Up, and snorkelling before brekkie. Excellent visibility, and lovely coral. I think it was my favourite place. Then diving again after breakfast. This time I wasn’t so lucky… I didn’t feel remotely as comfortable down there, plus the visibility wasn’t quite as good. Anyway, at $40 for 40 mins it was still worth going for it (though my ears have only just gone back to normal – a day later!).

That evening we all went out for beer and pizzia. I tried my hand in the pool competition. I got knocked out, in the first round, by the drunkest man I have ever seen play pool!. I reckon (I hope) he was a great player when sober (and just a really good player when drunk!!) hehehe, I still had 4 balls on the table when he finished.

Not the end of the entire world. Quite yet.

Next morning headed north towards Cairns. 6 days left in our van. I’m really going to miss it a lot.. such a comfortable free way of travelling, can’t reccommend it enough. Looking forward to seeing Domhnall in Perth on the 19th. Should be fun, not quite sure what the plan is there. Mhairi has friends from scotland down in Margaret River, but I’m not sure if Domhnall has time off and wants to climb.. sure we’ll see. And then off to Asia. Time is already flying.

We’d anchored that night in a bay just accross from Whitehaven beach. 7km of pure white silica sand. It really is quite a beautiful place.

I tried to take some arty pictures too. Which probably don’t work at all.. but hey.. gave me something to do for a while!

That evening we had a nice sunset – the evening before we’d not been able to see it.

The lads – being mark and anthony – hadn’t brought any CDs. So the music for the weekend was played off my MP3 player + speakers. Though I think, for some odd reason, the others preferred it when mb was choosing the music.

And why the ozzies didn’t love it when I found (and played as loud as I could) Tie me kangaroo down by Rolf Harris I’ll never understand ;)

Other exciting things, we saw a couple of humpback whales – I was glad I’d brought my binoculars, we didn’t get super close to them. Also, went on my first scuba dive since my last time, in the cayman islands ;) I do have a mild? case of sinusitis (blocked sinuses). You’re not really supposed to go diving if you have it, ‘cos when the pressure changes it’s not easy to equalise. However, I’ve found if I just swallow it does the trick – it did for that dive anyway, lots of fun.

On Friday 9th Mhairi and I headed down to the wharf to meet the rest of our group on the Ambition, our boat for the whitsunday islands. The rest of the passangers were already there – and a lovely bunch of people they were too. Rob and George, from Kent, travelling together and now off to Cairns/Perth to try to find some cash so that they can keep on travelling!. Then there was Sally and Laura, from London – both on holiday – though not for too much longer I think? And finally (besides Mhairi and I!) there was Kirsten, from Vancouver BC.

Everyone got on well from the start, and it really was a most fun couple of days. We met Mark(skipper) and Anthony (everything else – chef and dive instructor mainly!)

So from 10 until 2 ish we sailed off towards whitsunday island itself, taking in a spot of snorkelling after lunch (with time to digest!!). I’d bought my own snorkel the day before, as I’ve become accustomed to the luxury of a purge vavle thingy (so you don’t get salt water in your mouth all the time). I really enjoyed the snorkeling. Mhairi and I bought an underwater camera, so hopefully a few of those pics will come out well..

More food and drink to pass the evening away. Luckily Mhairi got her run in the morning, so she was just about able to relax for the rest of the day ;) hehee, though I think she rather enjoyed reading and chilling!

SO after a lazy day updating our weblogs (they do take a bitta time – esp when not at home..) we headed off to Eungalla National Park, there to see Platypus at play.

We did a couple of short walks and went back to the viewing platform for dusk.. There were a few turtles pottering about, but no sign of a platypus. Just as we were leaving (after enjoying a glass o white) a small creature came out and zipped about making a small wake around the pond area. It was, probably, a platypus, but by that time it was too late to really see it properly.

So, I think I saw a platypus in the wild, just not quite sure.

Anyway, it’s been wonderful staying with Paul and Jackie, so amazingly kind to us, just made us feel totally at home. It was kinda funny.. when we arrived Jackie said ‘Come in, Come in’.. and then ‘So Who are you guys anyway ? ;)’ later on Jackie asked me what my surname was ‘Davey’… to which she replied ‘Oh, I’ve heard about *you*’…. hehee, so a massive thanks to them for having us – now – on to the whitsundays.

Finally, I put up a slide show of a bunch of the pics from Fraser Island here

So after leaving Canarvon we headed back towards Mackay, our stop before the whitsundays. Paul and Jackie Stuart – of the Stuart family once more :) I hope to have a pic soon. We had a really lovely dinner with them in their *amazing* house, designed by themselves – it’s really open-plan…

Paul manages one of the sugar mills here, so he very kindly went back into work in the evening, and took Mhairi and I along to show us around. It was great, I felt like a real engineer again (however passive). They make 1400 Tonnes of sugar a day (up to 1800). We saw how the various stages work (from how they manage 1000km of railtrack, and 11,000 carriages) – which is how the raw materials (sugar cane) arrives. He showed how it is weighed (which determines how much the farmer gets paid (well, actually their %age ownership of the co-op), how the cane is stripped and pulped, juice extracted and the various washing and crystalisation methods used to get the sugar out.

I’m not going to go into too much detail just in case I get it all wrong. Oh, the furnaces were amazing.. they generate their own elec (and heat – lots of heat) from burning the bits of the cane which aren’t used. It was so impressive, really, the whole of the cane is used in some form or other.

Finally, two things…

1) the little differences between NZ (which is free of nasty things that want to kill you) and OZ, which has snakes and spiders and and and (not to mention Australians themselves… ehehehe joking joking!!)

and finally… I thought it was funny anyway…