One of the reasons I wanted to do an advanced diving course at Magnetic Island was that it includes a day-trip to the site of the wreck of the SS Yongala, supposedly one of the best dive sites in the world.
Unfortunately I couldn’t do the course due to (relatively) poor weather, but yesterday (my last full day in Australia) I was able to go out on the day trip with Adrenalin Dive, based in Townsville.
I had two ~30-minute dives with a maximum depth of 23 metres (The deepest I’d been previously was 12 metres!). The marine life at the wreck was incredible! There’s a huge variety of fish, including a couple of giant Groupers and the odd Reef Shark but the highlight for me had to be the Hawksbill Turtles that lived in and around the wreck.
Although the visibility was less than 10 metres (I’m told 20+ metres is normal), these were undoubtedly the best dives I’ve done, and a great way to end my time in Australia.
I’m currently sitting in the airport at Cairns waiting on my flight to Tokyo. I’ve still got about an hour before boarding, but that’s alright, there’s free wireless here!
It’s a little strange to be leaving the country I’ve been travelling through for the last 7 months or so. It seems I’ve been here long enough that other travellers look at me and think I must have some idea what I’m doing with this travel lark! I ended up helping a couple of people plan trips down the East coast to Melbourne while I was sitting on Magnetic Island! I don’t mind it all. I asked the same questions 6-months ago. It’s just a little strange being “that guy” now!
Anyway. Today I’m travelling from a country I know quite a bit about, to one that I’m relatively clueless about. I can’t wait to see it though! Lots of raw fish and robots everywhere! Awesome! That, and I’m meeting my parents and brother there. That should be good too!
During the Second World War, Townsville was an important base for supply ships and troops. In order to defend it from the Japanese fleet, two huge gun emplacements were created on Magnetic Island along with the command and signals buildings needed to support them.
I didn’t have time to see them the last time I was on Magnetic Island, but time isn’t really an issue now, so I walked up there this afternoon and got some great views of both the bay and the interior of the island!
I’ve been in Sydney since returning from New Zealand. To be honest, apart from catching up with some of the people I met in New Zealand, I haven’t been doing very much and it feels like I’m just killing time before my flight to Tokyo.
I think I’ve done everything I’d planned on doing in Australia, and seeing as I’m departing from Cairns and have to travel up the coast again anyway, I’ve decided to go back to Magnetic Island for a while.
I’m hoping to do an Advanced Open Water diving course while I’m there, but even if it doesn’t go ahead, I think I’d prefer to kill time on a small island than in Australia’s biggest city!
The Australians don’t really go for this political correctness lark. To illustrate this, I present a poster for the Scary Canary’s (the Base hostel bar) celebration of Barack Obama’s inauguration.
Brilliant!
For those who don’t know, Coon is a brand of Australian cheese (I still laugh when I see it in the supermarket!), and Goon is disgustingly cheap wine, usually sold in 4 litre bags. Great stuff!
I’ve been back in Sydney for a couple of weeks now, mostly trying to sort out what I’m going to do for the next few months. I was pretty much set until a few days ago when I tried to confirm new dates for my flights back to Aberdeen (via Tokyo).
It seems that my travel agent has sold me an open ticket that isn’t all that open. I can make changes to my flights, but not the changes I actually want to make! For example, Qantas tell me that the Sydney to Tokyo flight on the date I requested is full, but their website tells me that there are plenty of economy seats still available. Aparently these seats are part of a sale, and not available to customers who have already booked, the end result being that I had to cancel the remaining portion of my ticket, and book new flights myself. To say I’m not very happy about that is an understatement.
I’m thinking my travel agent is mostly at fault here, but I can’t help think that Qantas are being a little unreasonable too.
Anyway, I’m now flying to Tokyo from Cairns, which isn’t so bad as I’d planned to head up that way again to do some diving. Hopefully the weather will have cooled a little by the end of March! As a result of all these changes, I’m planning on heading over to New Zealand next week until the beginning of March.
New Zealand was always a bit of an after-thought on this trip. It was somewhere I really wanted to visit, but dependent on whether I had the time and money to do it. I’ve got a rough idea of what I’d like to see, but no real idea about how long it will take to get around. I travelled from Cairns to Sydney in around seven weeks, so hopefully five will be enough for New Zealand.
After almost 3-months, I’m leaving Geelong this afternoon and flying back up to Sydney. I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do once I get there yet, but getting a job is pretty low on the list of priorities at the moment.
I’m flying out to Tokyo at the end of March, and I want to spend some time in New Zealand before I leave, so that only really leaves me with 6-8 weeks in Australia. Even if I found a job tomorrow, I don’t think there would be much point in it!
Instead, I’m planning on heading back up to Magnetic Island to get my SSI Advanced diving certificate, then maybe up to Cairns to dive at the Great Barrier Reef, if I can stand the tropical heat, that is!
Other than that, I’ll most likely just be catching up with the guys that stayed in Sydney. Possibly fly out to Perth to see Martin.
If I can do all that, I’ll have seen more of Australia than a lot of Australians!
New Year’s Eve from around Federation Square, Melbourne.
Christmas isn’t supposed to be hot. I’ve been thoroughly confused by the lack of ice, snow and freezing rain for the last month or so. The lack of rubbish Christmas songs on the radio is quite refreshing, but it’s a Pyrrhic victory really — Fairytale of New York is nowhere to be found (It seems that nobody here has even heard of it!).
Apparently the weather has been pretty mild for the last week or so though. I’m told that most Christmases down here are spent avoiding the North Wind, supposedly similar to standing in front of a huge hair-dryer while somebody throws dust at you. So it could be worse!
Apart from the odd weather, Christmas has been quite nice really. Roast lunch with Meg’s family, enough cold meat to last a couple of days, and little neoprene tubes to keep bottles of beer cold!
It’s all been very interesting anyway!
Since I finished travelling down the East Coast at the end of October I’ve been searching for an IT job in the Melbourne area. This hasn’t been going particularly well. One of the main problems is that nothing seems to happen very quickly over here, and with the New Year fast approaching, I don’t think much is going to change over the next few weeks.
Rather than sit around doing practically nothing I’ve decided to book a flight down to Tasmania, rent a car, and drive around the island for a week. I’m flying tomorrow and other than staying a couple of nights in Hobart, I don’t really have much of a plan. I think I’d like to stick mostly to the coastal routes rather than use the main inland highway between Hobart and Launceston. I’ve heard the scenery around the island described as “spectacular” so I’d like to see as much of it as I can while I’m there!
I’ve called a few dive centres to try to organise some SCUBA diving either around Hobart or further up the East coast off Bicheno. This has exposed one of the downsides to travelling alone — I have no diving buddy. This, combined with my relative inexperience, means that I’ll probably just have to wait until a boat goes out and hope that I can be slotted in with the group. Hopefully something will turn up, as I haven’t been diving since I was sailing around the Whitsunday Islands.
