The Great Barrier Reef, Fraser Island, and the Sunshine Coast

You know you’re really on vacation when you find a 4-day-old moulding avocado in your day-pack.

So backing up, we were about to leave Cairns, some of us sun burned, some of us coughing (remember the colds) to head south, but Aviva felt this weird pressure in her ears, so off she and Rob headed to the 24-hour walk-through clinic (yes, "walk through" – not sure how they examine ears that way). Anyway, Aviva had limited confidence in the MD who examined her. She wasn’t so sure how good his English was and he only spent about 30 seconds examining her when he gave her a prescription for an outer ear infection. The pharmacist wasn’t much better. Rather than telling Aviva how she should use the medication, she kept asking her what the doctor had said and then would say, “Yeah, ok, that sounds good, do that.”

So with Noah’s eye infection still being treated, and Aviva’s ear infection, we headed off down the coast. Back in a rental vehicle we found on-line, you know us – enviro-friendly geeks – we found ourselves in a massive “maxi-van” which seats eight, with tons of extra room. None of us were too happy with the size, and while parking was already a challenge in the last van, this one topped it. As an aside, Diane has now been promoted back to the front seat and only occasionally gasps or yelps.

We spent the night before our boat tour in Airlie Beach, a definite can-MISS, beach party town with drive through liquor stores again.

Our hotel was in the quieter part of town, but right next to our rooms was an 18 year-old's all-weekend birthday party (drinking age here is 18). As it turned out, the 18 year-olds weren’t the problem....it was their loud and perhaps drunk parents! The front desk assured us they would be quiet by 8:00 pm. When 9:00 pm rolled around and they were still raising a ruckus, we went to the front desk to complain, only to learn that the front desk closes at 8:00 pm and the staff go home for the night. Thankfully, the rowdy bunch settled down by 10:30 pm and we all got a good night’s sleep.

The next day we headed down to the boat. The parking lot was $22 for the two days, but the machine only accepted coins. Fortunately we found another place to park that accepted credit cards, given that we don’t tend to walk around with that kind of change in our pockets!

At the dock, we were greeted by Woody, the scuba instructor from North Hampton, UK. We soon met our skipper, Pete, from New Zealand, and Harriet, the cook and sometimes guide from Australia. There were 27 of us in total on Wings III, a catamaran sail boat that goes around the Whitsunday Islands stopping in choice spots for scuba and/or snorkeling, as well as a beach or two. There was one minor snag for all on the boat, and an additional snag for our family: it was cold and rainy, and some in our family had colds, eye infections and ear infections. The cold weather didn’t stop us from getting in the water, but the colds in our heads did stop us from being able to scuba dive. Aaron made two attempts at it, but was not able to equalize the pressure in his ears :( To be honest, a couple of us (i.e. Rob and Diane) were a bit skittish about the whole scuba diving idea to begin with! So we all snorkeled instead – and that was pretty amazing.

So how did we get into that 19 degree water??? Each of us wore 3, yes THREE, wet suits! If you go up one size each time, the space in between heats up with your body and can keep you pretty warm. (We only did this on the 2nd snorkel. The first time we were all chattering away). All bundled up like the Michelin man, we saw amazing fish and coral. On their second time out, Rob and Aaron saw a turtle swimming in the water. On a later snorkel, Aviva and Diane saw another turtle and swam with it for a few minutes. And by turtle, we mean huge things – we’re guessing they were each over a meter in diameter. As for Noah, well he saw a Moray Eel. All told, it was pretty awesome.

We also went to an amazing beach, Whitehaven, with the softest sand you can imagine – something between brown sugar and flour. During a hike on that island, Rob wanted to change into his bathing suit, so he and Diane let the others go ahead, while she kept a lookout and he changed. Once ready to rejoin the group, the others were no longer in site and so Rob and Diane were on their own on the trail, trying to figure out where the group (including Aviva, Aaron and Noah) had gone. They stumbled upon the other two academics on the tour, who were also lost! The four fumbled around on the trails and eventually met up with the rest of the group.

On the first night on the boat, we opened our hatch to let some fresh air in-you can do that when the boat is moored... operative word here being "moored". Unfortunately during the night, it rained.... And near to that open hatch lay a bunch of our stuff, including Aaron's book and all of our passports. Thankfully we had a fan in our room, and they dried, but they were all curled up and oddly contorted. We were a bit worried about getting in trouble on our return to Canada for damaging them, but low and behold, because they are made out of some weird newfangled plastic material, they straightened out within a couple of days squished between two books. Good to know if you are a Canadian out there with a wet passport!

The crew and our fellow passengers added to the fun of the tour. Aaron and Noah spent hours with our skipper, Pete, and learned a ton from him about sailing, navigation, New Zealand, etc. Aviva got to hang out with a bunch of people her age, since aside from the two other academics, most of the passengers were under 25. It was a very international crowd, and we all enjoyed the camaraderie.

After the boat tour, we headed further south to Fraser Island in our maxi-van. Fraser Island is a 120 km-long island made completely from sand. It has several fresh water lakes on it, which are really rain basins as they are not actually fed by any rivers or springs. There are also fresh water streams on the island also made from rain water, that takes 70 years to seep down through the sand, hit bed rock, and then form a stream that flows out to the ocean. We visited one of the lakes and did a creek hike in one of the rivers, upstream against the current.

But the coolest thing about Fraser Island was probably the “roads” there. In order to preserve it in its natural state, none of the roads are paved; they are all sand. The only way to travel here is in a 4X4 vehicle, and even then you can easily get stuck. If the sand doesn’t get you, you can also end up out somewhere on the island and then the tide comes in cutting you off from the other part of the island, and you're stranded till the tide goes out again! So we went on a tour bus, and the ride alone was entertainment enough. Sometimes the bouncing was like being on a ride in an amusement park. At other times we got stuck in soft sand moving along at a snail’s pace and wondering if we would have to get out and push (remarkably, Aviva actually fell asleep for part of this crazy bouncy ride). Then, the east coast of the island is this incredibly long beach, which they use as a highway, with an 80 km/h speed limit. They didn’t used to have a limit, but there were too many deaths, with people driving like maniacs on the beach. Our driver also drove straight over rocks – it felt more like riding on an elephant than in a bus at times!

Near the end of the day we were on one of the roads crossing the island when another vehicle was heading right for us. The other vehicle stopped and backed up to a spot where we could get around each other (the sand roads are all one-lane by the way). Unfortunately, in the process, they got trapped in the sand. Their vehicle was a pick-up truck used by the local Aboriginal people, but was rear wheel drive only – insane! So we were suddenly all stuck. Folks from our bus spilled out, and several including Aaron, tried to push them out of the sand, but they just ended up digging in deeper. Eventually our driver skilfully backed up our bus between two trees, barely missing one of them. He then tied the front bumper of the stuck pick-up to our bus and pulled the trapped vehicle out of the sand. As we all piled back on the bus, we could hear the other driver backing up his truck and then a loud crunching noise. He had hit the tree we had just missed!

The other cool thing on the island is the wild dingoes. Dingoes are everywhere in Australia, but the ones on Fraser Island are the purest breed. They are thought to have been introduced to Australia about 4000 years ago – after the Aboriginals arrived and before the Europeans came. They’re actually from Asia – Malasia/India/Indonesia and may have come over with fisherman trading with the Aboriginals. Oh how the Europeans love to think they were the first to “discover” a place, eh! Anyway, there were warning signs all over the place about the dingoes as they love to steal food – and have been known to attack people, especially small children in their search for food (remember “A Cry in the Night”? The woman was only very recently exonerated on June 11).

Let’s take a moment to review some of the new vocabulary we’ve picked up in our travels here.

• Cuppa = cup of coffee or tea, as in “Let’s have a cuppa.”
• Doona = comforter
• Dunny= outhouse
• G’day mate = Hi buddy... yes, they really do say this.
• How ya goin’ = How’s it going
• Tasty cheese = cheddar cheese (we think – at least that’s what it tasted like to us).

Now we come to the section we call Australians make everything sound cute:

• Sunnies = sun glasses
• Paw paw = papaya
• Strawbs = strawberries
• Avos = avocadoes (as in, “hey, I just found a mouldy avo in my day-pack!”)
• Pokies = Slot Machines

After Fraser Island we headed further south still, to The Sunshine Coast. During the drive Aviva read to us our second book, “The Kite Runner.” It seemed fitting to read about Afghanistan while we were in Australia, cuz they both start with A. Throughout these last drives we have passed through tons and tons and tons of cane fields. They even have “cane trains” here. They are these mini-trains that sit on a very narrow track. The farmers load the cars up with the harvest and then move the train along. As with all holidays, we’ve also had a couple of theme songs that have nothing to do with the place we’re visiting and only to do with what we wanted to listen to at the time. So the theme songs for this year have been: Roundabout (by Yes) and Sunday Bloody Sunday (by U2).

The last three nights of our holiday were spent in a little beach town called Caloundra. We relaxed at the beach, read, ate very well, and just hung out. Rob and Diane had their anniversary here, and so the kids had dinner in one restaurant, leaving the parents to go out for a romantic 21st anniversary dinner. Left to their own devices, the kids tried Oysters on the half shell and reported back, “I didn’t totally hate them” (Aaron) and “They tasted like blood” (Noah).

There was one really odd and upsetting thing that did happen while we were in Caloundra. On the first day, as we strolled along the beach, we noticed four police officers standing around what looked like a parachute and a helmet. We weren’t sure what to make of it at the time, but the next day we read in the local paper that a skydiver had actually fallen to his death there a couple of hours before we arrived on the beach, in front of tons of witnesses as it was a Saturday, late morning.

On a lighter note, for our last night in Australia we got dressed up and went out to a very nice restaurant overlooking the water. We returned to the hotel for a late night swim in our warm pool – although still not warm enough for Aviva and Diane, but the guys did swim. We’ve written this, our last entry for this summer, somewhere over the Pacific.



Till next time.....Love,

RANAD
P.S. Comments always appreciated.