Now folks this is rather long so make a cuppa, put your feet up and make yourselves comfortable hehehe… Finally, I have gotten around to writing the next entry to my blog… apologies it’s late but it has been one of those weeks… what inconsiderate timing Christmas is!!
Not a great deal happened in the days between my last entry and when we headed up to Queensland but, as I am sure you can imagine there was plenty of running around (a bit like headless chooks) trying to get everything sorted and packed ready for our trip.
We headed over to Sydney on Monday 5th December to stay with Adam’s sister, who very kindly volunteered to take us to the airport the following day. It would have been a very early start to take ourselves as Oberon is a good 4 hours from the airport and that would have meant we would need to leave at silly o clock in the morning to fly out at 11.30am, so instead we had a lovely relaxing evening catching up with the family.
I have to say, I am a big fan of this interstate flying as you arrive at the airport, fly through check in (pardon the pun), then 30 minutes later you are boarded and on your way. No passports required and security checks are kept to the bare minimum. Beats flying out of Heathrow any day of the week!
We arrived on the picturesque Hamilton Island on Tuesday 6th (who’d of thought it would be cheaper to fly to a remote island rather than the mainland?!?!) which was absolutely roasting with super humidity, the sort that makes you melt from the inside out and that old saying ‘women don’t sweat they perspire’… well in this sort of humidity even the babies sweat never mind the women. The skies above were overcast and there was a fine drizzle descending on us. I must admit I did think to myself ‘oh great we are in for a week of rain’. I wouldn’t have minded too much though even if that was the case as I love the heat and it was joyously warm up there. The last few weeks in Oberon had been pretty chilly, and so I read in the paper Australia as a whole has been at its lowest temperatures (15 degrees lower to be exact) in 56 years. Trust me to leave England away from the cold, only to take it with me. The overcast skies were a bit of a one off though as for (give or take the odd storm) the rest of the holiday, the temperatures were soaring and we had clear blue sky.
We took a ferry crossing over from Hamilton Island to Airlie Beach then boarded a coach that took us right to our hotel doorstep. We checked in and headed up to our room. As soon as we walked in I realised we had been duped and miss-sold our hotel. The description on the booking website didn’t match the venue we had just arrived at one little bit. We had booked through a company called Booking.com and in all fairness they were fantastic. I emailed them to say that the hotel wasn’t up to the standard that it had been portrayed, and almost as soon as the email had sent, I had a reply back. The booking website said they only displayed the information as provided by the hotel, I informed them this was somewhat ‘out of date’. We had chosen this hotel over 2 others as basing it on the information contained in the website, it looked far flasher. Adam and I were both a little disappointed as we thought we had purchased 8 days in an executive suite complete with spa bath and sea views, but in actual fact what we had paid for was holes in the ceiling, frayed carpets, stained furniture and a building site view lol.
My complaint to the booking company did do the trick though as we were upgraded to a room twice the size and twice the standard. It really does pay to moan if you are dissatisfied!! It still wasn’t quite what we were initially expecting but better than the first effort. The hotelier said he had only taken over the running of the hotel 3 weeks prior and they were still completing the inventory of what needed to be replaced and refurbished. He was nice to us about the move and seemed genuinely apologetic. However, I think it was only 24 hours and they had re-filled our original room… so much for the ‘updates’.
After moving to our new room we were totally chuffed that instead of the cupboard containing a fridge and a sink, we this time had a full kitchen in our apartment and decided so that we could spend more money doing nice things, we would cook for ourselves on a few evenings rather than eat out. Hahaha, what a joke that was, we headed out to the local supermarket and purchased the ingredients for tacos. Quick, simple and tasty… Or so we thought! I cooked up the mince and while I was waiting for it to reduce, I popped the taco shells in the oven. 5 minutes at 180 degrees. I set the timer on Adam’s phone so it would buzz when they were ready. I was stirring through the mince and thought to myself ‘what is that smell of burning?’, decidedly confused, looking all around the pan thinking ‘but nothing’s burning??’ the penny dropped and I thought ‘oh crimes, the taco shells!!’, I opened the over door and in about 8 seconds flat the entire apartment was full of smoke and ALL the fire alarms were going off throughout the hotel. No amount of door opening and flapping of towels around the sensor would disperse the thick smog. Next came a knock at the door and behind it, a rather sour faced hotelier who briskly informed me that the alarms were automatically connected to the fire station and if they were to arrive we could expect a $1000 fine for the privilege of their visit. At that point the alarm started to buzz on Adam’s mobile telling us that the taco shells were ready. It had taken less than 2 minutes to colour the shells a delightful shade of charcoal black. The hotelier stormed away to see if he could re-set the system, to our complete luck he did manage too and the fire brigade never arrived.
What an evening! A short while later when Adam and I sat on the balcony eating the revised menu of taco mince on toast we fell about laughing over the irony of the situation. We were cooking in to save money but due to a faulty oven we almost landed a larger bill than if we had eaten out every night for 2 weeks, never mind 1. Needless to say for the rest of the holiday we did not try and use the oven again! I’m pretty sure the hotelier was p**sed at the two moaning minnies he had earlier switch rooms for, who then as thanks tried to burn down his hotel… ops!!!
Airlie Beach is a real backpacker town, geared towards the traveller. The town does have a lovely feel about it though and is very relaxed. This time of year is jellyfish breeding season and for that fact you are not able to swim in the sea, well not unless you own a stinger suit and for those of you who don’t know what that is, it's a full body Lycra ensemble that covers every extremity from the poisonous tentacles of the jelly’s, the suits are far from flattering and seem to be produced in colours like bright turquoise blue and cerise pink… just so you don’t go unnoticed.
We decided to spend some time at Airlie’s manmade lagoon in the centre of the town rather than at the jelly ridden beaches. The lagoon consists of 2 giant pools with a bridge dividing the two. The pools have gently sloping sides, so if you don’t want to swim you can sit half in, half out the water cooling off, glorious! Each day the grassy banks surrounding the pool are covered in snoozing backpackers fast asleep under the trees, catching up on Zzz’s they missed from the night before.
Adam and I found this really delightful fish eatery… if you are ever in Airlie Beach go there. It’s called Fish D’vine and the fish really is divine!!! The restaurant is sophisticated yet simple and comes complete with a great rum bar. They construct every rum-based cocktail you could ever possibly want. We went to Fish D’vine twice as the food was truly amazing. One evening I had sea coral trout served on flat egg pasta with a pea and saffron sauce… it was to die for. We also sampled barramundi, red emperor and Snapper.
There was a third of a mile saunter between our hotel and the centre of town and one evening as we were heading up town for dinner we saw something move on the roadside. As we got closer we realised what it was, a cane toad. It had been stormy earlier that day and we had experienced a couple of down pours. The wet atmosphere, so we learnt, brought the toads out to play. We were both fascinated by the toads as they were gigantic!!! They were everywhere, and they had surfaced in their thousands (slight exaggeration but there were far too many to count)! There were 5 of them in a perfect line, playing follow the leader across the footpath headed towards the road, quite the spectacle. I hadn’t taken my camera so after dinner we walked back to the hotel to collect it and toddled back up to take some pictures. There was the biggest toad imaginable, sat with his gang of minions as we were on our way out for dinner, he was huge and I wanted a picture of him so I asked Adam to try and take a picture with his iphone. I bent down to put my hand next to the toad to show just how big he was, as I did this his pal hopped and plopped right on top of my sandal clad foot. To Adam’s complete amusement I squealed and launched the toad into the air flinging the poor little chap into a bush. On arriving at the restaurant I did a moon light flit to the ladies so I could wash my foot!
Another evening Adam and I went to a pizza eatery called Sorrento’s which is down in the harbour. We were seated on the upstairs balcony for dinner, gazing out across the water, listening to a really soulful female jazz singer. As it turned into night the moonlight shimmered on the water creating incredible shadows and reflections of the moored boats… it was very romantic… ahh I hear you say!
On Sunday 11th we took a trip out to the Great Barrier Reef. It was a two and a half hour boat ride to get there, calling in at Hamilton Island on route picking up further guests, arriving at the reef about 11am. We went with a company called Fantasea and to their credit the whole operation was extremely well organised. Our boat arrived and moored up adjacent to their pontoon and we all deployed. There were several activities to undertake throughout the day. Adam and I headed straight for the snorkelling, we collected our gear mask/snorkel and of course the mandatory turquoise blue (gimp, I mean…) stinger suit. We got ourselves changed and headed down to the submersible platform to get into the water. The sea was surprisingly warm. The currents and rips through the water were decidedly strong and on occasion you would need to grab hold of the guide ropes to pull yourself through the current, otherwise it would sweep you off to the opposite side of the reef.
Almost as soon as we got into the water I had an up close and personal encounter with a large sea turtle. I had a little giggle to myself as the turtle was genuinely so chilled out it was like a scene from finding Nemo and I was expecting him to say “dude”. The turtle was no more than an arm’s length away which enabled me to get a couple of remarkable photographs of him with the disposable underwater camera we had purchased, the camera didn’t take very high resolution pictures and didn’t depict the colours or show their intensity well, but worth the investment to capture otherwise unobtainable memories. The reef is extremely intricate in composition with ornate looking corals and the most diverse collection of beautifully coloured fish. The waters are decorated with Surgeon Fish (Dory’s), Parrot Fish (of which there are multiple brightly coloured varieties), Moon Wrasse, Blue Fusilier, Giant Gropers, Giant Trevally and Sea Turtles to mention but a few. The Gropers are enormous and it’s a little unnerving when you have one sneaking up on you with their great big rubber lips flapping in the tide. The Giant Calms are something of a spectacle, as you swim over them they sense the shadow created and close up. We must have spent a couple of hour’s snorkelling in all. There were a couple of professional photographers taking pictures of the fish and it was nice to do some pictures with them as they had amazing equipment. You can check the pics out at… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyQtr_ROFhw&fmt=18
Also on board the pontoon were an underwater viewing platform and a semi submersible submarine where they had resident marine biologists sat giving talks on the sea life.
On our final day (and they do say they save the best till last… lol). We had organised to catch a charter and go sea fishing for a few hours. We were meant to depart at 7.30am but were contacted by the organiser first thing to ask if we would mind rescheduling to the afternoon as there had been a storm warning issued for that morning. When we woke at 6am we had thought ourselves it may be a little dubious to go out as we could hear the thunder rolling outside. So we agreed and were collected at 12.30, taken up to the harbour where we met our host and had a safety briefing. At this point in time (as it had been since 7am) it was glorious sunshine and crystal clear blue skies.
We boarded the fishing vessel and set sail. We were extremely lucky that there was just myself, Adam and our guide Scotty. 10 minutes into the ride and our guide cast out 4 trawling lines behind the boat, they were set up with some fairly hefty lines so that we could try and catch something like a Giant Trevally or Barracuda while we were on the move. About 15 minutes out to sea, looking back at the coast line of Airlie Beach, we noticed thick dense black cloud descending on the Airlie shores. The cloud was swirling and becoming thicker, blacker and denser by the second and with every moment that passed it was expanding further up the coast line. The cloud erupted into the most violent storm with thunder clapping so loud it could pierce ear drums and fork lightening striking so bright that I think it was illuminating the skies all the way back down to New South Wales. We halted our boat so that we could gaze in awe at the manifestation behind us and take some photographs. No more than 5 minutes later the storm had turned and was heading straight in our direction. It had spread so far down the coast line it was surrounding us and moving in with haste. Our guide Scotty slowed the boat right down so that we cold brace ourselves ready for the storm that was just about to hit… and boy did it! The rain pelted down so hard and fast that it felt like it was breaking the skin, it was like being stabbed with a thousand needles. The wind was driving the rain in sideways so there was no way of getting away from it. We found ourselves some bin bags that were stowed away in a cupboard we poked a few holes in them to make some temporary raincoats. It was a vain attempt to protect ourselves, but in actual fact they did very little other than make us look silly and stop the wind from being quite so cutting. Certain moments of the storm were extremely scary as the thunder was roaring right over head and fork lightening flashing off the sea just a few feet away from us on either side. The boat was made of some form of poly-plastic but it had an internal metal frame so we were making sure we were not touching any of it. I recall one instant when Scotty’s sunglasses were ripped off his head at an unbelievable rate of nots and thrown down into the sea. The 3 of us huddled up on the driver’s seat behind a small wind visor trying to shield from some of the wind and the rain.
We were swallowed up by the storm for a good 20 minutes, at one point we must have been in the very eye of it as the air was motionless, the water was as flat and as smooth as can be and the rain fell as soft as tears rolling down a cheek. There was an eerie feel about it as we could see no more than a few feet away because of the storm lashing down outside of our protective little bubble.
Maybe no more than 5 minutes later and the storm departed, within moments the skies were once again a bright sparkly blue with the sun beaming down on us and there was not a ripple to be seen in the water, it looked like glass. If it were not for the 3 equally soaking wet bemused people stood on the boat having all been witness I would have sworn I’d have just dreamt the whole affair, as there was not a hint of evidence that a storm had ever been present.
Scotty had received a few phone calls from the charter company during the storm trying to check we were all ok but because of the severity of the weather we didn’t even hear the phone ringing. When Scotty called back the charter company informed him that the storm warning had been issued at 1.52pm and by 1.57pm it was belting Airlie Beach with full force. They had recorded 23mm of rain fall in 3 minutes… wowsers!
We had lost an hour of our day because of the storm, but we did get a very pleasurable few hours fishing after and caught some stunning fish. We caught a few Venus Tusk Fish and Blue Fusiliers, a Grassy Sweet Lip, a Moon Wrasse and a Trout Lolly. We used a few tusky’s as live bait but had our line, hook and bait ripped off at astonishing speed by what I can only presume was a mammoth fish due the load the line could hold.
Our holiday up to Airlie Beach in Queensland was the most amazing and not one that Adam nor I, will ever forget! I think a few of those stories will be appreciated for years to come.
