Saturday 11 August 2007

Day Something Else - Agnes Water & 1770

Hello all! Hope your all good - let me start by saying that i'm in a great mood at the moment after my little low a few days ago. As I suspected, I think I was pretty exhuasted from the Fraser Island leg, and its taken me a few days to get back up to speed.

That said, we've been busy. From Rainbow Beach we drived a few hours further north (ever north, ever north it seems) to the dreaded Bundeberg - home of the chain gang worked slave dwelling backpacker army that picks the fruit around here for a pitetence. Just ask Emilie about it some time (I didn't even go near it from the very start)/ Anyway, it was actually pretty good fun to stay there - tiny little hostel, we were the only non asian people there, got dinner and a conversation from a Korean girl Emilie met when working here, and the next day we hit up the Bundeberg Rum Factory tour before encountering a bizarre - but utterly captivating - old Russian man named Igor who was born in South Africa and fought in the cold war proxie/ wars of independence/ civil wars/ mercenary armies of Africa in the 1960s. To top it all off we ended up with a local delicacy, battered fish with yes, battered chips.

From there we headed north still further to a tiny little twin town area called Agnes Water and The Town of 1770 (the place of Cook's second landing in Australia). Fantastic little place, best backpackers I have ever stayed at I think (certainly in terms of facilities and services) and the craziest thing is the town is set in something like 200km of coast national park, with just 8km for the towns - they only got the dirt road sealed 3 years ago! So yesterday we went to 1770 and did a fantastic 3 hour sunset sea kayak tour, which was awesome (drank goon on the beach and ate ginger bread cake) and today we went out the Lady Musgrave Island, the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef - just absolutely amazin - easily one of the very best things I've ever done, without a doubt. And joy of joys, I've finally had a chance to look at my pics and the camera lense is fine, and the photos are frankly fucking awesome. They're also massive, so I'm going to have to figure something out so I can actually share them with you guys. I'll stick just the one or two up for now.

So whats next? Well, tomorrow I'm going on a 1.5 hour flight around the bay and over the national park and coast, landing on a beach and having some fresh oysters! In the afternoon we're leaving to do a big big drive in a convoy up to a national park to go platypus watching with some friends we've made along the way - two irish guys, a french guy and a dutch girl - looking forward to it a lot!

Well, its getting late, I've been up since 6.30am, and I'm pretty tired (plusthis is about $5 an hour online) so I'm going to shoot - speak to you soon!

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