Land of the flies
Trip Start
Sep 10, 2008
1
35
71
Trip End
Sep 03, 2009
Whitsunday Islands,
Queensland,
Australia
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Airlie beach is stunning. Turquoise waters wash over white sands, bordered with lush green grass
Airlie Beach 1
. Unfortunately, you can't actually swim in the sea due to the swarms of potentially deadly jellyfish lurking on the shoreline, but they have a man-made lagoon to make up for it. Waiting for my boat, I had no idea of what to expect. I was temporarily filled with horror when I saw the people getting on another boat, most of whom were carrying their actually body weight in beer and required a trolley to ferry it to the boat. Their trip was only for one night! I needn't have worried however, as the people on my boat were lovely, even if I was the only non-German speaker. Remembering broken GCSE German from school will only get you so far it would seem, whats your name and I am hungry do not make for exciting conversation! After a long wait, and an almost equally long list of instructions of how to use the toilet and 2 minute shower we piled onto the ex-racing boat. The 16 of us took the long walk down the boards to our boat, the Mandrake. Within only 10 minutes of pulling out of harbour, my hat flew off into the distance, never to be seen again. I was slightly disappointed as I'd only bought it that day, but I guess it wasn't meant to be. And so, off into the sunset we sailed (well, we used the engine, and technically, as it was the middle of the day, the sun wasn't going down), slapping on sunscreen almost as quickly as the water splashing over the deck was washing it off. After reaching our first destination, we climbed into our rather fetching stinger suits and jumped in for a snorkel
Airlie Beach 2
. The coral was so shallow, it was amazing, I really wish I had taken my underwater camera with me, because I didn't see snorkeling as good as that again. It was incredibly shallow, and full of soft coral and big colourful fish. It was a little too shallow in some places, as you felt you had to breathe in to avoid hitting the spiky coral!Eventually it was time for us to get out, enjoy our 2 minute showers and eat the lovely dinner that had been prepared for us. Unfortunately, we had to wash our own dishes! Trying to get into the tiny beds was amusing, I couldn't even roll over once I managed to wedge myself into the tiny space of my bed.
The next day, we headed to Whitsunday beach, famous as being one of the top ten beaches in the world and home to hundreds of sting rays, cue the Steve Irwin jokes. What they don't advertise however is the thousands of March flies that had appeared on the island. The thing that March flies seem to love to do, more than anything else in the world is swarm around you, land on you, have a little look around, take a step forward and then stick their proboscis in you to have a little taste. The colour they love more than anything else is black/navy blue, which is of course, the colour of our stinger suits. Apparently stinger suits don't work on March flies and did nothing to protect us from the painful bites
Airlie Beach 3
. The flies are huge, presumably so they can carry the huge spikes they use to jab into you, causing you to feel like you are being given some sort of bizarre acupuncture session. Luckily, the things are pretty slow so you can slap them off you and watch them drop to the floor. They don't even leave fly squash in your hands which is nice. Consequently we spent most of the time slapping ourselves and each other in order to try and control the damn things. It does get to the point where you can take no more. At any one time there was at least one person running screaming into the water trying to get away from them. Most people decided it was safer to sit in the water and chance it with the sting ray and jellyfish, and it was quite amusing watching people being chased down the beach by a swarm of flies.Having got totally fed up of the flies and after managing to loose everyone from my group on the crowded beach I decided to head back to the boat. I had no idea of the time, and didn't realise I was actually 20 minutes early. As such, the dingy didn't turn up to pick me up even though I gave them the relevant signal. Eventually, a woman from another boat took pity on me, and decided to rescue me from the flies, so I hitched a lift from her. On the way we drove past a huge sea turtle, really close to the boat and swimming with his head out of the water. It was fantastic, his shell was probably as big as our dingy
Beware of Jellyfish!
.Later in the day, as the weather wasn't so good, we gate-crashed a holiday resort. We headed up the hill for a long bush-walk to a look-out point before coming back down and relaxing by the pool for a while. Several cheeky parakeets came and tried to drink from people's glasses. After watching, along with the rest of the resort, a group of idiotic (and I'm ashamed to say, British) men making fools of themselves round the pool area it started to rain, so we headed back. Once it got dark, we shined a torch into the water and watched as lots of bright orange cuttlefish, shoals of small fish and big tuna swam around the boat. Unfortunately we discovered that our water tank hadn't been filled properly, and we had run out of water, no showers for us then. The deck hand had to go back to our resort and fill all our bottles up so we at least had some drinking water.
And so onto our final day. With a final bit of snorkeling. The fact I saw a huge jellyfish drift past the boat on the way to the spot did not fill me with confidence. Nor did the fact that there were a lot of jellyfish floating around us when we actually got into the water. Even though I was wearing a stinger suit, I decided to get out, the visibility wasn't great anyway, and a few people joined me
Airlie beach 4
. After being in the dingy for about 10 minutes, I realised I had actually been stung on my foot. Unfortunately, there is no way of telling how bad the sting is, other than waiting for half an hour to see if the poison is going to hit. Thankfully, the probability of it actually being a dangerous sting is very small, and the sting was fine after a good dousing with vinegar. Guess I'll be wearing socks and gloves in the future!On the way back to the harbor, we finally got the wind we needed to enable us to sail. And so back onto dry land which was apparently moving more than the sea for the evening. It was Australia day, and our boat had a table in the bar. Drawn by the promise of free food and drinks, we all headed down, and eventually all left as the food never really turned up.
