2.5 days in Brisbane - Brisbane, Australia
visited Jun 29, 2006
Day 1 was taken up getting Rhys and kieran away. I hadn't seen Rhys in a while, so it was good to catch up. We had Sandy and Celine and the kids over for a barbecue (would you like bleeding, or charcoal?) and otherwise spent the time madly rushing about getting things mum and dad wanted sent up, and making kieran tidy his room. They are joining mum and dad on the boat for 2 months of sailing in PNG, so they needed to leave the place respectable! They finally got away, and I had 1 day to sort myself out to leave. Now it's 2am, and I have to be on a train to the airport at 6. Argh. I had better go! his is the last of the Brisbane 2006 posts. Next post will be from Korea, London, or Copenhagen! I'll have to think of a name for the next itinerary!

South Molle Island - Hamilton Island, Australia
visited Jun 18, 2006
I know I should add these other islands to travel post, but I can't be bothered, so I'm just putting all the whitsunday adventures under hamilton island! Day two of my trip was the last day of the Seawind Rally, so we raced from Stonehaven to South Molle Island. Sailing puts me to sleep, so between that and my severe long term lack of sleep during assignment season, meant I don't remember much of the actual sail. The evening was taken up by the final celebrations for the rally, including the presentations, a seafood buffet, and a rather dreadful cruise-ship style floor show called "flames of polynesia". The next morning my mother decided exploring the tracks in the south molle national park would be a good idea. We did find some nice views, but I think and I did enjoy it, but I'm still glad we didn't climb the major hill! The next days turned out to be less than fine - we snorkelled in the brief moments of sunshine, and did not much when it rained. I read lots of books. It was nice. And the snorkelling was good - in Butterfly Bay we saw a whole herd of Maori Rass - great big gentle fish, each of them about a metre or more long! It was impressive. As was the coral - better than we saw at Keppel in April! We left the Whitsundays to head north, stopping in Gloucester passage (Monte's "resort" which was the most low-key resort I had ever seen!) and Shark Bay (Cape Upstart) where we went swimming at approximately shark feeding time (ok, pretty sill in hindsight, but we didn't see any sharks, so it was all good).

5 minutes on hamilton - Hamilton Island, Australia
visited Jun 16, 2006
Flew in to hamilton to meet my parents. Mum swore she saw elton john getting off the plane, but when she pointed him out (waiting for his luggage with the rest of us plebs) it really wasn't him, although she kept saying it was. Looked nothing like him. There weren't any buses back tot he marina, and everyone else on the plane had a resort bus to collect them, but us grotty yachties divided my luggage between us (I had 15kg of stuff mum and dad asked me to bring up, plus my stuff!) and trudged over the hill to the marina, where the boat was already overstaying the paid time in the marina, so we pretty much leapt aboard and left. A lovely sail to Nara inlet, where we met up with Joy and Chirs on Esprit, had dinner, and crashed. I think it was about 7.30 when I fell asleep! I think I really need this holiday!

Finished! - Brisbane, Australia
visited Jun 16, 2006
It nearly killed me, but I finished all my assignments. And a mere 6 hours or so before my flight north. Now I have two weeks of whitsundays and far north queensland to look forward to! And NO UNI WORK!!!! until next year that is...

The worlds seems to have survived... - Brisbane, Australia
visited Jun 7, 2006
So it's half an hour after the end of the 6/6/06, and we appear to still be here. Admittedly I haven't been out of the house since about 8pm, so it's possible the rest of the world has ceased to exist. Or that the world was sucked into hell, but they couldn't be bothered with australia. Or maybe I just didn't notice. I've had my head down doing assignments. At the end of Pirates, when life returned to something resembling normal, I had 5 to do. I've done 2 of them. I now have exactly a week until I leave for the whitsundays, and I'm halfway through assignment number 3. Will hopefully have it done before bed tomorrow night. That leaves me a whole 6 days to write the other 2 - only 4000 words worth. No problem. Just don't expect any updates between now and then. But then, there will be lots of exciting new updates. I have a wild plan. After my two weeks in the whitsundays, I have three days in Brisbane again, then I fly to Copenhagen (via a night on an airport floor in london) for 5 days of festival, then england for 4 weeks of work, then israel for more festival, then travelling around the middle east with Kate, ending up in Egypt, then flying to Morocco, and travelling up to portugal, then on, still overland, to Edinburgh. From there, I return to london to fly to korea, then on to Japan for 3 months more work (I have to do some occasionally), then back to Aus, via Korea again. I'll give a prize to anyone whocan come up with a decent name for the Itinerary for that trip!