Priit entered the coordinates into his GPS device and off we went. An interesting fact, that I have not yet mentioned, is that highways don't just have numbers here, they also have names. And it is only in Australia, that you would encounter a highway called Bruce. Bruce Highway runs from just north of Brisbane to Cairns - a distance of about 1700 km. From Brisbane to the northern part of Sunshine Coast, it is a dual carriageway and from there on, it is a single carriageway with overtaking lanes every so often. So, our GPS route showed us driving up the Bruce, but then taking a shortcut that would cut off about 100 km of the journey. We figured, since it showed as a major road on the map, it would be just another highway going more inland than the Bruce. But we had no idea how wrong we were...
We had agreed, that I would stay awake at home, to ensure we did not sleep in so Priit could get a couple of hours' sleep before the drive up. Then I would sleep in the car, but when he got too tired, he could wake me and I could keep driving. So, there I was, peacefully napping in my seat, when I was suddenly woken by a lot of shaking. We had hit a dirt road - that was our shortcut. It took us through several ranches - evidenced by the cattle grids on the ground and constant warning signs to mind the livestock. Fortunately, the road was quite good, but there were signposts next to the road indicating water levels. We were lucky it had not rained (summer in the tropics can be quite wet). You can see 4-wheel-drive cars everywhere with exhaust pipes up in the air on the driver's side. These are especially designed to help drive through flooded areas. Well, we did not have a car like that. So, finally, we were through that stretch of road and agreed to take the longer route back.
A little while longer and it started to get light. And then it suddenly a beautiful sunrise!
Some of the roadside adverts here are good fun:
Around 7am we got to Rockhampton.
It looked like a nice town. It has a zoo and a botanical garden. Also, the CQU (Central Queensland University) campus there is the biggest one. CQU has several campuses in different big cities in Queensland, but this one is like a small town itself. We drove past it to Rosslyn Bay to the marina our cruise was supposed to start from.
There are all kinds of traffic signs here. :)
When we got to Rosslyn Bay, we paid for our day cruise and then went to find some breakfast.
We ended up waiting for quite a while as they forgot about us and in the end we could only drink our coffees there and take the food with us.
That's the marina. We kept looking at the boats and dreaming of having one of these ourselves one day to sail around Australia. In my dreams..... :P
And yes, you heard it right... Priit does drink coffee now. He never used to in Estonia, but here is the proof - Priit with his morning latte.
That was just couple of moments after we had spotted a shark swimming in the water. The guides told us later that the waters between the mainland and the islands were quite shark infested. Not that encouraging considering what we did later... but you will see some photos of it below.
When we got closer to the island, we could not see a harbour and we were wondering how the people who were staying on the island would get off the boat. But, it just drove onto the beach and lowered the walkway to allow people to get on shore with their suitcases.
As we had an hour to spend before the next activities, we decided to take a walk on the beach. This enclosed area has a sign that said there was a turtle's nest there. We could not see anything, but I think the sand was a bit higher, so there could have been turtles' eggs there.
We also made our way to the local tourist trap where there were lots of fun T-shirts. Priit took a special liking to this one, but since there wasn't his size there, he didn't get it.
Before going back on the boat, we went to swim in the sea. I figured that the best way not to get burnt being out all day was to wear board shorts and a surf T-shirt. There was a 1-litre bottle of 30 SPF suncream on the counter on the boat for anybody to use as well.
The first activity was to take a glass-bottomed boat out to another nearby island and to see the corals there. Our guide also fed the fish, so I tried to get some photos, but overall, I think these do not do justice to the actual sights we saw.
After our hour out with the glass-bottomed boat, we had lunch on the big boat. It was a decent lunch. There were lots of salads and fruit and they had a BBQ grill on the boat, which the one member of the crew had been using to grill meat and sausages on while the other two took us out to sea.
That was my lovely plateful of food.
... and this is Priit with his.
There was plenty of food for everybody and we ate enough to give us energy for the next activity. This was snorkeling. The snorkeling equipment was provided by the cruise. We spent an hour or more off the coast looking at corals and fish. There was a wide variety of fish out there. We also saw the clown fish made famous in Finding Nemo .
When we bought our tickets for the cruise, I also bought a disposable waterproof camera. I had never used one before, so I didn't know what to expect. I am not sure whether it was the quality of the film or my inability to take photos under, water, but a selection of the results of that hour's activities is below:
.....and that is Priit. For some reason, the colours are a bit dull. There were way more colours in the corals.
After snorkeling, the next activity was boomnetting. I had never heard of that, but I quickly understood it once the boat started moving and the guide released the net that had been on deck at the back of the boat into the water.
All you had to do was to climb down the net and hold on to it while the boat was moving. We were going to be "shark bait". :D
There were also two ropes on each side of the net that you could hold on to. Priit was the first to try it. He just held on to the rope and jumped it. It did not look too difficult. But soon I could see that the man on the left got tired and tried to hold on to the net instead. One of our guides drove a small boat a short distance behind us as when some people, especially young girls, got tired of holding on to the net and could not pull themselves back up, they just let go and the boat picked them up and brought back to the big boat.
Here are just a couple of more photos of Priit enjoying boomnetting:
You can also see the small boat following in the distance.
It turns out that Priit is not only just like a bird in the sky, but also like a fish in the water. I wonder what that makes him? Semiaquatic?
Since, all the kids on the cruise were taking turns occupying the nets, I thought that it would not be too difficult to use the rope, like Priit had done. The instructor warned me that as the boat was moving, I had to hold on really tight, as when I jumped in, I would feel the rope pull really hard.
Boy, was he right! I was holding on for my dear life, but I could not let go and allow the small boat to pick me up. It would just not have been right.
So, I finally managed to get hold of the net and enjoy the ride.
After that we were given tea and cookies and we returned to the island to pick up those who just wanted the ferry service back to the mainland.
Overall, we felt that the day trip had been worth driving there all night and definitely worth its cost.
We got back to the mainland around 4.30 pm and drove to Rockhampton to see if we could use the remaining hours of sunlight to see something else before starting our long drive back.
The zoo and botanical gardens were next to each other, somewhat overlapping each other. The zoo was closed, so we took a walk in the botanical gardens. We could see some animals through the fence.
These dingos were playing with each other. Watching them you could not tell they were not dogs.
There were kangaroos, of course...
I found a family of geese to bother. They were quite patient with the photo session. :)
I could not believe the size of these bamboos.
All swans used to be presumed to be white until black swans were discovered in Australia in the 18th century.
On our way back to the car we noticed lots of little noses sticking out of the water. We thought they might be small alligators, so we went closer to investigate. They turned out to be turtles. There were more than fifty of them around. Priit was very tempted to take one home. :P
We spent the rest of the evening driving Rockhampton looking at houses and finding a place to eat.
These are called Queenslanders. These houses are built on stumps, raised above ground to allow air to circulate. This was an early version of air conditioning. However, the lower the stumps, the more difficult it is to keep pests away from under the house. All kinds of bugs make their home there. I would be constantly worrying about cockroaches and other bugs with a house like that. They do look beautiful, though.
After dinner, we drove back taking turns to drive.
We spent Sunday recovering from the trip. I was not surprised, that my arms and shoulders were aching really badly from the boomnetting experience. :)
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