| "With a little help from my friends (& family!)" - part 2 |
| ...we were throwing bits of bread over the side to see what kind of fish would appear, and a squid just dived right out of the water and onto deck and landed on Mum's feet!!! Which gave one of the guys an idea! So he grabbed the skipper's fishing line and between us spent almost 2 hours fishing for squid - was a little reluctant at first as have never done the whole catching your own food then eating it?! But we managed to fill half a huge cooking pot, enough for the whole 26 of us on the boat for lunch the next day! Had to stop at half a pot as people were trying to go to sleep below deck and with the poor squid squirting ink everywhere when caught, we could just imagine one of the guys downstairs getting a faceful through one of the hatches!?! (sorry, bit gruesome, I know!) Sleeping on a boat is something a bit different too - a few of us dragged ourselves upstairs and camped out on deck! It was soooo cool - when the lights on the boat were off, the sky was the darkest sky with the brightest stars I've ever seen - it was amazing! So I fell asleep on deck wrapped in a sheet under bright stars with the sound of the water coaxing us to sleep, was a very different experience! We woke with the sunrise around six the next morning, grabbed brekky from downstairs and had that on deck before taking off again. How can you complain when you're sitting on a secluded beach on an island at 7am!?! We were dropped off at Whitehaven Beach, where we had climbed to a lookout point the day before to admire. Now picture the most perfect beach you can think of in your mind, and I can guarantee this one would outdo most of those! It's pure white fine silica sand that crunches under foot like snow! And crystal clear shallow water (will put the piccies on the site for you so you can see whether you agree!?). We stayed there for a few hours, back on the boat and off to more snorkelling sites, before a whole load of wind found us giving us an amazingly invigorating sail home!! With the delights of Queensland behind us, it was back to Sydney with a whole load of amazing memories and a top-up to the tan!! We spent Mum & Dad's last weekend up in the Blue Mountains, about an hour's drive from Sydney, so called because of the gases the Eucalyptus Trees produce, you can actually see a Blue Haze over the trees! Again, another fab few days, we got out and saw the main sights, Wentworth Falls, the Three Sisters, and did a bit of walking through the forests to a few lookout points where you can get a real good view of the landscape. We also did a tour round the nearby Jenolan Caves - a massive network of caves discovered about 150 years ago. There are so many to choose from, but we only had time to do one tour. Have been to caves before in other parts of the world and expected these to be the same, but they were amazing!! So much detail and huge chambers - the biggest being the "Cathedral" - you can see why - they even have weddings and concerts in there! With Mum & Dad safely on the plane to Singapore, I also had some fab friends over from Norwich! Me being in Oz was a fab excuse for Lucy, Clare, Edgy & Chris to visit and do the "backpacker" thing for a few weeks (was very impressed Lucy-no hair straighteners ;o) !!). They stopped in Sydney on the way down the coast, and we carried on where we'd left off in Norwich causing trouble!! We did the whole "Sydney by night" tour to the main drinking establishments, as all good backpackers do, and spent a day at the "Mardi Gras". Was fab to catch up, and after a few minutes felt like we hadn't been apart :o) And then, with holidays over, it was back to the whole working and saving thing for a while... !! |
| 12 April 2004 |
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