The End of the Road

 

So that's it...we've made it to Melbourne and are going our seperate ways after almost 4 months in each others pockets. Tis gonna be very weird without my sidekick for the remainder of my 6 weeks of travel!

Thanks for reading...I hope it was somewhat entertaining and kept you posted on our adventures.

If you wanna drop us a line, feel free on lemmieandloonie@gmail.com

Lemmie and Loonie...over and out!

Great Ocean Road

I've run out of steam a bit and am trying to write this up a while after the fact so bear with me...

The Great Ocean Road, a brilliant end to the Lemmie and Loonie adventure that started on May 20th with a Sail & Rail ticket from Dublin to London. We left Adelaide on September 16th and pulled into Melbourne on September 20th bringing our 4 month adventure to a close.

The trip involved hiring a campervan in the form of a Spaceship (spaceships.tv). A bright orange, automatic transmission beast - a modified Toyota Estima. I was nervous about driving it having never driven an automatic before and the only car I've really driven being my little Micra at home, but I stood up to the challenge well and got us through the journey in one piece with the only casualty being the poor green parrot who walked into the path of the tyre as I tried to dodge it on the road to Mount Gambier on Day 1. It was a dark moment for me..I've never run over anything before :(

So....we took off from Adelaide and drove to Mount Gambier on Day 1 with very little stops because it was raining so much. We pulled into the carpark of the oval there and cooked up our beef stirfry in the pouring rain on our little camping stoves before settling in for the night and watching a crappy DVD about partying in Cancun.

Day 2 saw us move from Mount Gambier to Warrnambool with a good few stops along the way to check out the lookouts and sites along the way.

Day 3 had us move on to Cape Otway, a little ways short of our target of Apollo Bay but a worthy diversion. The road to get to the Cape was like something from the Blair Witch Project...pitch black, deserted, surrounded by tall forests and very scary. The whole thing was made a bit more freaky by Una trying to scare me senseless and having a moment where the only car we came across was a few hundred metres shy of the campsite we were headed for...about 30 seconds after it passed us blinding lights appeared in the rear-view mirror and I was convinced some mass murderer had spotted us and done a u-turn to come get us..thankfully my imagination was just working overtime! The campsite had the best bathroom block of any I've seen to date...I regret not taking a photo!

Day 4 was a monster drive day because we got a bit lost in Geelong. We had hoped to stay there for the night before moving on to Melbourne but couldn't find anywhere suitable to pull up. Then the signposts stopped making sense and we were lost in the middle of housing estates. The only way out of it (considering we didn't have a road map to great enough detail, any printed directions or a sat nav) was to follow the signs to the only place I recognised the name of - Ballarat...an hour and a half from Geelong. Not exactly the end to the day I was hoping for as my eyes were already glazing over as we approached Geelong!

The last day was a pretty excellent one. We explored Ballarat and went to Soverign Hill where they've got a gold mining town with period costumed staff for you to explore. Well worth the entrance fee, though it would have been great to have had longer there..but...we needed to get on the road to Melbourne in time for me to get to the airport to welcome Conor who was arriving to start a 6 week adventure with me, and get Una in town early enough to get to the YHA before it got too dark.

It was a day of mixed emotions..the end of an era, the start of a new chapter. Very weird to say our goodbyes at the airport..but we'll be reunited soon enough at home with enough photos, stories and memories to bore all of you to death!

Photo Albums

We've got thousands and thousand of shots at this stage....

I've been putting some up on my personal Picasa WebAlbums until now, but I've managed to fill up my quota :( So...to solve the issue I've set up a new Lemmie and Loonie Picasa account where we can put all the albums we want. I've started this with the most recent shots from our ATA travels...check them out on;

http://picasaweb.google.com/lemmieandloonie

This is where the rest of the photos from our travels will go and ultimately, the OzBUS and other Oz albums that are currently on http://picasaweb.google.com/mailnem will be moved over to this new account too.

If you've got any queries or comments on our travels, if you're interested in doing OzBUS and want feedback from people who've been there, done that and worn the t-shirt out, or if you just wanna drop us a line to say hi here's the most convenient email address to use: lemmieandloonie@gmail.com

Thanks for reading :)

Adelaide

Again, as with Perth, we saw all too little of Adelaide. During the trip we had two nights there, one with OzBUS and one after we'd been on the Indian Pacific. Neither visit was long enough and sadly we didn't take in any of the sights.

The good to be taken from the visits is that I got to catch up with my mates Ann & Cerri and meet their new arrival Aisling. A big bonus on the trip is catching up with people I don't get to see all that often :)

So...add Adelaide to the list of places to spend more time in when I eventually get back to Oz.

Indian Pacific

Having done a long distance train ride before I was really, really, really excited to be taking the Indian Pacific railway from Perth to Adelaide. The initial plan way back when had been to take the train in the reverse direction, east to west, from Sydney to Perth. But having spent some time on OzBUS talking to people who'd been to Australia before I'd come up with a different route that meant we take it west to east and only part of the way, which though a shame was good enough for me.

When we were booking our tickets we were torn about whether to stick to the cheapest option to reduce the impact on our backpacker budget or to splash out a bit and get a sleeper cabin. The day/night sleeper seats were the cheapest tickets and though we would have been fine there we went with Red Sleeper Cabin tickets so we got a bit of privacy and comfort after months of dorm rooms and buses. When we checked in at East Perth station we were told our carriage was out the door and follow the platform to the right, so off we went...we walked and walked and walked and eventually found our carriage. The only Red Sleeper Carriage with the only other carriages behind us being the Red Diner, a single Red Seat Carriage and the luggage/car sections. We really were toward the bottom end of the ladder on the train!

Boarding time arrived and at last we were clambering up onto the train looking for our home for the next two days. The hallway snakes up the carriage to make the cabins a weird shape on the inside with one side wall longer than the other...altogether very weird. We squeezed into the room and closed the door and almost immediately had to open it again to avoid the sense of claustrophobia that engulfed us. The seats we had were very comfy with a little table in between, we had a cubby hole each to hang our clothes in, we had a small sink that folded away into the wall, we had a window with a magic blind that could be raised, lowered or twisted to be partially open or closed fully. The bottom bunk folded out of the wall by the cubby hole and was lowered into the space where the table normally stands (it's folded away to make room). The top bunk is then pulled town from the roof and clipped into place a couple of feet above the bottom bunk. It's accessible by a ladder that's casually hung from the handle on the side of the bed. All very smartly configured. The only issue is that when the beds are out there's even less room to manoeuvre yourself...we spent most of the first night wondering how the rather portly man across the corridor was managing to survive in his room with his pretty portly mate.

We had planned on having a “Sex and The City” moment like Carrie and Samantha on the way to San Francisco with a champagne toast to start our journey but in the hurry to find the station and get on the train we didn't have a chance to find a bottle shop to get the champers. But as with everything, if the universe wants it to happen it will...we got on board and there in the Red Diner they had little bottles of Brut for sale. So, the universe agreed that we needed our toast :)

Our evening meal on the first night was a baked potato with chilli...Mmmmmm. It seemed to be the dish of choice amongst the backpackers aboard as the portion seemed to be bigger than the other options on the menu and it was one of the cheapest. We sat in the diner listening to the chatter at the table next to us where a bloke from Dublin was trying his charms on a German girl who'd said she loved the Irish accent and had met more Irish than Aussies during her time travelling here (I'd tend to agree with her on that...we Irish do seem to travel a lot..there are more Irish accents around than any other kind which is weird given how small a place Ireland is...has everyone left? Is there anyone there at all anymore?). After dinner we went for a power nap to make sure we'd have energy for the Whistle Stop tour of Kalgoorlie scheduled for shortly before 11pm that night. We pulled into the station (the second longest platform in WA) and were herded out front to waiting coaches. I thought we'd be on foot so was a bit surprised to see two big coaches waiting for us. On we got and had a look around...it was reminiscent of my holiday in Benalmadena in 2005 with Mairead...blue rinse brigade on tour and Una and I sat in the middle of them! The tour went on for a good hour or so with the crazy driver moving slower than some of the passengers would have walked faster with their zimmer frames as he gave us the history of the city (which turned out to be a lot bigger than I expected – Kmart and Red Rooster here too....shame). The tour included tales of thievery, brothels and murder. He went on at length about the topless barmaids in some of the local establishments, giving us a giggle when he told the story of how they responded to complaints from the health department about serving drinks and food in the nip. Rather than put their clothes back on, the girls wrapped themselves up in cling film so everything was still on show, but was covered up thus addressing the concerns from the health department officials. At a later date they were in trouble again but this time because people were complaining that they could see nude barmaids through the windows of pubs and hotels...the answer was to put in frosted glass or cover the windows with newspaper up to a height of 6' 6”. This stopped people from seeing stuff they didn't want to see but resulted in all the towns milk crates going missing over night as young fellas in the place stole them so they'd have a height to stand on to see over the 6' 6” cover ups.

When we got back from the tour we visited the shop in the station to see what it had to tempt us with. It was run by possibly one of the craziest people we've met along the way...she tried to serve multiple people at once but had no attention span so randomly started serving someone else before she'd finished up with 2 or 3 others. She was attempting to guess where everyone was from and then giving them her impression of their national accent. It turns out she's from Liverpool and had taken a ferry to the bottom of Ireland years ago (I've no idea where the ferry from Liverpool goes to and she didn't have a breeze). She did the typical 'top of the morning', 'aye begorra' and various other leprechaun type speeches at us. Good for a giggle at 1am :)

Waking up on the train was a bit weird, I tried to swing my legs out of bed and bashed my feet on the sink and my legs on the ladder, then walloped my arm against the window. Eventually I woke up enough to go in search of breakfast but they'd stopped serving it (it was about 8.40am!!). We spent most of the morning lounging in bed and finally got up and ready to do as we pulled into Cook, a practical ghost town on the Nullabor Plain. This use to have about 500 residents, now they're down to 5. The local hospital is closed, the school's been shutdown and the houses have all been left idle with most of them now condemned. It's gotta be a pretty lonely existence for the people of the town who are employed to refuel and rewater the trains that pull in twice a week. We helped the local economy by making some purchases in the local shop, and helped the Flying Doctors service with a donation for some books they had in the shop. An afternoon of trashy Mills & Boons books followed....what a way to spend the day :)

We continued on the train journey overnight arriving in Adelaide shortly after 7am on September 15th...now to start the spaceship adventure!

Verdict on the Indian Pacific...do it..if you like trains at all...if you like travel...do it, do it, do it!

Perth

Perth has to be added to the list of places to visit on my next trip to Australia, there's no way I can really say that I've been there having spent less than 24 hours in the city! We arrived in at 7pm ending our 10 day tour from Broome. We met Richard of OzBUS fame at the train station at Wellington and William and headed off to his place where he was kindly putting us up for the night. A local chinese restaurant fed us a lovely dinner for a very reasonable price before we headed off in search of The Shed on Aberdeen Street to meet up with the Western Exposure (ATA) gang to say the farewells before everyone headed off their separate ways.

It should be noted that The Shed won't let you in if you're wearing 'thongs' (flip-flops to you and me)...but only if it's Saturday..which is was! So, there I was standing in mine freezing my toes off and being refused entry. Since we'd gone all that way and we didn't have any numbers to tell the others what had happened I told Una and Richard to head on in and I'd wait for them in a net cafe or somewhere around the corner where my footwear wouldn't be a problem. They partied for 2 hours and then we all headed back to Richards for a snooze...man it was great not to be in a bunk-bed or in a room with a million people (or 8 or 10 or whatever).

We slept soundly and were up before 9am to get ready to visit the Perth Mint, the one attraction that we'd decided to do and that rather amazingly and very conveniently turned out to be just around the corner from where we were staying. So off we went to see them pouring liquid gold into a mould to make a solid gold bar..amazing! The tour was informative and they guide talked a lot about Kalgoorlie (good because we had a planned stop there on our impending train ride and we intended to take the whistle stop tour to see the place). Time ran out too quickly so we headed off pretty quickly to collect our bags and try find a cab to take us to East Perth station – the Indian Pacific doesn't leave from the main station in Perth but from the suburbs.

So, a very quick visit...not nearly long enough, but it was enough to tell me I'd like to see more of the place so I'm adding it to my 'must visit next time' list (it's getting quite lengthy now).

Kalbarri - Perth (ATA Day 10)

What is about making the last day of a trip a really long drive day? OzBUS had us do Narrandera to Sydney which was a bit adventurous given the time we stopped off in Canberra for....this crowd have us doing Kalbarri to Perth with a stop at the Coastal Cliffs, Jurien Bay Marine Park and the Pinnacles.

Up at crazy o'clock but we had a breakfast of bacon and eggs...Mmmmm. Of course we're out of butter because it wasn't on Ben's shopping list, but thanks to Una introducing me to the cheese and honey delicious combination earlier in the trip I was able to improvise and have grated cheddar, honey, egg and bacon on my toast to avoid the dry toast situation. It wasn't half bad ;)

A short ways outside of Kalbarri we detoured to the Coastal Cliffs which can be described as the Great Ocean Road of the West Coast (except it's not a road it's a short walkway...but you get the idea). There was a short walk we headed off on to see the One Apostle (proper name is Castle Cove) and a ways further on the Natural Bridge. The waves crashing into the cliffs were awesome and the scenery was pretty breathtaking. One thing I've come to the conclusion on during my travels is that all this world exploring is great...but I need to get out an explore what's in my own backyard a bit better (read any bit at all). The Cliffs of Moher is a must see for me by the end of 2010...enough is enough..I need to become an Irish tourist in Ireland :)

Back on the road, we drove on until it was time for lunch. We pulled in to Jurien Bay Marine Park where we had the last sandwiches I'll eat for a while. Having barely digested the ham & cheese goodness we were off climbing up the sand dunes with sandboards and candles in hand. After waxing up the underside of the board most of the bus crew had a few runs at sliding down the dunes on the boards. My first attempt ended prematurely when I got scared about how fast I was hurtling toward the fence at the end of the dune. I tossed myself to the left, thus ending up rolling to the bottom off the dune at speed and having to run after my board to retrieve it. My second attempt was perfect...but Una was chit-chatting at the bottom and didn't get a picture of my triumph. My third and fourth attempts ended up like my initial run with me tumbling down the dune rather than sliding gracefully, though I blame these crashes on the fact that some of the guys were trying to go down the dune standing up and when they fell off they took chunks out of the runway we were using so each time my board hit a divot I got chucked off. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it!! ;)

The final stop before Perth was at Nambung National Park to see the Pinnacles. We wandered amid the limestone pillars for half an hour or so taking jump shots and pictures of the more shapely rocks. The ground was covered in a yellowy sand rather than the red that we've seen for so long..it was a bit weird, but a nice change.

Last stop Perth....10 days on the road bringing our Lemmie and Loonie bus tour total days up to 101...not bad within 4 months on the road. Both buses were very different. It's hard to get to know people in just 10 days, but in saying that the guys on the WestExpo bus were lovely. I'm looking forward to seeing some of their pictures when they send them on :)

Denham - Kalbarri (ATA Day 9)

Today's drive was to get us from Denham to Kalbarri to make a bit of progress on the mammoth distance that's still left between us and Perth. I really struggle to understand how tour companies come up with their routes and stop points. Drive days with OzBUS and ATA have such varied lengths that I really can't fathom how whoever does the research comes up with the list of accommodation stops. Anyways....it's not my job so I'll stop whinging ;)

We got on the road early to make the short trip over to Monkey Mia to see the dolphin feeding there. I'm not quite sure what I expected of it, but what happened wasn't really it. People line the beach and can stand in the very shallow water while the staff are getting ready to feed the dolphins. Before this can happen everyone has to step back out of the water onto the sand, a yellow 'decoy' bucket is brought out to distract the pelicans that have gathered on the beach hoping to steal the dolphin's breakfast and then the handlers come out with the real fish buckets. There are only 5 dolphins that are hand fed, each of them have a quota of fish that they are fed each day in order to guarantee that they'll go fend for themselves and fish for the rest of their daily requirement and not rely on being hand fed everything they need. It's illegal to feed them if you're not working in the centre and part of the team that feeds them up to 3 times a day (in the morning). Nobody, including the handlers are allowed to touch the dolphins...one of the girls explained that from having them rub against her leg in the water she thinks they feel like a shelled boiled egg.

With the feedings over within a half hour we were going to be at a loose end for a few hours while one of the crew headed off on an Aboriginal tour (the welcome to country ceremony here was to rub soil between their hands..no billabong water spitting on the head). A big gang of us decided to take up the ATA/WestEx discount on the Dugong spotting boat and headed off for 2 hours on the water. We were dressed up in very fetching yellow raincoats (I can't complain it kept me nice and toasty), and headed off out to see in search of dolphins, turtles, sharks and dugongs. I spotted 3 out of 4 so that wasn't bad. The dugongs were pretty shy and I only got a look at them appearing for air for a fleeting second or three before they were off back to the ocean floor to graze on more sea grass. I spotted a solitary turtle which was cool, but there were no sharks to be seen. Dolphins however were all over the place! There was a big gang of males chasing a female to mate with her. After the boat crew explained what was going on and left me with some pretty disturbing imagery we sailed off to leave them to it. Poor lady dolphin...she'll either be pregnant, with calf or being chased by a group of males all her life! Despite not seeing all that many dugongs the boat trip was great..it was ace to just lay on the net in the middle of the boat watching the waves pass below.

Onwards then toward Kalbarri National Park to see Natures Window, a rock formation that looks like...a window. We messed about there for a while taking lots of pictures and attempting new jump shot manoeuvres (I think I'll have quite the collection by the time I get home).

After that we continued on to Kalbarri where we stayed for the night after yet another sumptuous Aussie BBQ evening with steaks, sausages and coleslaw.

Coral Bay - Denham (ATA Day 8)

On the road early enough this morning as we had a lot of driving to do to get us from Coral Bay to Denham.

We passed through Carnarvon where Ben spent a few minutes trying to locate a place that sold chocolate covered bananas that he'd been to before – he couldn't find it now. He got back on the bus at the petrol station we eventually pulled in at and asked if anyone fancied driving because he was tired and cranky. Tempting...might have been nice to get some driving practise in in advance of being let loose on the Great Ocean road but since I doubt my licence covers me driving a bus I just had a giggle as he shuffled back to the driver seat.

After a long time on the road we pulled in and stopped at the entrance to Shark Bay World Heritage Centre for a photo op. I was more interested in the road sign across the way that indicated Useless Loop was 163km away from us. I had to find out what it was and why in hell it was signposted....so asked Ben. The Loop is a route that was followed by two maritime 'geniuses' way back when...their boat was grounded at Denham so they set out on foot in search of fresh water. They walked for a few days until they came to a point where they looked out over the sea and saw their ship grounded in Henri Freycinet Harbour and realised they'd looped the coast. Idiots!

From there we moved on to Hamelin Pool Nature Reserve to see the Stromatolites (I had never heard of them before and so knew nothing about them in advance). These are living organisms that effectively look like black rocks on the sea shore. The area is protected by having a boardwalk erected to take you out over the Stromatolites into the breaking sea so you can view them at various stages of life...from blossoming (growing up to 1cm a year) to dead because they've been in the heat of the sun for so long and the shoreline has receded starving them of the water they so badly need. In high tide it's sometimes possible to see bubbles of air coming from them but we didn't have that pleasure.

The final stop was Shell Beach where instead of sand there are banks of cockle shells that have been forming in the area for more than 4000 years. Cockle shells thrive in very salty water (as is present here). The shells are constantly being washed ashore and over time are being compacted into banks of shell that are now up to 10 metres above the sea level in parts. Walking to the water we had to go over ridges of shells that were like giant sized strawberry drills. The water was pretty warm but there wasn't really any chance of swimming there because it was so shallow. I went walking out to sea to see how far I could go before the water got up to my knees. I lost interest much before this happened. Within a foot of the shore the water was ankle deep...another couple of feet in it was maybe 3 inches above ankle height and it remained that way for a couple of hundred metres out to sea. I walked out until the people sitting on the beach were specks on the horizon but the water never reached knee height!

Back in the bus we journeyed on to Denham where we stayed the night in the smelliest room I think I've ever slept in. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like I was going to be sick and seriously considered moving to the sitting room area of the apartment thing we were in (but was too tired and lazy to move). We reckon someone either puked all over the room and it wasn't cleaned properly or someone is buried under the floor in there...it was like decaying feet...euwwwww!

Exmouth - Coral Bay (Day 6 & 7)

We were up earlyish this morning to maximise the time we had at the beaches around the Ningaloo Reef. First port of call once we got going was to pull in at a beach not far from the campsite where there was a young humpback whale beached on the sand partially eaten by sharks. It was here that we saw our first 'do not enter the water there are sharks signs' of the trip. From there we moved to a lookout point that allowed us to hunt the horizon for whales jumping about. We saw a couple off in the distance frolicking about making a splash.

The next stop was a flying visit to the Cape Range National Park Visitors Centre. Here we picked up some info on what fish we could expect to see and the do's and don'ts of snorkeling. Driving through the park we saw wild kangaroo bounding around along with emus and bush turkeys.

We drove on through the park stopping at Turquoise Bay for most of the day where we snorkeled, sunbathed and chilled out. I took to snorkeling pretty quickly with my only real difficultly being when water leaked into my goggle thingy. It didn't happen too often but did seem to happen when I was out in the water trying to manoeuvre my way around. A lot of the group spotted sea turtles (Una included) but I didn't manage it myself. I saw a good few different types of fish, a lot of coral (though none of it as brightly coloured as I expected given how many times I've watched Nemo) and a hell of a lot of sand...lots and lots of sand being swept back and forth by the waves.

When we had our fill of snorkeling we headed onward to Coral Bay where we stayed for two nights. The first night we arrived in the dark. The hostel had a BBQ with damn fine burgers for us and we were shown to our 10 bed dorm. Two nights in a 10 bed...nice...NOT!

We had been given a list of optional activities that were available to us for our full free day in Coral Bay – these were mainly water based with snorkeling tours, scuba diving, swimming with manta rays, glass bottomed boat etc and a quad bike tour of the place done at several times during the day. Una and I signed up for the manta ray swimming tour in the morning, and the quads tour for sunset. It was going to be a long day but with the weather already a bit colder than Broome we wanted to make the most of the sunshine while we have it.

The manta ray tour was sooooo good. We headed out around 9am and had 30 minutes to snorkel in an area called 'The Maze'. The water was between 4 and 5 metres deep where we hopped in and we were told to stick to the sand channels only (easier said than done!). The coral out here was so much cooler than what we'd seen at Turquoise Bay, more colourful, bigger and just all round better. We saw an incredibly large selection of fishes floating around there too. It was immeasurably better than the snorkeling the day before. From there we moved on to an area called 'Bateman's Bay' where we going in search of manta rays to swim with. We sat sipping tea/coffee and eating cinnamon raisin cakes as Tara (of of the crew) explained a bit about mantas to us. They grow up to have a wing span of up to 6 metres, they are solitary animals that don't travel in packs, they are resident all year round in this area of the world (one of only 3 places that is the case), they feed on plankton and other microscopic sea matter so we were safe and weren't going to be eaten, and the final fact I remember that shocked me was that they can swim at speeds of up to 60km per hour! The first group got into the water and gave chase but could catch the manta that had been spotted for us (by the spotter plane doing loops above us). They swam hard and fast but the manta was obviously spooked and took off at speed. The boat picked them up and went in search of another one where they tried again. This time they managed to get in quietly enough not to frighten it and they got to swim with it. Next up it was our turn...having heard how much difficultly one of the girls had had in keeping afloat in the waves we took life jackets to keep us afloat. We slipped in as quietly as possible and kicked our legs as hard as we could to catch up with Tara who was following the manta in the water and directing us with her arm held up above water. I kicked like a crazy person but didn't seem to be getting anywhere and was losing the pack falling behind pretty much straight away. This was one of those time I wished I was a stronger swimmer. Then, by a pure fluke I saw a huge manta under me when I looked back down into the water. I popped my head over water to see what was happening and discovered that Tara was now nearly on top of me..the manta had changed course and was conveniently swimming along at a nice pace under me with the rest of the group kicking like mad to catch up with it. I followed for a while taking one picture and a short video before calling for the boat to taxi me. I could have got dropped off closer to go back in again but I was breathless from all the kicking and the amazement of how graceful the manta had been. It was a very cool experience to have had.

After the mantas we headed back to the outer area of the reef where the ocean waves were crashing in. We had another opportunity to snorkel here before heading back to base. There were a two options, go in by yourself and explore around the boat or do a guided swim. The guided swim sounded pretty amazing but given how much trouble I'd had keeping up with the mantas and the fact that the current where they were going was at least twice as strong as anything I'd struggled in so far and the water was twice or three times deeper than where the boat was anchored I thought I'd better pass. They were swimming out beyond the outer rim of the reef into the ocean to see a shark cleaning station (it turned out there was no shark there at the time – but still cool to see). I almost chickened out of getting back into the sea (the water wasn't cold cold but wasn't the warmest either) but thankfully I sucked it up and dove in. I have never seen anything like the sight of all the different fishes that were swimming around at the back of the boat. I lowered myself into the water and was immediately surrounded by all sizes, shapes and colours of fish. I paddled a little ways back from the boat to leave room for people to get on or off and then just bobbed about on the surface watching the fish come closer and closer to me to see what I was. It was AMAZING! The coral there was even better than what we'd seen in the Maze earlier in the day too with more brightly coloured stuff there and the water was much deeper so I felt a lot safer knowing I was unlikely to be unable to accidentally hit off some of it (ashamedly I must admit that I think I hit off something in the Maze..either that or there was a person behind me when I tried to kick my way back to the boat – my flipper definitely connected with something :( ...not good).

I didn't think it was possible to top the morning we'd have and was wrecked before we even got back to the Eco Tours office to get started on our Quad Bike sunset tour of Coral Bay. Because they require driving licence information from anyone who wants to drive the quads (there's a tiny portion of road involved on the route) Una braved being my passenger for the tour. Having only driven a quad once before on snow while on holiday in Austria I was a bit nervous about taking on the beasts they had at Coral Bay. They have to have been twice the size! Off we went and after a couple of minutes of bumpy riding while I got used to the throttle we were in business. We were flying around the dunes at top speed with a few hairy moments when I took turns a bit too quickly or didn't see an upcoming hump in the track until we were launched over it. It was such great fun that it kicked the morning's snorkel tours ass!! We watched the sunset and headed back to the hostel absolutely shattered ready for a good sleep (in bed by 9.30pm).

The time we had in Coral Bay and the activities we did made it one of my favourite places in Australia thus far. It was such a beautiful place and was surprisingly normal and not really trashy touristy. They've only cottoned on to how popular it could be as a destination in recent years and are starting to build it up. I hope they manage to do that while retaining the charm the place currently has.