More photos!

Craig has posted photos from the Northern Territories portion of our trip at
http://picasaweb.google.com/craig.wilkinson/Australia#

Australia Day 24 - Surfers Paradise to Brisbane

Our hostel was about a 30 minute walk from the Surfers Paradise beach so we were happy to find when we checked out that there was a free shuttle bus leaving in 5 mins. When we got to the beach we stopped for breakfast and planned to go back to the school we used yesterday to rent equipment (they offered a deal of $20 per person for a 4 hour equipment rental, and were right on the beach). However during breakfast Adam got a call from a friend of his who lives in the area whom he had been trying to meet with while he was in town. His friend was surfing a few beaches south of where we were and said he would look into board rental places in the area so we could drive down to meet him. One of the suggestions was that we rent the boards where we were and drive them out to the beach he was on, although since the beginner boards are huge that was really not an option. Craig suggested that we stay and surf a couple of hours in Surfers Paradise and then drive down the coast to meet Adam's friend for a drink or something. In the end though, we ended up walking 30 mins back to the car parked at the hotel, driving 20 mins south to the rental place Adam's friend had found only to find out they only have fibreglass boards (which are much smaller and less stable and hurt when you get hit with them). Since this was only my second time surfing and I'd only stood a handful of times I wasn't comfortable on a fibreglass board and neither was Craig. We went on a wild goose chase around the beach to find a place that rented g boards (everyone had a suggestion but none of them panned out) and finally met up with Adam's friend, still no boards. He made some calls and finally found that a shop run out of his neighbour's house had the proper boards so we drove further south to the shop.
Finally, at around 2pm (we had finished breakfast and been ready to get surfing at 10am) we had boards (although this place didn't have rash guards). We headed out to the beach and started our second day of surfing. This day was much harder - I was super sore from yesterday - all my muscles were stiff and I had a few bumps and bruises. The waves were much stronger on this beach and the drop off was much steeper so my feet couldn't touch the ground once I was out a few metres. As a result I ended up trying to swim against the waves in order to get out deep enough to get on a wave. However every time I got hit with a wave it pushed me back towards the beach since I didn't have the ground to stabilize against. I ended up exhausted and frustrated, not able to get out far enough and not able to move fast enough to get up on the board if I did get a wave. By the time I was up, the wave had dissipated so my board tipped and I fell. I got hit by several large waves and did quite a few face plants in the sand, which was rough with rocks and shells on this beach. In the end I had rashes (like carpet burn) on the inside of my elbows, wrists and armpits, knees and thighs. My legs and arms were sore and stiff. And I was covered with sand - when I later went to the washroom I realized I had an inch of sand on the entire inside of my bathing suit. Overall the day of surfing was really disappointing for me because I had been really looking forward to it and wouldn't have another opportunity to try again anytime soon. Adam enjoyed himself though and Craig was slightly more successful than me (he was able to reach the ground where I couldn't so could get out farther).
We ended up at a sushi restaurant for dinner and I had some surprisingly good vegetarian tempura sushi before we dropped Adam off at the airport. Afterwards we drove back to Brisbane (stopping for freshly made local mango ice cream on the way) and found our way to my cousin's place, where we are staying until our flight home.
My cousin, Angie, and her fiance, Scott, recently purchased a home in north Brisbane. Her sister, Jenni, who until recently lived in London, moved in with them in December. So we were able to visit with all three of them (and Craig met Angie and Scott for the first time, and I met Scott) which was nice. Since we got in fairly late we only had a bit of time catching up before it was time to go to bed.

Australia Day 23 - Surfers Paradise

Our overnight bus from Hervey Bay to Brisbane got in almost a full hour early (at 6am instead of 7am) which was unfortunate since that meant we had less than 5 hours to sleep, and had an hour to kill before the car rental place opened. We eventually got our car from Hertz and drove an hour south to Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast. We checked into our hostel and had a bit of a nap while we were waiting for Adam Tait to arrive. Adam is a friend of Craig's from university who moved from Ottawa to Sydney in August, so Craig hadn't had much opportunity to see him since university.
Once Adam arrived, we had some Australian pies for lunch and booked a 2 hour long afternoon surfing lesson with Go Catch a Wave. Although Adam and Craig had both tried surfing at least once before, this was my first time so I was really looking forward to the lesson. The lesson was really great - we were given rash guards (long sleeved shirts to wear while surfing) and big foam G-boards (which are more stable because they are big and hurt less when they hit you because they're foam) and were taken to the beach where we were taught about how waves are formed, where you want to be to catch a wave, how to position yourself on your board and how to catch a wave. We spent the next hour pretty much boogie boarding - we caught waves but only lifted our shoulders to ride them, instead of standing. This was a lot of fun and helped get us comfortable catching the waves and gave us a lot of practice on timing. After an hour we went back to the beach and learnt two techniques for standing up, and how to stand on the board. After practicing a bit on land we took to the water for another hour. We had great fun and the three of us were all able to successfully stand on our boards at least a few times. The surfing was a lot of work because the waves were really strong and some were quite large, so walking the board out to catch a wave was much more effort than catching and riding the wave. Luckily though the beach was a very slow descent so we were able to walk out quite far and still touch the ground. We never went out past the break of the wave and didn't need to go deeper than we could walk to get a good wave. There were a few waves that hit me with a lot of gusto, sending me sprawling back to shore - I quickly learnt to take a breath before getting hit by the larger waves in case I got pulled underwater for a few seconds. By the end of the lesson, my whole body was a bit sore from struggling against the water when going out, and from doing pushups to get standing on the board. Great experience though and looking forward to trying it again!
After the lesson we went to a nice Thai restaurant for a lovely dinner with some really nice tofu dishes. Yum!

Australia Day 21-22 - Fraser Island

While we were on our sailing trip I realized that I hadn't told our Fraser Island tour that I was vegetarian, so I called them as soon as we got back to dry land. Good thing too - our travel agent had confused the dates so we were scheduled for a tour starting on the 9th instead of the 7th. Since we were being picked up from the Greyhound station 15 mins after our bus got in, if I hadn't called we would have missed our tour and have had to do a 1 day tour instead of the 2 day we wanted. Luckily I got it all sorted out and we arranged for pickup on the 7th. Good thing I'm vegetarian!

After returning from the sailing trip, we rushed to catch a 6pm Greyhound which arrived in Hervey Bay at 6:50am. They showed Davinci Code before we attempted to sleep for 8 hours - by the time we got to Hervey Bay we were stiff, sleepy and smelly (we hadn't been able to shower since before the sailing trip). Our ride picked us up from the terminal at 7:05 and we were dropped off at the ferry to the island. Once on the island we met our driver and group for our 2-day tour - we did the trip with Fraser Experience, which has 4WD coaches. Since Fraser Island is all unpaved roads (dirt roads with huge bumps and holes, and the only highway is actually a beach) the bus, with it's longer wheel base, is able to go faster and feel smoother than the normal 4WD jeeps.
In the two day tour we drove all around Fraser Island, stopping at Lake Wabby and the adjacent sand blow, the Maheno shipwreck (strange that this became a tourist attraction instead of being cleaned up, but this is a rusted out ship washed up on the beach), the Champagne Pools (not normally included on the tour but our driver was cool and wanted to take us to see as much as possible), Indian Head, Eli Creek, Central Station (where the timbre industry employees were based), Lake Birrabeen (also not normally included - we had a bit of a slowdown when we came across a fallen tree across the road, but made it there), and finally Lake MacKenzie (which is the nicest beach on the island - big blue lake with fine white sand) where we swam and relaxed for a few hours before returning to the mainland. Our tour was based at Eurong Beach Resort, where we had buffet breakfast, lunch and dinners, and where we spent the night. Craig and I were too tired to go out and enjoy the bar after dinner (due to the overnight on the bus and the bad sleep the previous night because it was windy and the boat was really rocky) but some of the others saw a big python chilling in the bar.
Once we returned to Hervey Bay, our bus driver dropped us off at the greyhound station (at around 6:30pm) and we found some internet, a late dinner, a bar, and then took turns napping on the bench until our 1:30am bus arrived.

Australia Day 18-20 - Whitsunday Islands

We got up early on the 4th and left our backpacks in storage for a few days, only bringing our day bag for our sailing trip. We had booked 3 days aboard Summertime - a wooden sailing boat built in 1941 (finished quite a few years later because the war stopped them from getting their timber). Very cool.

We got to the boat and it was tiny! I think there are 16 of us plus 4 crew. Very cozy beds below the deck, but nice enough.

We spent the next 3 days / 2 nights cruising around the Whitsundays - stopping to snorkel (with the option to dive which we turned down), swim, hike, kayak, or just laze on the beach or in the hot tub on board the ship. The crew prepared us breakfast, lunch and dinners and did a fantastic job with my vegetarian needs - in addition to the salads they also prepared different tofu / vegetarian dishes just for me. Awesome.

The snorkeling was really nice - we stopped at 3 different places to snorkel and saw lots of interesting fish and sea life. We saw sea turtles and clown fish and stingrays and sea cucumbers and angel fish and many types of coral and a whole bunch of other creatures whose names I don't know or remember.

We stopped at Tongue Bay on Whitsunday island and walked to Whithaven beach, which had really nice fine white sand (99.3% silica for the nerds in the crowd). The swimming there was nice and we had a walk up to a lookout overlooking the hill inlet that was quite spectacular.

We did our kayaking on the last day and saw lots of stingrays (they went right under our kayaks!) and mangroves. But alas, no sharks :(

In the evenings we docked and had dinner, dessert, then met in the lounge to watch a slide show of all the pictures the crew took during the day. They had two cameras which they took with us on our various expeditions and sold us the DVDs of photos at the end of the trip. So we have some good pictures of Craig and I that aren't self-shots! They also showed us various pictures and videos they had taken on other trips and told us about the sea life which was really really interesting. For instance, sea turtles look stoned because they are - they eat jellyfish and the toxin is converted into a drug for them. There was also a super awesome video of the police fish which protect the animals in their reef escorting a Morey eel (which is mostly blind) from one hole to another - they look around, check that the coast is clear and then tell the eel to follow them. When they get to the hole the cop fish change their colours into camouflage mode - very stealth. Also, there are the small fish that set up car washes but if there aren't any fish in the car wash they go out and start cleaning passerbys, often to the frustration of the big fish. One of the guys on our tour actually saw one of the car washes set up with a big line of patient fish waiting to be cleaned - so cool! Hearing all this information about how the reef animals work really made us want to watch Finding Nemo again :)

After dark, they turned on lights that shone into the water to attract plankton, thus attracting small fish, attracting squid, attracting dolphins to eat the squid. This is how we ended up being surrounded by dolphins after dark!

All in all, we loved our experience aboard Summertime (it was one of my highlights of our entire trip) and would really recommend it to anyone travelling in the area!

Australia Day 17 - Airlie Beach

The night bus to Airlie beach was fine until 10am when the bus driver decided to turn on a really loud tourism Australia video. I was still trying to nap and it was so loud that it hurt my ears. But otherwise, the bus ride was nice enough - comfortable seats, quiet - we got a decent night's rest.

We got to Airlie beach and went for a hike up a steep hill to get to our hostel - in the heat of the sun and with all our bags piled on! Our room was gorgeous - we paid $50ish for two single beds in a 5-person dorm, however we ended up getting a huge room with private washroom, a double bed and two singles (and no one else showed up), a patio, a fridge, microwave, dishes and a hotplate. Much better than the bus!

We had a nap and did some errands - grocery store and bottle store - and had a lovely lunch at a noodle hut where you picked a noodle type, sauce and protein (meat or tofu) and they threw it all in the wok. $11 each - not bad! For dinner we found a bar with live music and relaxed a bit before going back to our room to enjoy some rose wine and get packed for our sailing trip.

Australia Day 16 - Tablelands

We decided to keep our rental car for an extra day and drive down to the tablelands for the day. The drive wasn't very long (only 1.5 hours) however there were 40km of super windy roads through the mountains where you couldn't go more than 20 or 30 km/h since there were 180 degree corners one after the other. We drove to Atherton for lunch (Malaysian curries) and then drove around Yungaburra stopping to look at some crazy fig trees (a cathedral fig tree that has a canopy the size of two Olympic sized swimming pools, and a curtain fig tree which fell onto another tree forming a curtain of fig roots) and do a hike around a (volcanic) crater lake. We finished our day at a platypus lookout hoping to spot one coming out for its dusk feeding. Unfortunately all we saw were turtles. Shucks.

We drove back to Cairns, had an amazing Asian dinner - I had tofu in a garlic sauce, and then Craig dropped me off at the Greyhound station and took the car to the airport (the only place they do late drop off). While I was sitting at the greyhound station alone at 10pm with all our bags I could hear all the bats flying over me - Cairns has a lot of fruit bats in the trees.

We caught the bus shortly after midnight to Airlie Beach.

Australia Day 15 - Cape Tribulation to Cairns

We got up early in the hopes of finding something to do in the morning however since it's off-season, tours are running limited service so we weren't able to find something that fit in the morning before our 2pm booking. We ended up just doing some hikes before grabbing a tasty pizza lunch and heading to the Cape Trib Exotic Fruit Farm for a fruit tasting. We found this online and booked it over a month ago because we were so excited - this is the reason we came to Cape Trib. The fruit tasting was advertised as letting us try 10 different exotic fruits in addition to telling us about each one and how to eat them and whatnot. The tasting only runs 3 days a week and doesn't usually run with only 2 participants but since we booked over a month in advance they ran it for the two of us! We both really enjoyed the tasting - we tried jackfruit (yummy!! super sweet!), davidson plum (bitter - only looks like a plum, but has two pits instead of one), west india lime (essentially key lime - we juiced it and added some water which made a nice refreshing drink), dragon fruit (bright pink outside - looks like a white kiwi inside. Not much taste but quite nice spritzed with lime), soursop (really soft and juicy - very sweet), something that was related to a lychee, a starfruit (tasted a bit like a green apple), mangosteen (not related to a mango - it has a thick spongy rind with 5 sections on the inside that you eat. Very tasty. This is what the farm produces commercially), and snakefruit (the peel is snakeskin like, the fruit makes your mouth go dry). And then there was the miracle fruit. This thing was amazing! It was small and hard with a red peel, kind of like a small cranberry. We only had one to share between the two of us because they are out of season. We cut it in half and popped them in our mouths, sucking on them and peeling them off the seed. A little sweet but not much taste. This is where the real excitement starts though - these fruit block the sour receptors on your tongue for 3 hours or so. Before eating the miracle fruit we took a quick taste of the west india lime - it only took a little lick and it was really sour. After the miracle fruit though the west india lime tasted really sweet and we were able to take big bites into it. Yummy! Like sweet lime juice! We also tasted the davidson plum again which also had a nice taste. Unfortunately miracle fruit lose the sour-stopping power a few hours after being picked so you can't get these in Canada, but we agreed that this was the best fruit at the tasting. Quite the experience!

We got picked up from the tasting by the Canopy Surfing company which took us up the rain forest to do some zip lining. At each station we were told a bit about the nearby trees and some other interesting facts about Cape Trib and the local rain forest. The last few lines were more thrills though and we went down with no hands and then upside down. On the walk back to the car we saw an iguana (and were told that when this type runs, it stands on it's two hind legs but it throws it's head back so can't see where it's going - it just runs until it whacks into something :)

We drove back to Cairns in the dark and checked back into our hostel for the night. I didn't properly complain about this hostel previously so I'll do that now. Travellers Oasis in Cairns - it's nice enough but they really bothered me because they didn't keep any soap in the washrooms. When we first checked in I found soft soap in one washroom but not in the one near our room so I mentioned it at the front desk. He said "OK thanks" but they never filled the soap in the washroom in the next 5 days that we were there. Since we were in India we had lots of hand sanitizer for ourselves, but it bothers me to be opening doors and flipping lights (and using the kitchen!) when you know that there isn't any soap in the washroom....