Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween!!


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Trick or Treat!


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Have a spooktacular day!

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Wednesday, October 24, 2007

It's Great When Mates Donate....

The Australian Red Cross has had a donor campaign all over the tele and radio lately. Did you know that one blood donation saves three lives? It's not just trauma victims that you will be helping; the majority of the donated blood goes to those with cancer, heart disease, liver and kidney disease, people with haemophilia and to newborn babies and pregnant women.

Amazingly, with all of these people who need blood product to stay alive, only 1 in 30 people donate blood regularly.

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So, can you think of a reason not to lend your arm and become a great Aussie bleeder?

See if you are eligible at: http://www.donateblood.com.au/

Monday, October 15, 2007

Magnetic Island

For our last day in Townsville, we decided to hop the ferry to Magnetic Island just off the Coast to see if there was any snorkeling to be had, since our dive trip had been called on account of weather.

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The island is rocky granite and quite hilly which makes it pretty funny that the primary mode of transportation is the moke. The glorified golf cart was actually quite tricky to drive and the steep ascents and descents and sharp curves gave me flashbacks to the Hana Highway debacle. Sometimes, I truly thought we were going to start rolling backwards or I was going to be flung from cart when Jon whipped around turns. Of course, he loved every minute of it!

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Ironically enough, most of the island is a no-go moke zone. So, we had to hike down to our snorkelling spot at Nelly Bay. Visability was absolute crap and we had no stinger suits, so it wasn't worth our lives to see nothing but swirling sand. We went down to the main drag on the island for lunch and a long walk along the bay.

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With the rest of the afternoon to kill, Jon got some thrills by driving the mope up and down the island from end to end over and over. I was never so happy to hand back the keys to a rental car.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

S.S. Yongala

The Yongala is one of the best dive spots in all of Australia, perhaps the world. The ship sank in a cyclone in 1911 and remained undiscovered for 50 years. The wreck now lies on its starboard side in 14-28 metres of water and at 109m long is the largest and most intact, historic shipwreck in Australian waters. Jon was so excited to have a chance to make this dive, but....

Townsville continued to be troublesome. There were only a few dive operators running trips to the Yongala and only one in the days that we were in town. The only other diving option was to go out to the Great Barrier Reef on one of those cattle herding FantaSea boats, which neither of us were keen to do. We visited the one boat going out to the wreck within our time frame and we were told that the conditions had been so terrible for the last few weeks and there was a snowball's chance in hell that we were going to get to the site. Brilliant, absolutely bloody brilliant. Townsville had done it once again.

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Jon was shattered. He had wanted to go diving so badly. Think of what a three year old would look like if you told them Christmas was cancelled and you've got half the idea. As a poor substitute, we went to the aquarium and he walked around all forlorn that he couldn't swim with the fish.

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Reef HQ was quite impressive. The centrepiece is a 2.5 million litre tank of living coral habitat with all of the colourful fish, eels, rays, turtles and sharks. There is a tank of predatory animals that replicates the flora and fauna found at the Yongala complete with a replica shipwreck. Didn't help matters much. The Night Tank was staggering with glow in the dark fish and luminescent fish.

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Still, we had fun and the wreck will be there to dive later. The pirate toy Jon got at the gift shop made him feel a little bit better and we went off to try the TexMex restaurant by our hotel.

It had to be done. The question had to be answered: Can a place that is neither Tex or Mex make a good burrito? The answer is a resounding no.

The upside: American beer (for nostalgia's sake) which can be hard to come by here
The downside: Montezuma's revenge knows no bounds

Saturday, October 13, 2007

On The Road Again, Townsville

Driving to Townsville seemed like such a good idea at the time, to use Jon's favorite phrase. It was such a long, tedious drive on along the motorway. The whole day was a blur and there was much talk of abandoning our hotel reservations and bailing out in Airlie Beach.

We plugged on in hopes of getting on a dive trip out to the SS Yongala and we arrived in Townsville around midnight, bleary eyed is putting it mildly.

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We set off in the morning to walk around the Saturday markets. Jon quickly abandoned me when he spied a Red Sox game on the TV in a sports bar. Beer and brunch was all the boy needed to hear; he disappeared into the dark back room into the glow of the big screen tv. He finally emerged when the locals turned off his game to watch the cricket and we were off to the Billabong Wildlife Sanctuary.

On first glance, the place is not exactly aesthetically appealing. First impressions be damned, I was going to cuddle a wombat if I had to do so in a porta-loo. We walked around while we waited for the cuddle time and saw all of the animal exhibits in under 10 minutes. With a half an hour to burn, we sat and fed the ducks.

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Finally the hour was upon us, Belle the wombat came out to visit with the public. They are just the most adorable little creatures, but quite bristle-like when you touch them. We did our little cuddle and photos with Belle and started chatting to the keeper who happened to be from America. She was just about to go check in on the koalas and invited us to come on a little "behind the scenes" tour.

Normally, when you see koalas they are just lounging and lazily stuffing their cute little faces with eucalyptus leaves. When we entered the enclosure with the keeper, one of the little fur balls came down from his perch and was trotting around sniffing at our feet.

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The greatest moment was when she pulled down one of the Momma Koala's pouches to reveal a little baby! It was a sight to make your heart melt.

After leaving the wildlife sanctuary, we explored Townsville a little bit. Our hopes had been to go for a swim in the lagoon, a man-made swimming area because of the prevalence of dangerous marine stingers in the area. Our bad luck, there was no water in the lagoon.

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Plan B was to set off and grab a bite to eat. At 3:00pm, this is easier said than done. Lunch is no longer being served and dinner is not yet being served, so the kitchens at most restaurants are closed. We tried every restaurant on the Esplanade with no luck, so it was back to the hotel for a room service snack grumbling about how ridiculous the situation was.

We had tried to get reservations at the restaurant at casino restaurant because it was supposed to be the nicest in town (the criteria being that they have tablecloths), but the only serve on select nights during the week and we couldn't get a booking. Townsville was just not being kind to us at this point.

The steak house across the street was settled for and the only highlight of the meal was the salt was pink. Australian pink salt, who knew?

Too tired from his early morning boozing to go out on the town, Jon fell asleep shortly after the sun set leaving me to catch up on my movie viewing and find a dive operator to go out to the SS Yongala the following day - easier said then done.