After the cyclone and oil on the beaches and sea we thought we’d had all nature disasters by now. Just before we prepared for a weak surfing with Adam another cyclone would hit the coast. We really started to worry about some sunshine on the Sunshine coast.
We forced ourselves in the water, despite the few good surfing waves, but we wanted to be on the board anyway. At Alex Headlands we were able the get some good ones. With all the weather this was one of the best spots, so all surfers were here, making it difficult to catch the few good ones. Luckily it’s also a beginners bay and the good spirit of the advanced surfers made us get the ones we could.
Lots of peddling, heavy arms and muscle ache the next day, we surfed well!
Weather predictions still weren’t great but we packed and drove North on Sunday. Chantelle and Richard let us use the “Ute”, a real Aussi car (the Australians say: “every guy has to have a ute!. 12 days on the road with a beaut of a ute. A big engine to overtake everyone and everything on Bruce Highway no 1, the highway that leads traffic from Darwin to Cairns, counterclockwise.
With all our camping gear over 1000 km north. This time 2 tops to keep the tent dry.
A two day drive to Airlie Beach, a touristy coasttown south of the Whitsunday Islands. Don’t get misled by the name of the place, because there is no beach at Airlie. It’s a startingpoint to visit the islandgroup and the Great Barrier Reef. Every 2 shops there’s a tourop to book a trip. We wanted to go to the reef, but not a 180 people, 3 hour to and 3 hour back, snorkle struggle trip. So we decided to do a Catamaran trip along the islands and see some fish there. But the promised coral, fish and swimtime didn’t really do it for us, so we cancelled the free trip and camp stay we got for the next day and headed back south, a bit disappointed.
Agnes Waters for some reason was stuck in our memories from stories of friends and along with the Town of 1770 a place where we, heard only a week ago, that that also is a good Reef and surf spot. So, off to a small village on the coast with a riverside campsite. 5 nights we slept under an amazing sky with the southern milkyway, great scenery, nice people and wildlife
Next to Agnes Waters is the little town of 1770. Captain Cook landed here in the same year. Nothing more that big expensive homes on the mountain wall, a riverside campsite, a café and two little companies organising Reef trips. Also, Agnes Waters is the most north place to surf on the Eastern coast of Australia. For us it turned out to be the perfect place to stay our last week.
We’ve had a great week with lots of sunshine, 2 days of surfing and finishing off with a fantastic trip to the Reef (30 people and 5 hours of wide range snorkle time). We say beautiful coral, fish a seaturtle and 2 sharks! We were happy to discover, again, that we had to follow our gut and our hearts.
Looking back we have done a lot and seen a lot, but not as much as we would have thought we would at the start of the trip.We might have had bad luck weatherwise, because we have seen almost every disaster and weather this country can handle, but even more reason to return to this beautiful place with knowledge we didn’t have when we first arrived. The country is big, unimaginably big and too much to see in a small area. The trip to New Zealand was the extra we wouldn’t have wanted to miss. The family took us in with open arms and accepted us in their lives, a very pleasant feeling.
The heavy bags are packed and ready. Hopefully we don’t have any overweight tomorrow :D
Love, Mijke and Robbert
Here's a link to the pics
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| Australia last few weeks |
