Tim and Mari’s World Tour #8

The Car – “The Blue Panda”

This is our baby – the little blue car that is going to get us around the great country of Australia. This is the romantic spot that Tim and I spent New Year’s eve. I slept through it and Tim woke up just in time to listen to it on the radio. Oh well.

Diving Trip – Whitsunday Islands – Great Barrier Reef

As the boredom of living out of the back of our car was really beginning to set in, a great adventure was just about to start…..We booked onto a sailboat, that would take us cruising around the islands as well as give us 2 nights sleep and 8 dives.

But at the last minute, the boat was cancelled and our trip seemed to be in ruins. Fortunately the sun was shining in Oz that day as we were given a replacement trip for the same price which included two night dives and another nights accommodation, for the same price. The only catch was that we lost out on the sailboat, this boat was a big diesel house-boat that could take 35 people.

The trip was great however, we dove four times the first two days and then twice on the last day. The first two days were basically get up, eat, dive, eat, dive, nap, dive, eat, dive, drink beer, and go to bed.

The cook on board was fantastic, and kept the hungry hoards full. As it turned out, Tim had to pull her out of the water, because her regulator was free flowing. He got her out with only 40 bar left in her tank..(not too much).

I won’t bore you with the description of each dive, but I will say that each was more beautiful than the last and even though I hadn’t dove many times before we came here, my confidence and ability have improved dramatically. The two night dives that we did were absolutely amazing. The night beams of our flashlights shown through the dark expanses of the water and picked up the reflections of beautiful and interesting creatures.

Many different types of shrimp shown in the darkness, their antenna and legs floating gracefully through the water. We swam with a Epaulette shark that whizzed past our feet in the darkness. Tim saw a carpet shark, and one of our highlights was swimming over a coral head to discover a sleeping white-tipped reef shark. We could swim within 5 feet and he never woke up (good thing too).

On the second night dive we swam at a coral where the Green sea turtles come in to sleep at night. Within 5 minutes of being in the water a huge (approx 5 feet long carapace) turtle swam right past us and turned and swam around us for a while.

It’s is very hard to tell all the highlights of all ten dives, however some of the most interesting sights that stood out were the large moray eels, and the number of rays of all shapes and sizes, the parrot fish, giant clams, the beautiful array of coral and the chance to do that many dives in such a short amount of time. It was a chance that we will never forget.

On January 31 at 4pm we left the boat. We were very tired and worn out. We wanted to rest, but the new millennium was about to start. We purchased some wine and headed out to the country.

Under the stars, we listened to our short wave. We heralded in the new year, and over the course of the next 25 hours, we listened to segments of every other time zone’s celebration. We were ecstatic when we heard “Great Big Sea” for Newfoundland, and “The Tragically Hip” for Toronto. It was our first bit of Canadiana in over two months.

On the first of January, we moved to a nearby park, called Bowling Green Bay National Park. We spent three days resting and recovering, and had a wonderful time. Every night, over 20 different wallabies came within one square kilometer. We even had a tame kangaroo.

We are currently in the Queensland Outback, and there is a real reason it is called the outback, with 200km between close towns. We will soon be in the Northern Territory.

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