Down under and back again: 2013

Back again, update here from Maartjes place at the sunshine capital - Brisbane! Before we start, I received my grades yesterday: passed everything! So no worries at all haha, I put in just enough effort :)

After Cairns, we went south. First stop: Mission Beach. Unfortunately, it is rain season at the moment. At Mission Beach, it rained. Almost all day. Hence I updated my blog there, and we moved on to Townsville. The day after arriving in Townsville, we went to Magnetic Island. I assumed this to be a remote, uninhabited island, but it was more like a resort! We spent the day there, I did a lookout walk, we fed rock wallabies (cute, but these looked kind of unhealthy and attacked each other continuously and they were kind of pushy as well!) and I did a walk to Balding Bay. Now the sign said that this is a nudist beach. As the last sign that told me the same lied to me, I assumed that Balding Bay was a normal beach as well. Turned out I was wrong. Hence, after half an hour walk (it was really warm!), I more or less instantly turned back around when the first thing I saw was a naked old guy coming out of the water...

After this, we went to Airlie Beach to visit the Whitsundays (Pinkstereilanden for the Dutch). We did this on a 2 day-2 night trip on a engined sailing boat called Habibi, which means 'my darling' as the guy who built it ruined his marriage by working so hard on it. On the first day, the weather was bad and we went to our overnight stop at Tongue Point on Whitsunday Island. This was a bit rough, causing me slight seasickness but nothing too bad overall. On the second day, we went to Whitehaven Beach, which is paradise as you imagine it! Crystal clear blue water and the whitest sand I've ever seen.The sand is so fine, you can clean your hair and teeth with it! Luckily we first had the beach for ourselves, but later on it became very crowded.

In the afternoon, we did two snorkeling trips. There were loads of fish, so actually fishing in a group of them was awesome! On the second spot we swam about 1 metre behind a big turtle, absolutely amazing...

The third day we went back to Airlie Beach, and we saw some dolphins in the distance.

After that, we went to Bundaberg with an overnight bus. This wasn't as comfortable as I hoped it would be, but at least we didn't have to pay for accomodation. Bundaberg reminded me a bit of Broken Hill, it has a Western-like atmosphere going on. Over there, we went to the Bundaberg rum distillery, which is famous in Australia (but only there, as 96% of the production goes to Australia). We had a tour around to see how the rum is made, and afterwards we had my favourite part: the tasting. I surely hope they'll start selling it soon in Europe!

After Bundy, we continued to Hervey Bay, our departure spot for our Fraser Island trip. Fraser Island is a big (bigger than Israel apparently) island consisting of rainforest and sand. Hence, we needed a 4WD car, and we got them. Fluffy pink ones, that is! We got to ride them ourselves, which was freaking awesome! On the beach, normal traffic rules apply (80kph speed limit, driving on the left, watching out for planes: yes, the beach is an airport as well!), so it is like driving a highway, but to the centre of the island is a real off-road experience: bumpy, risky and loud. Super! On the first day, we went to a lookout point on which you can see sharks, turtles and manta rays swimming around. On the second day, we went to lake Wabby and lake Mackenzie to swim.

And now I'm in Brisbane, in Maartjes room. Today we went to explore the city and tomorrow I'll visit Australia Zoo (from Steve Irwin, the crocodile dundee). After that, only surfing, Byron Bay and a bit of Sydney are left before I leave to New Zealand! I'm really looking forward to that, it's gonna be awesome. I'm not sure how connected I can manage to be over there though, so people back home, please don't blame me for that! That's it for now, update will be in January hopefully on NZ :)