Australia

9th March

This morning we woke up to guess what.. more rain. Kinda getting used to the fact we would always be wet from now on so it no longer bothers us. Car 1 woke up late, being in charge of breakfast everyone got an extra little bit of a lie in. Frying bread to make toast was strange and made it seem like you were putting jam on oily french toast.

All the boys were hungover so once again I drove us to Eli Creek – our second freshwater visit.

I can see how appealing this natural lazy river would be in summer but, the water was freezing.

Us girls were all ready and waiting in our swimsuits yet, the boys were huddled up with Alex. We thought this was suspicious especially as they then sprinted off – not trusting them we sprinted after them. Getting us all in the water for a group picture took a while as it was icy cold – girls in front and boys in the back.

We were right not to trust the boys – they had hatched a horrid plan, they splashed us – very cold and unexpected but, funny.

Swimming, floating or walking we all pretty much went round the lazy rover twice before, feeling too frozen to continue.

The river fed out into a lagoon on the beach where the rain hit you so hard it was like little pellets of ice. Jumping back into our cars I drove us back to the campsite along the beach. Stopping at the headland we all voted on not doing Indian Heads, because once parked it was a 10 minute hike up the cliff and the visibility was poor 1 meter in front. This was the place aboriginals often got cornered by settlers when they invaded this island.

On the way back through the sand road and deep creek we stopped off at the wreck SS Maheno. This ship was left on this beach for Australian Bombers to perform target practice drills in WWll. Even though it was sold to Japan for scrap Japan was against Australia so they didn’t care.

The boys in our car were messing around and we’re the only ones to get out. They kept radioing Alex saying they wanted to go on a rainy walk – I couldn’t stop laughing at the other cars responses.

Josh then drove us to the Champagne pools. He looked like one cool Aussie wannabe.

The recent cyclones had washed sand into the pools, shrinking them to a fraction of their size. Whilst us girls stayed in the water and small waterfall sheltering from the pelting rain the boys were kicking around a football. It had also trapped loads of Foraminifera, now rotting, hence the sulphur smell. Very grim, but we had Morton Islands Champagne pools as a good memory.

It rained so much we got some good news!

Alex received a message from his boss saying the campsite was/going to be under too much water and he’d arranged for us to stay in the hostel for free.

Woo! A hot shower and proper bed.

I offered to drive so the boys could drink their goon in the car and they had endless fun singing ‘holy goon’. I couldn’t stop laughing and they were smashed by the time we got to the hostel, continuing with cocktails for the rest of the night.