maybe in the Philippines where I met loads of people who said it was phenomenal. We had hired an underwater camera for the day so we could take full advantage of the experience and hopefully get some great photos to remind us of it, and in the end we did get some good pictures, although they definitely don't really convey the true amazingness of it.

We were pretty exhausted after the previous day's excitement so after having packed most of Thursday was spent relaxing and enjoying our last day in Cairns before our overnight bus down the coast to Airlie Beach with our new friend Eddie. Cairns is definitely one of my favourite places in Australia because we had such a great time there. It's not the biggest place and there aren't a particularly large number of things to do there but we ended up being really lucky with our choice of hostel and the people we met there that we didn't really care. And to be fair it's quite hard to argue against the merits of spending your time just relaxing in the sunshine, and of course the trip out the the Great Barrier Reef just made it all the more fun. After our all-you-can-eat pizza night we were feeling a little bit full and just sat around the hostel waiting for our taxi (we were feeling pretty lazy by this point) to take us over to the Greyhound bus stop. It wasn't the best journey we've had, but eventually we arrived at our new destination, Airlie Beach.

Airlie Beach is one of three towns that are basically all connected up and the main reason for tourists to visit is to go out to the Whitsundays. We arrived at our hostel and after checking into our surprisngly good room we went out for a wander. It isn't a very big place so we spent most of the day just lounging around by the lagoon (it seems to be a bit of a theme on the coast), reading, relaxing and eating icecream. For dinner we headed next door to the Down Under Bar & Grill where we could get discounts because of the hostel we were staying at. After a tasty bit of food we decided to spend the rest of the evening there, and in the end we were grateful it was just round the corner from where we were staying.

To be honest, the next day ended up being fairly similar, Eddie decided to head out on a boat trip but Daisy and I had another lazy day, although we did have a little stroll around the local market, where Daisy was fairly captivated by the sight of Camel Rides on the beach (even if the average age was about 10). For lunch we had a spot of fish & chips before spending the rest of the afternoon doing basically nothing. Eddie came back early in the evening and we went out to dinner together (where I decided to have steak yet again) before we had to bid him farewell as he was spending another night in Airlie Beach and we were leaving that night for Agnes Water & The Town of 1770. It was another of those lovely overnight buses where we got very little sleep, but come morning we found ourselves at our new destination.

Our new hostel was aptly named Cool Bananas and it seemed like a proper surfers' hostel with a really chilled out vibe, hammocks and a lovely beach just a short walk away. It was really quite a picturesque little place as we discovered soon after we arrived when we walked up to a lookout point on a headland which provided a stunning view of the endless beach, deep blue ocean and cloudless skies. Heading back we walked down to the 'town' (it was quite hard to call it a town considering how small it was) where we grabbed some supplies from the supermarket, and after a 5 minute walk around the 'town' (that's all you needed to see everything of interest) headed back up to the hostel. In the afternoon we went for a stroll along the beach which just seemed to go on forever. The weather was perfect and it really felt quite isolated down by the water. Back at the hostel we discovered that there was a guy who came over every evening to cook a proper meal in the kitchen so you could just write your name down on a list and get a proper home-cooked meal for a very reasonable price. We opted to have the beef stew that was on offer that night before retiring to watch a movie and eventually go to sleep as by this point we were pretty damn fatigued.

We had heard that 1770 was a really good place to learn how to surf, although this idea was quickly shot down when we were told there wasn't really any surf to speak of at the moment. Instead we discovered that you can do a Castaway experience where you get flown out in a small group of people in a little plane and basically abandoned on a little island with some supplies and stuff where you spend a night in proper isolation, although when we tried to book it turned out that there was no availability until after we had moved on. Mostly unpeturbed we instead decided to do a sunset se kayaking trip, although when we first enquired we were told it wasn't actually going to be on today. Fortunately our run of bad luck did not continue and we were told not long after that it was going to happen after all that evening. So later on we were picked up in a minibus and driven round to the town of 1770 (which incidentally is named because Cook landed there in the year 1770) where we all got set up in our two man kayaks and were led out down the estuary towards the sea. There were something like 10 of us in total and it was great fun kayaking out round the headland (if a little bit tiring). It all looked pretty picturesque as the sun got lower in the sky and we even managed to spot a mother and baby dolphin swimming around us! On our way back we stopped off on a beach looking out at the setting sun drinking what is affectionately known in Oz as 'goon' (cheap box wine) and indulging in some rather nice cake. Just before the sun set completely (as we would be a bit lost otherwise) we headed back on up the estuary to where we had started and got a lift in the minibus back to our hostel. Eddie had also arrived from Airlie beach that day so we hung out with him and again had a lovely meal cooked for us and watched the film that was on in the communal area. I did have a bit of a stress dealing with STA trying to rearrange the rest of my flights (as the next one was originally scheduled for the next day) but I got it all sorted and headed to bed feeling very contented.

We did aim to do something on our last day there but unfortunately it was a Tuesday which meant the museum was closed so we ended up basically doing nothing other than relaxing on the beach and having a nice easy day and a fairly early night before having to get up at the crack of dawn the next day to get the bus. Being me, I hadn't properly packed the night before like a sensible person would have done so I had the fun of packing by torchlight and hoping that I hadn't managed to forget anything. We checked out and the 3 of us (Eddie, Daisy and I) wandered down to the bus stop just as the sun was making it's first attempts at rising. After another really really fun bus ride we reached Maryborough where we waved farewell to Eddie who was carrying on to Brisbane and had a fun few hours waiting at a bus stop for our connecting one to head inland to a tiny place called Binjour where we would hopefully be met by Rohan and Fiona who we had arranged to go and stay with on their farm as part of the WWOOFing scheme. After getting some lunch from the nearby supermarket and the next book in my addictive series from a bookshop the bus eventually arrived. There were only 4 of us on the bus and it was a fairly uneventful journey and after a 30min stop in Gayndah (which is only about a quarter of an hour from Binjour) and a slight worry about an oil leak, we were abandoned in the dark by the side of the road in Binjour, hoping someone would turn up and take us in...

No comments:

Post a Comment