Hope you're all good! Yep, over the last few months, with a little help from my friends and family, I've been having a fab time over here, playing "tour guide" to all of the visitors I've been really lucky to have!!
My parents were over for 2 weeks in February, which was fab - it was great to have them here and to get to show them around the city which has adopted us for the past 6 months! We took them to all the sights, starting them off slowly letting them get over their jet lag on Coogee Beach...for all of one day, then off on our grand tour of Sydney!! We crammed alot in, the Opera House tour, Harbour Bridge, Hyde Park, Darling Harbour, and all the sights in between! They both were nearly falling asleep in their dinner later on, jet lag combined with a crazy day sightseeing!
Something I've been wanting to do for a while in Sydney, but one of those things I've just never quite gotten around to doing was crusing Sydney's Northern Beaches. We hired a car and drove up past Manly Beach, Dee Why, Whale Beach and finally up to Palm Beach. It looks just like any other Aussie Beach (very beautiful!) with the "Surf Club", "Diner & Kiosk", and surf lifeguards, but then look a bit further and you'll recognise it's where they film that ever-popular Aussie show "Home & Away"! Apparently they film once a week, just not on the day we were there!!
With that behind us, we flew up to Cairns and after stopping by the "Skyrail", where you take an hour's journey up through the rainforest in a cable car, and seeing "Tjapukai" Aboriginal Culture Park, we boarded the brand spanking new 2 million dollar "Passions of Paradise" catamaran to go to the Great Barrier Reef for a day - my Dad's lifelong ambition realised!! A two hour journey to the Outer Reef consisted of chilling in the sun one minute then running inside to escape the lashing rain! Anyone would think we were in England?! We stopped at what just seemed like the middle of the ocean, and we're all thinking, umm, where are we?! But as soon as you stepped off the boat and put your face into the water we soon realised EXACTLY where we were!! This was Paradise Reef, and we also stopped off at Upolo Cay, which you couldn't even really call an island, it was more like a sand bump in the middle of flat ocean in every direction!? Me and Mum went snorkelling while Dad and Shaz went off scuba diving - though reckon we got the better deal - we snorkelled with stingrays, loads of huge colourful fish and even scooted around for a while following an inquisitive sea turtle! The divers didn't even get to spot that one!!
After a few days in Cairns, we headed south along the coast. Now I've done this trip from Cairns southwards 2 years ago, but last time it was curled up trying to get some sleep on a "red-eye" Greyhound journey at stupid o'clock at night. So this time, the land we drove through was completely unexpected! This part of the world isn't called "Tropical North Queensland" for nothing! It's field after field of sugar cane, bananas, and pineapples as far as the eye can see with stunning lush green hills as backdrop. We made a few stops along the way at Josephine Falls, Mission Beach & Townsville overnight before getting to our destination the next day - Airlie Beach! One of my favourite places on the East Coast so was looking forward to it! Mum & Dad treated us to a stunning 5-star hotel for the days we were there, and for a backpacker this is like closing your eyes and waking up in heaven! From our balcony we could look out over the pool to the stunning sunset over the marina and some of the 80 or so Whitsunday Islands - our next stop!
Now THIS was the part I was really looking forward to! When I was here before, I had a fab few days on a racing yacht sailing around these beautiful islands, so we opted for the same company, but a different yacht this time - the "Southern Cross", a 65-foot ex-champion racing yacht!! The days were taken up with helping the crew to sail the yacht to cool snorkelling spots around the islands, spotting turtles, dolphins, and other sealife - or you could just lay there on deck and soak up the sun (we were blessed with fab weather considering it was the rainy season - no sign of it!) - but who really wants to do that when there's so much other cool stuff to do! After a fab first day, we moored up near Esk Island - one of the smallest islands and just as the sun was setting, from the beach of the island we watched a pod of dolphins rounding up fish before each nipping in and feeding! We sat and admired the sunset during dinner when we had an unexpected visitor...