Australia: hot stuff

The time has finally arrived for us to part company with our adopted home of New Zealand and hop the water to the bigger, more dangerous animal-filled and more beer-swilling country of Australia. We’d seen from weather forecasts that many areas on our planned trip from Cairns down to Sydney were underwater with the recent heavy monsoon rains, so we were a bit nervous boarding the plane! Our fears were unfounded though as we arrived in Cairns to some sunshine and the news that the week ahead looked like decent weather – phewf!

The first thing we noticed about Australia is that it is VERY hot and humid, and we had arrived during the uncomfortable wet season! We spent a while lying under the fan in our room trying to acclimatise. We had an afternoon around Cairns, dodging traffic, booking bus trips, and generally trying to avoid the hoards of young English tourists all intent on getting drunk and watching as many Premiership matches as possible – all a bit of a shock after untouched New Zealand! There were some good points - we had a cheap $10 meal that night in a canteen-style pub and also had a nice pool in our hostel to escape the heat, but generally we were glad to jump on the Greyhound bus the next morning and head south to Townsville.

We caught the Sunferry over to Magnetic Island from Townsville harbour, with the aim to relax for a few days before heading to the Whitsundays. We had booked into a B&B called Myra’s, a bit at random as our main choices were full, but we lucked out in a big way. We were met by a great old Aussie called Wal, who took us in his 4x4 across the island, stopping on the way to feed some cute little rock wallabies (by hand) and big salt water piranhas (definitely not hand fed!). Our place for the three nights was an awesome little cabin tucked away by itself in the garden, with bathroom, kitchen, TV and a balcony overlooking a little creek complete with rope swing. There was a resident possum in a box on the tree outside and thousands of birds and butterflies in the surrounding trees. Pretty sweet, but it got better when Wal told us breakfast was included (more on that in a bit) and we could also use his little car, a 27 year old Mini Moke with no roof and a top speed of about 30mph! We motored off in it straight away down to the local bay and bought some beers from the drive in bottle shop (typically Australian)!

The breakfast in the morning was BIG - we ate cereal, toast, fruit and a huge cooked breakfast, with tea and juice on the side. Both of us were so full we could hardly move and only managed a small dinner for the rest of the day! We spent that day walking up to an abandoned WW2 fortress and then skirted the coastline of the island. We were chuffed to bits to see a koala in the wild; he seemed really at ease with us (he spent 5 minutes scratching his bum!) and we got quite close for some great pictures. The rest of the island was picture perfect, with plenty of deserted beaches and tree lined headlands separating them. We were pretty hot and thirsty by the time we finished and flopped into the nearest pub for delicious pints of shandy before cycling on our free bikes back. We spent the afternoon and evening drinking beers whilst sitting in the creek to cool down and zooming around on the rope swing!

The next day we were floored by another huge breakfast so had a relaxing day. We fed some tropical parakeets in the B&B garden (they seemed to like sitting on Rach’s head for some reason!) before going for a swim in Picnic Bay. The deadly jellyfish in the bay meant we had to swim in the netted area, but we were still pretty nervous of random tentacles drifing through so it was a rather tense swim! We drove the Moke around for the rest of the day, stopping at sunset after bouncing down a very rutted road and watching shooting stars over the palm trees. Perfect! The next day we sadly left the island, after a smaller breakfast (at our request!), and returned to Townsville for our 6 hour trip down to Airlie Beach, the gateway to the Whitsundays.

Our plan was to book onto one of the sailing boats which cruised around the Whitsunday Islands. The weather forecast for the three day window was not good so we were unsure whether even to go, especially given what happened to Gaz during the boat trip in rough seas in Hawai’i. We decided to risk it, and after buying a stack of seasickness pills, we headed to the booking office. The trip we decided on was aboard the Alexander Stewart, a tall sailing ship which was to go on a 3 day and 2 night voyage around some of the 74 Whitsunday Islands. We stayed that night in a fairly mediocre backpackers full of boozy locals but were too excited to care!

In the morning we stashed our main bags, packed a small sack each and headed to the harbour. We found out that even though two other boat’s guests had been put on our ship as they had broken down, it wasn’t full, with only 14 on board! We all walked down to the huge wooden ship, took off our shoes, stowed our booze in the cooler, and got on board. Our cabin was wood panelled and comfy, with air conditioning (bonus!), and after the awesome buffet lunch one hour into the trip, we knew the food was going to be great too. The crew were great people too – Stacey (cook), Andy (deckhand and bush guide) and Rick (skipper). We first sailed to Whitehaven beach as the weather was due to turn later in the day. We got a dinghy to the shore then walked through the bush with Andy to a lookout over the beach. On the way we learned a fair bit about Aboriginal life in the area, and got an idea of medicine by licking an ant’s butt to get vitamin C! The views over Whitehaven were magical – flour white sand and aquamarine water. We were all really keen to get into the water so we dashed back down the hill to the beach to get the stinger suits on. Looking like a little lycra clad army we trooped into the 29 degree water, watching fish and stingrays swimming all around us! After a couple of hours at the reputed best beach in the world we were motored back to the ship. Rach almost got a punishment spoonful of Vegemite for forgetting to log her name onto the return sheet, but got out of it with some rapid apologising! We had afternoon tea, cakes and chocolate pie then sailed to our mooring for the night. We arrived at nice little sheltered bay, had some pre-dinner snacks and some wine, then lay on deck as the sun set. We had a fresh fish dinner as the stars came out – a perfect day!

As the air con had been switched off at midnight, we woke feeling pretty hot so were keen to get up on deck in the fresh air! It was a bit less sunny but the wind was a bit higher, which was great news for using the tall ship sails! We had a breakfast on deck then set sail to Hook Island and a snorkelling spot. We both lent a hand raising various sails and soon we were cruising in total silence, slicing through the waves. It was pretty exhilarating! We sailed for a couple of hours, then stopped at Maureen’s Bay and anchored for the snorkelling. We had a great hour flippering around the coral, seeing loads of brightly coloured fish, huge blue clams and lobsters! The sun came out after we got back on the boat, so we lay on deck and caught some rays as the boat sailed for our next night’s mooring at Hayman Island. As the sun set the wine flowed and we were soon playing drinking games with the others, which kept getting interrupted by glimpses of bright red squid and metre-long reef sharks circling the boat!

Our final day, which was much sunnier than the day before (yay!), started with more snorkelling. We were assured this would be different to all snorkelling we’d ever done before, and we soon found out why. We were ferried to a coral shore and jumped in from there. We swam around huge sardine shoals and saw lots of parrot fish and sergeant majors too. All of a sudden the water started to boil and there were fish everywhere, flapping around our masks and faces; we looked up to see Andy in the dinghy throwing handfuls of fish food right at us! We couldn’t see anything but fish and the experience was pretty amazing, if a little frightening! We both got nipped by a few of the frenzied fish! We got back to the boat, had a delicious lunch, then set sail back to Airlie Beach. It started to rain and blow a heavy wind on the way; we realised that we’d been incredibly lucky with the weather as it had pretty much been perfect for the whole trip, despite the forecast.

We got back to harbour and said goodbye to everyone, only to find a table had been booked at a local bar for that night with free booze! We spent the afternoon doing some bookings and shopping, before heading to the bar to meet the others. We had a great night reliving the last few days and trying to get over the strange sensation of feeling off-balance on dry land! We left rain soaked Airlie Beach at midnight to catch the overnight bus to Rockhampton – trying to sleep on the the bus seats made our boat cabin seem like the real height of luxury!