Touristy Cairns
Trip Start
Unknown
1
18
19
Trip End
Ongoing
Cairns,
Queensland,
Australia
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
We really enjoyed a place Spot X at Arrawarra beach. http://www.mojosurf.com/flex/spot_x_surf_school_arrawarra_coffs_harbour/60/1/default.htm
We ended up spending 5 days there. We would go surfing everyday. It was beautiful seeing the beach from our campervan every morning. Jim was lucky enough to see dolphins when he was out surfing.
We headed onto Byron's bay, a well-known surfers town. It was a nice, little hippy-resort style town with lots of surfers around. Enroute to Brisbane we stopped at Nimbin. A hippy village where people constantly offer you weed. It was a quaint little place but it felt pretty commercialised. We met up with my friend Denis for dinner. It'd been 10 years since I'd seen him. We met in Taiwan years ago. He seemed more Chinese than me. We ended the night singing karaoke. He was really good at singing Chinese songs whilst Jim and I stuck to English.
Other places we swent to were Agnes Water and Airlie beach. The Whitsundays were beautiful. It's easy to find a cheap one-day snorkelling trip. You could dive as well but they only go to around 10 metres so I thought I'd might as well just save my money and snorkel. We went to Whitehaven beach, one of the top 10 beaches in the world. It is so beautiful there. The sand is fine and white and the sea crystal clear. I wish we could've spent a bit more time on the beach there. Afterwards, we were taken to snorkel on the outer barrier reef. The water was pretty cold. There was a wide variety of fish. They were pretty huge as well.
After the Whitsundays we headed to Ayr to dive the SS Yongala wreck. The SS Yongala was built in England and sank during a cyclone in 1911. The wreck was not discovered until 1958. It lies on a remote location and is nowadays still largely intact. You can for example still see pieces of furniture. When disaster struck the ship, 122 lives were lost. The bodies were never recovered and the wreck is a marine gravesite. Therefore it is not allowed to enter the wreck, out of respect for those who died there. The top of the wreck starts at 14 metres below the surface and the maximum depth of the dive site is about 28 metres.
I decided to be really organised and book the dive in advance. We went with Yongala dive as you'll be there within 30 minutes. If you did it from Magnetic Island, you're looking at a 3 hour boat ride. http://www.yongaladive.com.au/ When we went to confirm everything the day before, we were told that part of the boat was broken and would have to wait til the day after to do the dive. The dive was worth waiting for. It has to be one of the best dives i've done. I saw turtles, rays, codfish, trevallies and so on. It was full of so much marine life. I even saw the toilet, it's still in tact. During the first dive I heard a whale, unfortunately we didn't get to see it though.
After our dives we headed to Townsville, using it as a base to get to Magnetic Island.
Magnetic Island was very busy. We decided to stay at Base backpackers for a night but it was the wrong choice. It was in a beautiful location but if you want to sleep, it's not the place to be. We were unfortunate to be put in a dorm with the most disrespectful people. After midnight, once the bar was shut, they stayed up til 5am, talking outside loudly for everyone to hear. Coming in and out of the room, turning on the lights. I was lucky that I could sleep through it. Unfortunately Jim couldn't and made sure he made lots of noise in the morning.
It was really nice at the Koala reserve at Bungalow Bay. If they had beds available, it would've been great to stay there. The talk was very informative and interactive. We got to hold a baby salty, a cobra, lizards and of course a koala. Aussies don't seem to like koalas but I think they're cute and cuddly.
Next stop and last stop was Cairns. I expected it to be touristy but it wasn't too bad. I thought about doing a dive but there don't seem to be dive schools which solely do diving. You basically have to go on a snorkelling trip with bout 30+ other people and then you have an option of doing dives in addition to that. The expense and the huge number of people didn't appeal to me so in the end I decided to give it a miss. If I went back, I'd go on a liveaboard. Maybe once I start earning money again, as it's so expensive.
We enjoyed our last days in Cairns. We ended it with a great meal in a French restaurant.
