East Coast Trip - Queensland Part II

Rainbow Beach & Fraser Island

For many Fraser Island is the best thing at the East Coast. Based on the chatting with other backpackers it is one of the backbackers’ favorite experience. And yes, Fraser Island really is a cool place! It locates between Airlie Beach and Brisbane, near Noosa, and the nearest spot to it for backpackers is a tiny place called Rainbow beach. Hostels there tend to organize the whole Fraser Island trip for you from food to cars and sleeping.

With RBAC (or something) from Rainbow Beach hostel we hired 4WD land rovers and drove and camped around the island for three days and two nights. In each car there were 8 people, in our case 4 Finns and 4 Germans, and we travelled in a group of 4 cars. My absolute favorite thing on island was nature’s own “wild stream”, Eli Creek, a fresh water river with jungle around it, which for me was like a refreshing oasis in the middle of all the sand. Also there are beautiful lakes, windy sceneries and dingos to watch out. 

Driving is another main thing on Fraser. Driving on the beach was cool admiring the waves and inland it was like a rollercoaster. And make no mistake – you get to drive there on your own! (If you are at least 21yo.) Even I managed to drive the car from one lake back to the camping side even tho’ I first totally failed by shutting down the car several times before leaving, which was problematic for the car’s battery was also dead and so each time the car turned off we needed to connect it with other car in order to restart it again.. (Haven’t driven a manual since my driving school, and never a land rover, and never in similar conditions on piles and mountains of sand…) But it was still fun! However, then again camping isn’t my thing, guess I’m too much of a city girl. I have no problem at all with sailing for example, but in Fraser Island prepare to cut down on tidiness and comfortability…

Eli Creek

Lake McKenzie

Wrooom!

Great group!

Cheers,

Anni

East Coast Trip - Queensland Part l

About a half of our trip, or a 1/3 more likely, around the East Coast has passed now – time flies! As mentioned earlier, we started our trip from Cairns and we will travel down to Melbourne before starting studying. Here are first steps of our trip:

Magnetic Island

Magnetic Island is an island with population of 2000 people and you can get there by the ferry from Townsville. Guess the island is mostly known for its animals and nature – it holds several bays for snorkeling, it is a home to rock wallabies, you can live in a bungalow next to a koala sanctuary as we did and you can rent a tiny “Barbie” car to drive around the island or go hiking on diverse tracks. All in all it was a cute, small place. In addition to koala cuddling by the bungalow resort we found wild rock wallabies and a “wild” sleepy koala, opossums that stole our food and we climbed up the “Forts trail” to admire the sunset and sceneries (and on the way back in the dark an angry roadrunner scared us to death…) As said, it was kind of a cute and relaxing place but nothing grandiose. Maybe few more days in Cairns to see Cape Tribulation and Port Douglas or Mission Beach (1-2 hours from Cairns to South) could have been more interesting.

Airlie Beach and Whitsunday Islands

Whitsunday Island National Park Sailing Tour is a must! Life on the boat is super relaxed not to mention the amazing places you see by island hopping. You can start your cruise from Airlie Beach – a neat, quite luxurious looking town by the bay (we stayed in a cute, relaxed hostel called Backpackers by the bay who organized a ride from Greyhound bus stop to their hostel). Our boat was a small race boat called Ragamuffin II for a crew of 13 persons skippered by a young, true Aussie sailor who seemed to find “heaps of fun” in everything, dived down to 5-10 meters without any gear and who had a pet eagle (I mean who are these people???). The first mate was an 18-year-old Dutch boy, another backpacker who had done his sailing courses here in Australia at Whitsunday and now worked in sailing tours. He was our “mom and dad” for three days cooking us 3-5 meals a day – without doubt the best food I’ve eaten in Australia so far (on Magnetic Island we cooked mainly pasta, tuna and beans ugh…)

Our Skipper

Mums!

Days in the Whitsunday passed by sailing, snorkeling, relaxing and gossiping with the crew. The top spot is the Whitehaven Beach with cool white fine sand all around and changing crystal-clear turquoise waters as far as you can see. Also other islands and beaches are great for there is no-one around and you can snorkel endlessly between the boat and the beach and spot amazing sea creatures.

We saw dolphins from the ship, and while snorkeling we saw many gentle giant green sea turtles that we could pet, one smaller super turtle, most likely a hawksbill turtle, that rushed up to the shore and then turned around and flashed back to the ocean all in one second. Also we spotted a stingray, a sleeping shovel shark, humphead maori wrass, huge angel fishes and other huge black fishes, which we encountered attacking towards us after our skipper had pushed us down from the boat saying there were sharks in the water and started to throw fishfood at us… (the big fishes weren’t truly sharks tho’ which we discovered later.) However my favorite (after the turtles) was a manta ray. With a French girl from the crew we saw it – a huge black shadow with horns gliding just 5 meters in front of us with a parade of other big dark fishes. I swear it was the size of a human with wings. Spooky. Especially when it was so close to the shore and everywhere else there were just happily colored corals and fishes and turtles. Unfortunately we didn’t get a picture (where is Ville with his GoPro when needed?!)

After three days of sailing we returned to Airlie Beach and walked through the city to catch our bus. We happened to cross by the local lagoon with showers and like true backpackers stayed there to wash ourselves and cool down in the water before catching our nightbus to Rainbow beach. Good day.

Sunset from the boat

Whitehaven Beach

Pet Eagle

Breathing brake!

Whitehaven Beach

Our private beach where we saw the manta ray

Diving at the Great Barrier Reef - Part II

More diving - here is a cool video clip Ville made for us about our dives at Great Barrier Reef. Thank you!

Watch "Pinnan alla" video on vimeo from here

Diving at the Great Barrier Reef

One thing checked off from my bucket list – diving at the Great Barrier Reef! (Sorry, mom.) You are now looking at a certified open water diver, I did a 4-day-course with Down Under Dive at Cairns at the Great Barrier Reef with Sari and Roope (Ville did his advanced level [Ville huom.]). So cool!

PADI is the biggest and most well-known diving organization in the world, so if you do your certificates with them, you can basically dive anywhere in the world. Open water diver is the 1^st level - you go through basics of diving and safety, and it allows you to dive down to 18 meters. Advanced or adventure are next levels increasing your allowed depth down to 30 meters and opening possibilities for specials (rescue/night/wreck/photography etc). Diving is amazing – it’s another world down there, you see amazing things and creatures, and the surroundings and your own body control are completely different. The main thing is to concentrate on your breathing all the time, and another interesting thing is communicating with gestures only.

As said, our course with Down Under Dive took 4 days – 2 days of theory and pool training and 2 days on the reef. Our instructor was very inspiring and funny Italian guy, and our group consisted of eight students from all around the world – one Canadian, two Koreans, one Dutch, one Australian-”Kiwi” and us, three Finns. Great group, and on the last night we all spend a night out before, in our case, leaving Cairns.

Great Barrier Reef is the biggest living structure on earth – it consists of corals that might grow only for 1cm per year, and it is home to hundreds of fishes and other sea creatures. The reef stretches for 2600kms from the most Northern point of Australia all the way down to Fraser Island, and it is about the size of Germany. Cairns is the nearest point on land to the reef and therefore the town is strongly focused on water activities such as diving.

During the course our Italian instructor told us a lot about the reef and different sea creatures and we even saw most of them! We saw a giant green turtle both at the surface from a boat and super close to us at the bottom while diving (“I showed ‘im my Visa and said, ‘Turtle, at two o’clock!’” – Instructor), a very nosy ”pet” maori wrass called Wallie that bit our instructor (“Don’t know why she did that, Wallie loves people and you can ‘ug them and ‘old them, she must ‘ave been jealous..”), few whitetip reef sharks (“Sharks only ‘ave a bad reputation, reef sharks are the kindest things, they would never attack a diver!”), a big trigger fish gazing firmly at us his fin up (“They are just guarding their ‘ome and backyard, but you should go around them...”), a clownfish (“You’ll see Nemo, I know where Nemo’s ‘ouse is!”) and many many many other things that I can’t even name (“They are all our FRIENDS!”)

All in all, I really enjoyed diving and I am looking forward to find a next spot for a dive. In fact, I’m a bit angry with myself for leaving Cairns, I think I should have skipped one night in Magnetic Island (our next stop) in order to complete Adventure level at the Great Barrier Reef... But yeah, next time then!

Buddy Check

Finding Nemo

 Can you spot him? (Saw him closer but we were a bit slow with the camera...)

Luckily Ville turned out to be a better photographer than I and actually got the Green Sea Turtle in the picture while later on snorkling on the reefs by Whitsunday

Maori Wrass

Happy Open Water Diver

Three Happy Open Water Divers ( + Our advanced buddy!)

Cairns - Hot days and refreshing waters

First days in Cairns have passed by rather peacefully planning the upcoming journey and getting used to the Australian way of life. We have spent time by the lagoon and esplanade, the heart of the city, eaten well and moved around a lot. Actually our trip has turned out to be a true wellness camp.

Gilligan's hostels pool

View from the harbour

Lagoon

By the lagoon

The sporty lifestyle of Australians is contagious. Jogging at 6.30 am by the beach route, morning yoga at the lagoon and a hike up Cairns’s own rainforest trails makes one feel good and are fun (and free!)

Superfoods and healthy stuff in general have taken over the place, it’s a huge trend, and they’re delicious! Also honey and tee seems to be big things here.

Banana-date-walnut -bread with honey at the Paleo café

Hostel-made omelette for breakfast, so proud of us!

The first tour of ours took us to see ancient rainforests and beautiful waterfalls at the Tablelands by the “On the wallaby” company. We saw the gigantic fig three that inspired James Cameron and Avatar, and then cooled down under the exotic waterfalls of Millaa Millaa and Dinner Falls. Not a bad day.

Boardwalk on the rainforest

 Cathedral Fig Three

Millaa Millaa Fall

 

Dinner Falls

Atherton Tableland

See ya next time,

Anni