Cairns (Jun 26 - Jul 3)

It’s hard to describe how you feel returning from a 3-day-trip with 11 dives. You feel more than knackered and so it took me some days to recover. Basically every muscle in my body hurt and I would never have expected it to be that strenuous.

So I took it easy, relaxed for some days, updated this blog and watched the 8^th season of 24.

After some days Suzi checked in at the YHA and so we brought each other up to speed what we have been up to since Rockhampton. We sat down and the next time I looked at my watch it was 4.5 hours later. She was also on Maggy but stayed at the other side of the island to do the open water course. Unfortunately she left for Asia some days later and I will most likely not see her on this trip again *sob.

The next day we went for a walk on the esplanade and noticed some ukulele players on a stage. It was the 2010 Cairns Ukulele festival. 

Festival banner, look at those sponsors. Accor and KPMG are apparently everywhere ;-)

Great Barrier Reef (June 23-25)

Having just checked in at the YHA in Cairns I inquired about a trip to the GBR to get to the next level in scuba diving, the advanced open water certification, when I was told that the next course was to commence the next day at 6:20h and that all the courses for the following days were fully booked already. Nice, that gave me 9 hours to do all my laundry, get rid of some more stuff to lighten my backpack and to recover from a 7 hour bus trip. Still, I was really eager to get in the water again and so it was easy to put up with a little less sleep although I knew I had 11 dives in 3 days ahead of me.

Our boat was a purpose built multi million Dollar scuba vessel with about 80 gross tons skippered by a 22-year-old.

Our boat: ScubaPro II

 Our scuba gear for the trip

Magnetic Island (June 20-22)

…or Maggy as it is also called is just 20 minutes off Townsville and is supposed to be the best location to see koalas in the wild. As a matter of course I missed them.

 Leaving Townsville for Maggy in a very nice cat

Townsville (June 16-20)

Townsville is the second largest city in Queensland with about 160k citizens and a lot of military presence in the area. 

So it is not unusual to see fighter planes breaking the sonic barrier over the city. It is also the gateway to the famous Yongala wreck. This is supposed to be one of the top dive site in Queensland but since I cant afford the GBR and Townsville it wasn’t hard to dismiss the Yongala. Still I would have loved to dive that wreck.

Townsville was one of the few places where I didn’t sleep at the YHA. I stayed at Reef Lodge instead which was recommended by Lonely Planet and the night in a 3 share dorm was just 22 bucks. Finally I have come that far north where you don’t have to put on any long clothes anymore and where you can stay up late just wearing shorts.

My room mates were the nicest couple I have ever come across on my trip so far. Grant and Sara from just outside of Belfast were working at a CD/DVD sale in Townsville and planned on staying there for three weeks. I watched the game Germany-Serbia (fu*king hell that sucked) with Grant and was impressed how much he knew about football. We spent entire evenings just talking about stuff and if you ever hear me saying [nei] instead of now then you know where I got it from ;-)

On the way to the hostel I noticed that the rubber on my suitcase wheel became loose and by the time I reached the hostel the rubber was completely gone and the wheel was about to break off. So unfortunately the suitcase just made it a little under 2 month before I had to replace it. In order to prevent that from happening in the future I decided to buy a proper backpack which proofed to be more difficult than expected. I checked out the local stores but those either didn’t have what I was looking for or the rucksacks (they actually use that word) were too dear (another word Grant uses frequently) . Therefore I had to take the bus to the suburbs. A clever bloke would have done that on any day between Monday and Saturday but I watched some movies I got from Sara instead and so decided to go shopping on a Sunday. N1.

I guess I don’t need to tell you how long I had to wait for the busses to get me to and from the store. Anyway, in the end I got what I wanted and so I am now [nei] a proud owner of a BlackWolf CedarCreek 75+15. They had a big sale on and I got the $330 backpack for $175.

Downsizing from 130 litres or however big my suitcase was to 80 litres was quite difficult and it took me quite long to decide what to keep and what to get rid of. In the end I had to let go of a pair of trainers, a sweater, a pair of jeans, my Lonely Planet Eastcoast, lots of ducuments and flyers, my sailing books and my beloved Gnuf hoody (courtesy of Pokerakedmie.com). Sorry for that, Micha. That hoody was really good but since I had never used it Down Under there was no sense in keeping in.

I almost cracked my bones putting on my new backpack and so I had to throw out more stuff in Cairns. From now on I am a genuine backpacker.

Enough of that bag and back to Townsville: There is the only living coral reef on display in the Reef HQ but as I will get to see that myself first hand in Cairns it was probably smarter to save the money. I would have loved to take a look at it, though.

Instead, I climbed castle to get a good view over the city. 

 Castle Hill