It has been a while...

I will start back in Townsville where we went diving! We spent three days on a rather small boat but it was great! We saw so many beautiful fish (tiny ones like Nemo but also huge bull and ray sharks) and coral in all kinds of colours. The night dives were a bit scary but a nice experience and the Yongala wreck is deservedly Australia’s number one dive. All things on the wreck (fish, coral, plants) are three times bigger than on the reef. The down part of our trip was that one of us got really seasick the last day (Guess who ;-) but with all kinds of different medication and a bit of sleep the problem was solved!

After Townsville we went to the Whitsunday Islands on a one day trip (we already had enough of sea and boats). I have only one word to describe this experience: WOW! It is even more beautiful in real life than on the pictures or the postcards! The water is crystal clear and in all the shades of blue that exist and the sand is as white as snow. The trees of the rainforest that surround these beaches make the picture complete!

And from one boat to another... the ferry to Fraser Island! Here we did a 2 day 1 night excursion because we felt like one day would be too short and a self-drive tour was not recommended as it hadn’t rained in over 4 months! When we arrived we were really happy not to have done the self drive because every 100 metres somebody got stuck in the sand and had to be towed. Even our experienced bus drivers got stuck or couldn’t get to places because the sand was too soft to drive on. There are some nice places to see like Lake Wabby or Lake McKenzie, the Maheno shipwreck and Indian Head but personally I found it a bit overrated. If I were to do it again, I would do a one day excursion or a self-drive so you can get to places that you don’t have to share with another 300 tourists and do some of the beautiful walks. Maybe next time ;-)

Now we are in Brisbane! It is the first real city that we have seen here; it even has a library, a museum and an actual city centre (not only shopping malls like everywhere else! ;-). We are staying at Andrew and Louise’s house and meanwhile taking care of some practical things like servicing our car (and not only servicing but also doing repairs that are not under warranty... aaarggghhh), waiting for my camera to be repaired (I hope that one is covered by the warranty!) and Thomas’ macbook to be fixed (also under warranty but the shop made a mistake and put an Arabic keyboard on it! We are hoping to leave by the end of next week so we can make it to Sydney by the end of the year. Let’s hope everything goes according to plan, but meanwhile we are enjoying the company of our friends, an actual bed to sleep in, television and a nice city!