Australia2

Australia part 2: for part 3 click it

After the diving experience and some early morning champagne breakfast as a goodbye we set course for the town of Mission Beach. Near Mission beach there is an island called Dunk Island where walking tracks, beaches and watersports are the attraction. We stayed at the National park campsite for a total of 7 dollars per day (good for the budget). The island is covered by rainforest and the 3-4 hour walk of the island was a good preparation for the track we will walk on Hinchinbrook island.

Thosborne trail:
This is a track on the Island of Hinchinbrook (200 k south of Cairns) of 32 km. Only 40 people are allowed to be on the track at any time, so it is very quiet. The track itself is fantastic, with beaches, rainforests, mountains, waterfalls and creeks to cross. The path is not very well marked so it quite hard going. Everything you need you have to carry and drinking water can be taken from the streams.

We had a great time, the weather was sunny and hot except for the third day. This day it rained (pooring) from morning to late, making the creeks we had to cross from small trickles to raging streams of breastdeep water, 10 meter wide. We had to cross hand in hand (good relational therapy!) with sticks and taking care not tip and end up in the ocean..
We set up the tent in the rain and tried to keep it dry, while warming ourselves in the one sleeping bag.
Fortunately the next day the sun came out again and dried everything further.

A cruise boat picked us up and brought us back to Cardwell where we could take a well earned rest, shower and decent meal + cold beers (and had to wash all the clothes..)

Townsville/Yongala
A day later the bus brought us to Townsville, approx. 200 km south of Cardwell. The reaon for stopping here was the possibility to take a dive on the wreck of the Yongala, a ship that hit the reefs in a cyclone in 1911. Now the ship is like an oasis in a barren desert (sandy ocean floor) and millions of fish live and feed there. The ship is totally overgrown with hard and soft corals of beautifull colors. Small and big fish can be seen everywhere. We saw a leopard shark, enormous groopers, seasnakes, big turtles, rays and great schools of Mackarels and tuna hunting for baitfish.
Depite the long journey out there (3 hours each way) and Anita's fish feeding (seasick) it was one of the best dives ever!
More info on Diving in Australia

Sailing to the Whitsunday Islands

When we arrived in Townsville Anita saw an advertisement where crew for a sailing boat was requested. We jumped for this opportunity and contacted George the skipper of the 'Amable', a 35 foot sailing yacht. Even after seeing the state of the ship (and skipper) we were still enthousiastic.
After spending a day to clean up the huge mess on the boat and fixing the most urgent problems we filled the boat with heaps of food and drink enough for a week of sailing. The next day we set sail for Magnetic Island, Horseshoe bay, a small distance to get to know the boat a bit.
We anchored there for two nights and had the chance to BBQ on board of the ship with skippers of some other boats. Fortunately the BBQ was working (with driftwood) because the gas and the microwave were not..)

From Magnetic Island we set sail in the direction of the Whitsunday Island in perfect weather conditions, after finally being able to wake up George to fix the steering and autopilot.
Everything turned out to be working perfectly so during the day we decided to head directly to Hook island, for which we had to sail through the night.

Guided by the stars (and a GPS) we even managed to hook a good sized mackarel, which provided us with a good sashimi lunch and dinner. You can't get it any fresher than this!
After 26 hours we reached Hook island and anchored in Butterfly bay for a snorkel and a sleep. Later we moved to a more protected bay in the south of Hook.

The following days we explored the islands further and finally reached Airlie Beach on Monday the 10th.
We will leave George tomorrow with a long list of things to fix and fantastic memories of a week sailing in good company! There will be no negativity on this boat!

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