Summertime

Upon waking up we were most surprised to see it was a gorgeous looking day, and headed down to the harbour with our day bags (clothes, wash bag, etc) for 8:30am ready to get on board the boat. I'm not sure what we were all xpecting, but I was somehow expecting something a bit...bigger. There was to be 14 of us, plus 3 staff. and a small 3 person hot tub on the back. The boat itself was lovely, all wood, which gave that lovely slippery when wet feeling everytime anyone nearly stacked it. and down stairs were alot of bunks all neatly packed in together, it was quite and old boat, I must admit that a week or so on, I've totally forgotten how old. I took the bottom bunk, which barely had enough room for me to turn onto my side, but at least it was long enough and wide enough, I just had to go in sideways. lol. It was better than the other option, Rob and Becky shared the wider bed above me. We were introduced to the crew first, Flo, (Florian) our dive master for the trip, (At this point I didn't know it was going to be a dive boat. doh) Amber, our hostess and cook, who provided top tucker throuhout the trip and kept us all fairly entertained, and Fernando, (Think Teves without the scars) who was the skipper. Over the next few days we'd get to learn who our fellow Passengers were, but just for you lucky lucky people, I'll give you a run down now...how considerate of me.
First, the British contingent:
Me
Rob
Becky
Mike
& Liz
Rachel
Laura
and rather questionably Nigel. (Now, Nigel is a bit of a sticking point and an anomalie, as he's originally British, but has lived in the States for 25 years (Half his life) has a bit of a US accent, and his appearance ttally belies his personality. Tattoos, a Flame emblazoned bandana, loving rock music, the little bushy tattoo, all lead us to think one thing. But he was really a very nice friendly and personable guy!)
Which brings us on to Team America!
Jess
Anna
Emily
Then Our Kiwi:
Caroline
And finally our Spanish lovebirds
Marc
& Stefanie

Over the next couple of days there would be lots of mocking of Team America, but obviously only in jest. "Team America, Have you seen a turtle?" was the cry from the other side of one of the bays when snorkelling. Randomly, Laura worked as a nurse out here and back home, and when I asked where she said, "oh a little place, you'll never have heard of it in Lanark, 'Law.'" Funnily and randomly enough, this was where I got signed off to work on my own at Adastra, so we had some fun but slightly odd little chats about Hairmyres Hospital and Law, and a bit of Monkton, she worked days in surgery back there, but it was a cool point of reference. She kind of ended up joining myself rob and becks most of the time, but the boat was very frinedly in genreal, I think most people took the time to wander around and chat to everyone, there was the usual chat about the english language with the yanks and the spanish, and Mike & Liz to some extent, the yanks brought up the subject of the V-sign and this then had to be explained to the Spanish, but all in all everyone seemed to get along, though Rachel and Caroline were maybe a little more apart from everyone else. The first day we motor-sailed (as the sails aren't up to the weight of the boat these days) to Tongue Bay, where we hoped into "Little Summertime" (A Dinghy) and headed to the island, we had a wander and went to a lookout overlooking Whitehaven bay and some cool sights, and then we trekked across the island to said beach, and stayed for an hour or so, chillin' having a laugh, taking some silly silly pictures and generally loving the almost white 98% silica sand which squeaked under foot. then back to the boat for dinner and sleep.
On day 2 we woke up and Flo took us all out Sea Kayaking around the bay, Everyone paired up, and we headed out, and saw loads and loads of turtles and cool stuff, whilst getting a bit of excercise, we must've been out for a good 2 hours and it was awesome. After that, we headed off to Luncheon Bay, where there was some diving to be had, but due to monetary situtations we 3 passed on this occasion, we went snorkelling instead, Rob felt rather ill almost as soon as he entered the water and made his way to the beach and had a sit down. Becks, Laura and I carried on after checking he was ok, and had a good ol time and saw absolutely loads of stuff, I even saw a cleaner wrasse doing his thang. and some large Angel Fish, easily the size of my laptop screen. and plenty other colourful specimens, the water was alot cloudier than the reef, but it was still good viewing. in the end the boat came to pick us all up, and Laura, Mike and myself decided it'd be much more fun to snorkel/swim back to the boat. So we did. It didnt take half as long as I expected and we saw many cool things, not least of which were the HUGE batfish by our boat! well over half a dozen of them, it was very very cool. We then moved round to Langford Bay, where it was dark (Oh yeah, it gets dark bloody early round here! ie by 6pm without fail, it's rather annoying.) we had dinner and bit of a laugh, Team America's token Blonde Anna, got very drunk and was a bit silly through the slideshow of all the pictures taken during the day, which we found mildly amusing :) then sleep!
Our final day Rob and I were up nice and early for the dive, (we had to do at least one really, and it was only £30) and we had a cool little guided tour round the reef with Flo, held a sea cucumber (slimey little buggers) and generally had a bit of a laugh. Then we got back to the boat, with Fernando shoving Flo off of little summertime when he was trying to take his fin off. Which added more amusement to the day, on the way back. We all chilled and wondered where Laura and Nigel had got to, they'd gone on a bit of a snorkelling trek, Marc went for a few more dives with Flo, and eventually Nigel and Laura re-appeared. Sadly it was then lunch, a bit of business and time to go home. But there was a promise that for every 4 people that turned up to our hostel bar at 7:30 on our reserved table, there would be a free jug of beer or wine, we figured this would get a fair few of us together again. Turns out we were wrong, it was only us 3 and team america, so we enlisted the help of a dude called chris (who had appeared with Big Rob who randomly seems to be stalking us back along the coast! Bless him.) who was a football mad geordie (are there any other types of geordie?) and a sound lad to boot, and some random that team america snared. We then all got wasted :)

Our last day in Airlie consisted of chilling out, shopping, checking out the surf shops and generally recovering from the alcohol, followed by a late night bus from Airlie to Hervey Bay. 13 hours overnight, and with a "meal break" at 11pm. seriously? who's gonna eat then? we were all falling asleep nicely and were then told we had to vacate the bus for 40 minutes! swines!

We arrived at the sister hostel to our airlie beach one at 9am, only to be to be told the rooms weren't ready yet (I'd kind of expected this as check out wasn't til 10.) and that their ATM wasn't working, so we'd have to walk down the road for 15 minutes to find a working one, by the time we got back, they still had no rooms ready for us, so we dossed in the closed bar until 12 when we finally got a room, and proceeded to get on with our washing and packing ready for our Fraser Island trip tomorrow, a little apprehensive after seeing all the walking wounded (4 of them) in the hostel from the big accident that had happened 3 days earlier, when one of the 4x4's had rolled at 100kph on the beach trying to swerve a wave, (1, the limit is 80, 2, you shouldn't be near the wave, and 3, these are nearly 4 ton fully laden top heavy (roof storage) old toyota land crusier troop carriers. With 11 people on board, a sharp turn is never going to result anything other than a dramatic roll. Sadly their one lasted several hundred yards and the loss of 2 people's lives as I'm sure you've all read by now, hence I feel it's ok to include here and not scare anyone unneccessarily. We also saw some young lads at the kitchen that looked like they'd be a pain in the arse to be with in our group tomorrow and hoped we weren't with them! Then we slept.

Fraser Island to come later....