Welcome to South Queensland!

It's a lot less tropical than the far north. In fact we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn when we passed through the town of Rockhampton. I can confirm that there is no line to tell you this, so a bit of guesswork is required for the geographically pedantic. But the dwindling areas of rainforest and the scrubby dry surroundings eventually convinced me that we'd left the tropics. South Queensland winter weather is still pretty balmy (from a British perspective).

Plain sailing...on the Whitsundays!

This was posh sailing, on a 70-odd island National Park area inside the Barrier Reef, off the coast from Airlie Beach. We scored the only private cabin on 'Wings' our 52-foot vessel and home for two nights. This was luxury I may boast, as everyone else either slept on bunks, or in the main sitting area of the boat. Double-bed, TV, DVD, fan(?) and our own porthole. Impressive! The wind was calm so it wasn't exactly the America's Cup, but that made for a super-comfortable few days with no sailing duties at all. Amongst our crew were two dive instructors so diving was very much on the agenda. This included three day dives and a night dive! Scary but awesome; Antonia saw a Lion fish (below). Check out some of the other underwater photos in the gallery.

Comments

Spotted!

Having failed thus far to track down any of Australia's larger wildlife in its' own habitat, we can proudly report that after a couple of failed attempts, we have finally seen a duck-billed platypus. At the third time of asking, and while staying at a campsite called "Platypus Bush Camp", we trekked up a path to a river, directed by a sign saying 'Platypus pool this way -->'. So I'd've felt almost cheated had we not seen the little guy. It did take another 40 minutes of waiting and watching (at Attenborough-o'clock in the morning) before we got the success we'd been striving for. Even that crazy flat tail, and the duck bill was visible while it was swimming!'

Comments

Too much exercise is baaaaaaad....

...especially when you're running into the sea at a gazillion kms an hour...check this out...

Comments

The Great Sandy Peninsula - a bad tour redeemed.

We'd splashed the cash on the luxury of the Whitsundays trip so our budget for the one-day trip to Fraser Island - "the largest sand island in the world" - was slightly limited. And yes, you do get what you pay for. Our driver, "Crocodile" Steve wore his bush hat and khaki shorts with swagger though, and added a bit of charm to the otherwise impersonal tour. We were herded into a 40-seater 4x4 bus and driven from the ferry port (the beach) across to a freshwater lake, for just enough time to see it and take a couple of pictures before being herded back onto the bus and onward to our buffet lunch.

So it was welcome (and pretty hilarious) when ten minutes later Crocodile Steve succeeded in shredding one of the back tyres over a tree root. Of course, there wasn't a wheel jack. Nice work. A couple of the more game Aussie passengers helped with sand-digging/bus-levering/wheel-removing/clamping/blah-blah, while we helped by taking photos, first of the burst tire, then of random things around us in the forest - great fun really...

Anyway we got going eventually, threw down a less-than-5-star buffet and were just thinking we'd wasted our money when in the early afternoon our bus pulled up on the 75-mile beach on the other side of the island in front of a light aircraft - probably the smallest plane we've ever been in. So we negotiated a very decent price, and had an amazing bird's eye zip around the island at 2000 feet - we also got a beach take off and landing which was fantastic. We even spotted a whale offshore heading north!

So the trip to what Captain Cook had originally named the Great Sandy Peninsula was saved. Cook must've been tiring of sailing around naming pieces of land by then though surely. I mean a) it's not a peninsula, and b) it's got a lot more than sand on it. So Fraser Island was a success. There's more on the (very brutal but interesting) history of the place here.

Comments

Have you ever wondered what sand sounds like?

Thanks to our hostess with the mostess on Wings, Courtney, for letting us know - this little demonstration took place on Whitehaven beach.

Comments