Category Archives: Queensland

Silent Night

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Wow.  Just wow. Went on a two day two night sailing trip on a yacht called ‘Silent Night’ and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. Seriously, if I was to name off the top of my head all the best things I’ve ever done.
So we jumped on board on Friday at 2pm, our group consisted of:
3 canadian blokes, very funny, loved to party
3 english blokes who had just become dentists, loved to party
A couple from Liverpool, great value
A couple from Germany, a tad more conservative, but real nice
A young husband and wife from sweden
Me!
Everyone just got along great from the start. The first day we pulled up in a bay for the night and watched the sunset, everyone having a few beers and getting to know each other. I knew then we were onto a winner.
 
Then we woke up on Saturday and went for a snorkel for about an hour, saw some cool things, including a large bull-ray that we all named ‘steve’. They dropped us at Whitehaven beach for a few hours, which mostly consisted of us playing frisbee in the water. Not sure if you’ve heard of Whitehaven, but the sand is white, fine silica, and it is probably the best beach in the world. (although it has no waves so I have to veto that)
 
 
Had a sunet snorkel before the huge night of Saturday kicked off. Everyone got along great and we were all tearing through the beers. The canadians passed around their contribution to the night, and the deckie broke out his guitar. The skipper told us some stories, like the time a few years ago he woke up to discover an orgy on the boat. We all decided that, if that was to happen, we would all pretend that there was an equal number of girls and guys. The night is something that I am going to fail in my attempt to put into words, but the jokes were hilarious, the tunes were pumping, and towards the end we all starting singing in all the words and sitting under the clear star-filled sky I remember lying back looking up getting semi-philisophical about how lucky we were. I was also afraid to stand since there was a good chance I’d end up in the water.
 

I had to work Sunday, but we all booked a table for Sunday night (sans the swedes who had to leave) and once we got there we all introduced a drinking game. The canadians taught me ‘fingers’ which is a version of fives-in, and the english did ’21’ which is sort of like begurkin with numbers. I got everyone to do a boat race, with europe vs the rest of the world, and we kicked ass. I was especially proud to see the German nailing them, he claimed not to drink too often, but I find it hard to believe since he comes from the place where steins were born. I then had a personal race against one of the canadians, and since there were a few other boats groups around, we tried to challenge a few, but no one was in the mood of bliss that we were. Very glad I ended up on this trip, not one of their boring ones. After that we all went out to a club, I had to work the next day so I was home by 2am. Anyway, we all swapped contact details, but that was pretty much the end of a week filled with fun and Michael Jackson jokes. I hear, since he’s mostly plastic, that they are going to melt him down into lego blocks so the kids can play with him for a change.

 

 

Fishing in Mackay

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We were fishing in Mackay and I was pretty excited. The bad news was that it is nearly a two hour drive to Mackay meaning we were up at 4.30am, essentially cancelling any Saturday shenanigans. And what an eventful day it was!

There was me, Judda, Charlie and Craig+Naomi. In front of everyone, Stuart the fishermen, goes right ahead and gets sea sick! All I did for the first two hours was contribute homemade burley off the back of the boat, pretty bloody embarrassing. It was a very quiet day fishing-wise, the quietest most of them have had. (Dad – since Charlie was taking us out I made lunch for everyone, including 12 bananas. I told them the theory and have been banned from taking bananas from now on).

I only caught a little fella that had to be thrown back, a few caught smaller fish. We only got one eating fish for the day. The highlight was Craig hooking a monster, fighting it for 5 minutes before it beat him. A few minutes later Judda hooks a monster, fights his heart out and get him on board. Not only has Judda managed to hook the fish through the gills, but there, in his mouth, is Craig’s lure! It was a mother-in-law fish, I think we will use it for crab bait.

We fished around the islands, I took a few snaps but couldn’t really take any good ones that summed up the majesty of it, but when you are around small islands on a sea of glass, good fun. There are turtles in both these photos, see if you can spot them – you might need the larger photos in the gallery on the right.


Fishing with a handline. I might have been a tad seasick in this photo.

After we got back the real fun began. We were hit by a perfect storm, the tide had turn 20 minutes ago. We were in the bottom of a slippery boat ramp, and it was about an hour until sundown. So what happens? Well the tires of the truck we are using to get it up are spinning, and another guy notices that one of the tyres was moving into the other. The axle of the boat trailer had snapped! In 1 hour it would be underwater and in about an hour and a half it would be dark. Fuck!

So off we all go desperately trying to fix it. We find an axle substitute pretty easily, but the problem is the load bearing bit of still, about 3 inches thick has gone. Without I the trailer collapses. Our first attempt to fix it comprised of two sheets of metal and a hammer stacked up. That exploded nearly straight away, however, we did manage to drive a metre which gave us probably another hour before we were underwater. So off we went again, using whatever we could find around us. I soon found a blanket, which I was going to use to jump a barbwire fence into the constuction yard next door – suddenly Craig emerged from an office building with a great block of wood he had found under some stairs. Using that, Charlie (aka MacGuyver) a rope, that steel pole and two jacks we manged to fix it, with about 30 minutes to spare!

With all that I didn’t get back home until around 9, long day!