Next morning again up and early we packed a bag and headed down to the the harbour of Airlie Beach to catch our Sailing boat, Domino, for a day trip around the Whitsundays. It was a very quiet and scenic walk along the boardwalk to the harbour and me and Neil played the game...which yacht would you like?
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| Airlie Beach |
We then arrived at the meeting point and waited to be collected, as we sat around we saw a groups of french people arrive with a case of beer and trying to bag it for their trip on a boat, as we had read a heard about the 2 day, 1 night trips which is full of youngsters, booze and bed bugs!!! After they were all picked up, me and Neil began to look worried about what we would be on. Finally a thin, tanned man appeared and introduced himself as Reg our skipper for the day. He was from the Netherlands and had bought Domino in New Zealand around 17 years ago. The sailing boat was in beautiful condition and after being taken abroad and run through the health and safety with his wife she explained we would be the only people on the trip today....fantastic, we thought, a private charter boat for us around the Whitsundays!!!
After a few minutes we were off and Reg was hoping we would be sailing we no problem as the weather had stated a south easternly wind. However, this was not the case and so we had to use the engine to get to the remote island we would be staying on. The views were fantastic and me and Neil enjoyed drinks on the boat while taking in the views and feeling, for me anyway, like I was in the Video Rio....by Duran Duran.
As we were sailing up to the islands we were talking to Reg about stuff. He seemed to have had an interesting life, growing up in New Guinea, sailing around the world a few times. He wasn't very happy with business at the moment, reckoning tourism was very slow and that he was being beaten by the big tour operators. I kept pointing out that what he had was exclusive – he could take small numbers of well-paying customers on his yacht, treat then to a bit of luxury treatment and all that, plus he was the only person who had the rights to land on the island we were going to (so he claimed). About halfway there he looked over to the island and looked very unhappy. “There's another boat there”, he said to me, “they've got my island now...that's it...it's over...” He continued to talk about this for the rest of the journey – his business was over – good job he was retiring in a few months – those b%£$£%s had his one unique selling point now etc etc. We left him to it for a bit and relaxed with our feet hanging over the edge of the boat. It wasn't long before we got there, moored to a buoy about 100m from the beach and tried to get in the inflatable. Bindya got in fine but I was only half way in when he started to push off. For a second I was going to leave it and just drop in the water but we were surounded by very large and hungry looking fish so I pushed and twisted and managed to get into the boat...just. We got to the beach and Reg gave us our 'stinger suits'. We walked round to the other side of the island, where there was a toilet, to get changed. I spent a couple of minutes, armed with a stick, removing spiders from the corrugated iron toilet hut before we got in there and got our swimmers on, followed by the stinger suits. By the time we added the balaclavas, flippers and gloves, we were covered head to toe, just our faces exposed, and sweating like fat nuns. It was over 30 degrees easily and so hot we were burning our feet on the sand. We posed for a couple of photos then tried out our snorkelling stuff.
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| Shekshy... |
After a bit of flapping about, we ditched the flippers and tried again. We were doing perfectly fine, taking it easy and looking at the pretty little fishies, gradually going into deeper water as Bindya isn't very confident in water that is too deep for her to stand. Reg kept shouting at us, “Go further out! Towards the boat! Go further!”, so we went a little bit further. The reef was spectacular, all different sorts of coral and hundreds of different fish. Reg still wasn't happy and as he passed us in the inflatable, he shouted at us to go further down the island. I kept shouting back that we were fine and just taking it easy but it's difficult to do when you have snorkel gear in your gob. After about 15-20 mins I realised that we were a long way away from the boat, and the beach we set off from and there was nothing underneath us apart from dirty looking sand and weeds. I tried to swim back the way we'd come but it was very hard work and when I stopped for a breather, the current took me right back to where we had started. Bindya couldn't swim out of it either, I tried pulling her along as I swam but it just made me more exhausted and we ended up back in the same place. I started to panic a little bit here as Reg couldn't see where we were and I couldn't get out of where we were. We must have floated around this bit for a good 30 minutes or more until Reg eventualy came over in the inflatable, shouting, “What are you doing over here? You shouldn't be here!”. I explained about the current that was keeping us here but he ignored us and said, “Swim back to shore!”. We splashed about a bit and moved nowhere until Reg got the message. He pointed at Bindya and shouted, “She's never going to make it! She can't swim back to shore!”. I didn't really know how to respond to him telling me my wife was going to drown here and now so I just kept flapping about some more. He decided that we needed to get Bindya onto the boat, which took a bit of manouvering as I was trying to lift her while treading water and choking on the water that kept leaking into my mask. Bindya got in the boat just in time as she got hit by an attack of cramp and they both sped off towards the beach, leaving me stranded about 80 metres from shore, exhausted from trying to swim against the current for about an hour and retching from swallowing so much sea water.
Meanwhile I am on the boat with Reg asking him if we are going back to get Neil as he looks like he was struggling. So Reg headed back but decided to only go as far as the small beach and wait for him there. It took Neil a while to get over and when he got out of the water he looked like he had just run a marathon. We then walked over to have some lunch, after lunch we had a stroll around the island and took lots of pics.
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| Bindya all over the place... |
Reg then said that the other 2 people on the island were snorkelling and found turtles. We popped most of our stinger stuff back on and jumped in. Luckily, the turtles weren't far out and we got a good look at them. There was two of them, green turtles, just scooting along the bottom of the water, eating stuff. We watched them for a bit before getting back on the inflatable for the boat. We fed bread to the fishes when we got on the yacht, Reg shouted at us for getting sand in our stinger suits (!) and we set sail back for the mainland. This time the wind was better and we managed to do most of it by sail power. Reg was in a bit of a happier mood now (possibly due to him being a raving alcoholic and having had a couple of drinks when we weren't there (just a guess but, you know...)) so we all had a nice chat as we sailed back to Airlie Beach. On the way back to the campsite we passed the man-made lagoon they have there so we thought, why not, and jumped in for a bit. We swam around for an hour or so until the sun was nearly down then had a quick shower and headed back to the camper. We got changed and headed out to check the nightlife. The first pub we went into was massive and had lots of big tables set out for tour groups and overlanders. We had a jug there and listened to some live music before heading out the the next pub which was pretty much the same deal. We decided that we were getting hungry so tried to find somewhere to eat. It was about half nine by now and all of the pubs had stopped serving food and all the restaurants were shut – some nightlife... This meant that we had to go with 'The Last Resort' – McRubbish for dinner - and a bottle of wine.
Next morning we had to turn around and head back down South - we drove for about 500 kms to get to Bundaberg but had to double back a number of times because roads were closed due to flooding so we didn't get there until it was dark. This meant that the last hour of driving was a little scary – the reason you don't drive around outside of a city at night in Australia is because all the wildlife comes out and decides to jump around on the roads. We had a number of near misses with things streaking across the road in our headlights but we made it in one piece – if you do end up hitting a kangaroo at 70 kph your car does not come off well... By the time we got to Bundaberg all the tourist info and stuff was shut. We drove around a little bit and found nothing so had to get the computer on and do an internet search. We found a place nearby and spent another half hour trying to find it as the sat nav didn't have a clue. Obviously it was shut by the time we got there as it was about half eight but we buzzed the doorbell and a very miserable bloke appeared. One of the first things he said to me was, “This is not a party campsite, if you want that you can go elsewhere.” I assured him that I was a sensible and mature fellow with a quiet night in mind and he let us in. We set up then headed back into town to find the Indian Restaurant that we had passed earlier. We got in and checked they were still serving then I went round the corner to get some BYO. I thought that since we were here we should buy some Bundaberg rum – the whole town smells of molasses. That night it was so hot that we slept with all the doors open, including the back door. Later on we hear some screaming noises and there's a couple of people running about – the next day the woman in the tent next to us was asking if we'd seen anything. Apparently they've been getting hassled by local kids ever since they got here because her husband is Aboriginal. I thought they were trying to catch a bird or something.
Next morning was an early start to get to Australia zoo...
A huge THANK YOU to the Fawcett's for their generous Wedding Gift as we had a fantastic day at The Whitsundays xx
Day 11 and 12 Airlie Beach and Whitsundays
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