Sat 9th Nov
Day trip to Airlie Beach! Its only a 40 minute drive here anyway, so even though we don't need to be here till Tuesday, we thought we would have a look anyway... And what an excellent decision it was. Airlie Beach is in the middle of a 3 day music festival featuring about 75 bands, most of which are playing at different bars and pubs all day where you can seethem for free! We caught The Hillbilly Goats playing again (I say that like it was by accident. Not so. I hunted them down and got to the bar early to get a good seat right in front of them), and their set was awesome! My excitable flailing was obviously memorable as after their set one of them saw us as she walked past and:
Hillbilly Goat: "oh hey, wern't you girls at Wallaby Creek?"
Me: "Er... yes. Im not stalking you. Honest."
After that we left for the next bar, where we watched an unmemorable band play some unmemorable songs, and as we were leaving that bar a group of 4 drunk middle aged ladies jumped into the back of the van demanding a lift home, and then they took us backto their hotel and offered us beer and drugs. I just had a cup of tea and then we moved on.
After spending the night back in our campsite in Bowen, next day we went back to Airlie Beach to see some more bands, and who do we bump into? The group of cougars we met the day before, this time mercifully less drunk. But just as rowdy. We also saw a really good band called Wanita and the Honky Tonk Bar Dwellers and a lady called Nadine something who we got chatting to for ages; she gave us two Vip passes so wecould get into the main tent later on (free food and booze in the VIP area, yay!). So at this bar, after the bands had left some dude (who we saw playing at the bar at Wallaby Creek festival) somehow summoned a pa system and two guitars into existence and invited anyone to come up and play. By this time we had already consumed a couple of jugs of cider, which made me think that getting up and singing was a great idea; anyone who saw my atrocious falling-off-the-stage incident during my tenure as VP at UCS Union would be able to tell you that this was a mistake, but there was fortunately no raised platform for me to fall off of this time.
The best thing to come out of this experience was of course the excellent new friends we made (Trent and Sam, holllaaa) who we hung out with the rest of the evening; not only in the vip tent but we also had some drinks at another bar where an awesonme band were playing and they had a guitarist who LOOKED EXACTLY LIKE MY FRIEND JAMES JENINNGS except a bit less ginger. And then The Hillbilly Goats were suddenly there dancing with us and now they probably think I'm stalking them.
Monday 11th
Barbara is hungover. Don't even bother. My body failed to siphon the alcohol from my bloodstream, so I spend this time in a haze of being still drunk but completely sober.
Tuesday 12th
BOAT DAY! WHITSUNDAYS! We started our 2 day and 2 night boat trip in glorious sunshine, with Barbara still horrifically hungover. We were on a (Trimaran? Trimeran? Trymaran?) big boat with a big floaty bit on each side, with 23 other people and a crew of three. It was pretty sweet. On the first day we snorkelled in two different places, saw a ton of nice coral and loads of fishes, also one very large friendly fish called Elvis who was like the big daddy of the bay. Barbara couldnt bring herself to sumersault off the boat like I did, so the skipper ended up pushing her in. She screamed loud enough for other people to think she had seen a shark or something.
The next day we cruised around somewhere else to look for turtles, but couldnt find any. We then went to Whitehaven Beach, officially the second most beautiful beach in the world, and there we played around in the super soft super white silica sand, saw a hoard of tiny crabs, a few stingraysand a lot of tourists. We took a ton of stupid pictures (we have to ruin it for everyone, always) and then went back to the boat, where we finally saw some turtles! They were apparently coming up for air as the bay we were stoppedin is a popular mating ground for them. On the way to the next stop we also saw a few Ospreys - one of the crew had a load of meat and he chucked it up for them to catch which looked pretty awesome. Spent the night in a sheltered bay where everyone drank copiously, played drinking games and got to know each other a bit too well. We sailed back to the harbour early the next morning, it was nice and cloudy so we could give our skin a little break after two days of hardcore sunburn.
We are now in the Town of 1770/Agnes Water, cooking lunch and contemplating our next movements. Its pretty here. The menu is... fried vegetable wraps. Again. Nom.
No comments:
Post a Comment