2/27/02 Arlie Beach, Australia
(Phillip)
Okay, so this entry is by Phillip. The reason I'm never entering journal's is that I always get tied up responding to emails. It's almost as if (I said almost) I'm popular! Kelly is on the computer next to me typing in her journals so I'm going to give you my take on the past week.
So as you may have heard we're heading North on the East coast in our camper van. Our plan all along has been to rent a van to save money, except when it actually came down to it these things are expensive! After calling literally every place with a toll free number we were struggling to keep our daily van costs below $100. Considering our total budget for the day is $105 you can see the problem it caused.
Anyway, I decided to tell some little lies to play the companies against each other to get a better deal. Eventually I managed to talk the most expensive (and best) company from $113 per day to $63, not bad eh? We went and picked up the camper in a suburb of Brisbane, first thoughts on the camper were, wow! this is great. It has a fridge/freezer, two double beds, a sink and a gas stove. It even came with some chairs and a table to sit outside and eat!
Off we set, our first stop was the great Australia
Zoo, home of Steve Irwin (Discovery's Crocodille Hunter). I was really impressed with the croc feeding demo. It seemed like the park staff almost died on three occasions!
We spent the first night trying to get used to sleeping in the heat and getting used to all the van’s knobs and plugs. Even though the girl at the rental agency had shown us most of them, we weren’t paying attention… Typical!
We booked ourself on a tour of Fraser Island. It’s the world’s largest sand island, you know? The tour was great. We rode the ferry across and boarded some large 4WD coaches. As we drove through the rainforest (it has adapted to grow in sand) we saw a plane flying above which landed on the beach. Jokingly I asked Kelly how they got the planes on the island, (the mainland was only 4km away…), she responded with “They probably bring them across on the …” I managed to stop her before she said “boats.” Although Kelly would like me to add that she was both hungry and tired at this point!
Fraser Island was actually a lot of fun, the beaches were beautiful (although unswimmable due to sharks) but we did get to swim at some lovely crystal clear lakes and streams. The water was remarkable, the sand filters it and by the the sime it makes it to the surface it is absolutely clear.
The next two days weren’t all that exciting, we took some detours around Bundaburg and ended up in the middle of nowhere. We drove through sugar-cane fields and ended up at Kelly’s Beach. It’s nice to have a beach named after you, don’t you think? Had we headed much further west we may have hit Simpson desert though…..
Now one of the highlights was certainly the Limestone Caves we explored. The tour itself was okay, but the best part was getting to climb through a tiny rabbit-hole like vertical cave. Great fun! I got all mucky and it no-one shouted at me! We also got to see a wonderful cave called The Cathedral. It was ovan and almost enclosed so it had fabulous accoustics. The lights were turned off and a CD was played (Enya). The tour guide even did a wee lights show but it was really spooky listening to the music (interspersed with bats flying overhead) in the dark.
Yesterday was Kelly’s day. She was all excited about Sapphire mining so we drove for ages to get to the mines. Honestly I was a bit sceptical, I don’t quite have the same attachment to gems that she does. In the end though she was right, it was great fun. We did an underground mine tour (17m underground) and then fossicked. Fossicking is kind of like panning for gold. You get your muck (which may or may not have gems in it) and you wash it, remove the big rocks, wash again, and then tediously go through it for stones that might be of value. Sounds mundane and it is, baking heat too. Basically they have machines to pick out large stones and you’re fossicking the leftovers. We actually found lots of Sapphires. However on later examination……. You’ll see in the pictures we found lots of tiny ones and I managed to find two that were big enough to be cut and used in jewelery. I was really happy with myself until I realized that you could buy bigger ones in the store for less than we payed to spend hours in the sun doing it ourself….. Still fun though and at least I have a unique gift for some girl, someday!
Today on the way to our next destination we stopped in Eungella National Park. It’s the largest rainforest in Australia
and home to one of the few remaining colonies of Platypuses. We drove up some crazy steep roads to get to the colony only to find out they were nocturnal and therefore asleep! This wasn’t the end of the world however because I had secretly been loking forward to two massive waterfalls that were nearby. After violating our van rental agreement we did some offroading and drove across some serious streams to get to the park. Walking through the rainforest was really cool by itself with all sorts of wildlife wandering around, but the reward was certainly the swim under the waterfalls. Beautiful waterfalls and refreshing water. Oh and a massive lizard (1 ½ meters long!) too.
Finally arrived in Arlie Beach. This is a much younger generation destination. It’s at the bottom of the Great Barrier Reef so there’s wonderful things to see. We’ve just booked ourselves on a day cruise. You get on a catamaran (at 7:15am no less!) and it takes you on the hour journey to the edge of the reef. The company has a large floating resort out there that you get dropped at. Has a submarine and an underground viewing deck. The resort is literally right next to the reef so you can snorkel right off the floating resort. However, being certified divers and all, we opted to add two scuba dives to the reef. The brochure looks amazing and if it’s even half as good we’ll be happy campers (literally) tomorrow night.
Okay, so I know the question you’ve all been waiting for hasn’t been answered. That question, of course, is how many kangaroo’s have we seen splatted at the side of the road, the answer (drumroll please) is only 2! Bye…
Posted by Admin at February 27, 2002 12:17 AM