Going North to Townsville Sun 19/01/03   Flew into Townsville from Sydney in the morning and got a ride to the Civic Guest House, which turned out to be very well run and rather nice. Spent the rest of the day at swimming at the olympic size pool close to the Strand and around the city. Met some nice English guys staying at the hostel with whom I went out for dinner at "the Brewery" followed by a visit to the cinema to watch "Analyse that" - a thoroughly entertaining film. Townsville Break Mon 20/01/03   Disaster struck after I had gotten up for a 6:30 departure to the SS Yongala, which happened to be at a dive store in town, however this I only found out after I had waited at the hostel for 30 minutes for a pickup and then had been wandering round the two harbours in Townsville for about an hour. By this time the boat had of course already left, which saved me quite a bit of money but I also missed out on one of the best dive sites in Australia - bummer. Decided to have a quiet day after that, doing some swimming and excercise as well as having an Internet-update session.	no map Civic Guest House 262 Walker St. - Ph: 1800 646 619
The Whitsunday Diving Adventure Tue 21/1/2003   Left on the Greyhound bus from Townsville to Airlie Beach where we arrived at 2pm. Had a look round town and managed to buy a replacement for my trowsers I had trown away days earlier in Sydney - finally! Then went to the Reef Dive store and signed my life away for a 3 day and 3 night dive adventure on the Tropic Princess, leaving that night. (Reefdive cost AU$ 480 with the only other alternative on Tuesday being Oceania costing AU$ 560 yet with a nicer and larger boat - and no internet search results) The group was made up about 50/50 students vs experienced divers, with the students going back to land on the second day. The instructors and staff were very friendly and helpful, the facilities on the boat were pretty good and so was the very plentiful food, all in all a relaxed and welcoming vibe. After an afternoon briefing followd by some lame fast food dinner in town we met up again at 7pm to go onto the boat and head out towards the outer Whitsunday Islands where we spent the night in one of the anchor points in a sheltered bay. From there we would head out to the outer parts of the reef the next morning. First Day Diving Wed 21/1/2003   Started early and arrived at our diving site, called Bait Reef at around 8 am. We would be diving there for the whole day visiting various subsections of the Reef in the course of our 4 dives (including one night dive!) that day. The visibility was pretty poor around 12 metres and the diving was not as interesting as I had experienced in Tofo, Mocambique. All in all managed to gain some experience and the more you feel comfortable under water, the more stuff you see and the more you enjoy diving. Not much else to say apart from an awesome sunset of which I naturally took some photographs. During the day I also tried to photograph some of the fish with a disposable camera but I will only find out later if the pictures actually turn out well. Different Dive Site and More Stuff. Thu 22/1/2003   Did one more dive in the morning at the Bait Reef and then moved on just a little bit to a different section which turned out to have better visibilty and I saw more interesting things on the two dives we did there during the course of the day, namely some White-tip Reef Sharks and a couple of Sea Turtles. In the afternoon the wind picked up and we had a relatively rough ride back to the sheltered bay where we had spent the first night for another night dive (which I did not take part in) and some nice food. Actually went swimming there as well but only swam for a few hundred metres. Diving back onto Land Fri 23/1/2003   Started off with an early morning dive at Luncheon Bay which was quite different from the site on the outer Barrier Reef, especially the large number of multicoloured soft coral in the sheltered bay provided a different feel than the hard coral found on the outer reef. Finished off with a ninth and final dive on the other side of the bay and then started our bumpy 3 hour ride back to Airlie Beach in the pouring rain. The weather had pretty much deteriorated to 25 knot winds and heavy rainfall at the end of the trip, too bad for those poor folks that would be leaving the day after. In Airlie I checked into Magnums Backpackers which was rather nice and cheap (always a welcome combination) and then shot off to the internet cafe to arrange my flights in New Zealand (to the Southern Island). Spent the evening with the dive crew in a restaurant (Morrocco's - not that great) and then met up with Jenny, who was also on the boat doing her SSI Open Water (hence she had left us after the first 2 days). Spent the evening at Magnums and missed the Wet T-shirt competition! On the way back to my dorm I noticed that I had left my key to the room on my bed (the bed inside the dorm that is, which at this point was of course locked - together with the reception). Anyhow me being a lucky ba..... Jenny let me stay in her room.	no map Aboard Tropic Princess / Magnum Backpackers - Ph: 07 4946 6266
Common Room on Tropical Princess Sunset @ Sea