Day 211-15 - Rainbow Beach- Airlie Beach

(I am writing these entries on the 23rd, so please forgive their brevity - it's been a busy week, much has happened and much forgotten too.)

Day 211 (Tuesday 13th) - Quiet Day, Stupid Night

Today was a day of admin and stuff, I sorted out my flights down to Sydney and beyond - to Sydney on the 31st, Melbourne on the 3rd of June, Christchurch on the 10th, LA on the 26th. I think I'm going to have to skip Jamaica and Barbados too (bugger!) as it's time to rush... After sorting all this out I lay by the pool with Seppi & Pablo, had a pretty good day and Seppi cooked us a vegetable soup for dinner. We entered the Quiz at the hostel (with Brian) and came second by two points, as we screwed up the music round. We got a few takeaway beers ($1 cheaper) and sat by the pool (10m away) to drink them. We were joined by Rich and Dave, who work there, who were practising their firespinning, which was a nice spectacle as we chatted. Pablo and I took it upon ourselves to dispose of the leftover bag of goon from Fraser Island, which we took down to the beach and shared with a load of people around a campfire. We swiftly lost each other, talked nonsense to strangers, and stumbled home.

Day 212 (Wednesday 14th) - Rainbow Beach - Hervey Bay

I woke up with 5 minutes to spare before checkout, feeling like death. We slunk around until 3, when I said a sad goodbye to Seppi and Pablo and got my bus to Hervey Bay. I'll miss Pablo, he was a really cool bloke. Anyway, at Hervey Bay I had all you can eat Pizza for $10, had a beer and watched Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, which was awesome.

Day 213 (Thursday 15th) - Hervey Bay - Kroombit

A very early start today, as the bus picked us up before 7. We seemed to drive for ever, with a few stops along the way, before arriving at the Kroombit Cattle Station around 1530. We saddled up on our horses up (I had Ledger), and spent the next couple of hours mustering goats, while the sun set over the outback. we then took part in a goat rodeo, which involved teams of three catching, flipping and fake branding goats. We then had an awesome roast dinner and a few beers, were taught to crack a whip (resulting in many sore arms the following day), then it was time for the Mechanical bull. Lots of people were really crap at this, I only managed two seconds, but a few people were naturals and stayed on for 30 seconds or so. Seline, a girl who worked there, was incredible - she rode the wrong end of it without a handle, got to her feet and surfed on it, did 360s and all sorts of awesome stuff. In exchange for a case of beer, a chap called Will volunteered to do it naked - this was a rather horrific spectacle, as he is a large, blonde, inexplicably shaven rugby player. Noone else went on the bull after him.

We played a few drinking games around the fire, and then some of these made it back to the room, before sleeping at about half two.

Day 214 (Friday 16th) - Kroombit to Airlie Beach

Eugh, today we were up at half six to allow some people to do some clay pigeon shooting which we hadn't been able to do yesterday. We drove for ages, swapped drivers, and made loads of seemingly unnecessary stops. Due to our lateness - a knock on effect from Hayley doing her pick-ups in the wrong order in Hervey Bay, apparently - we had to skip outback lawn bowls, which I had been looking forward to. The girl sitting across from me is really beginning to bug me - she is a teacher and has a wierd way of talking to you like you are a child, while coming across as being on about 12 herself. Also, she has that teacher's arrogance, an incredibly large faith in the truth of her own opinions and so on. We arrived at Airlie Beach late,and for some reason Forrest, our driver, chose to get into a tumble dryer for a minute and a half four our amusement. This was actually pretty impressive, if a little bizarre. I had possibly the best shower I have had in Australia, washing the cattle station dirt off me, then met a load of people from the bus for dinner & beers at Morocco's. We drank here for a bit, went to Beaches for cheap snakebites, then back to Morocco's where we caught the end of the wet T-shirt competition. This was at the final stage, just two girls wearing just bikini bottoms having jugs of water poured over them while gyrating around the stage/staff. This all felt a bit wierd to be honest, so I left shortly after it was over (we had to see who won, of course - the English girl beat the Aussie).

Day 215 (Saturday 17th) - A Frustrating Day

I packed and checked in for my boat trip, and was issued with a stinger suit - the rumours I had heard about the stinger season being over were clearly false. I spent the day reading by the lagoon, (which was surrounded by hot girls) until sunset, then I take a bus to my boat at seven tonight. Today has just seemed really full of hassle - packing, repacking, luggage storage, forgetting everything, can't find any blah blah blah. I can't wait to get on that boat.