Whitsunday Islands, Queensland, Australia - Pristeen!

I've spent the past couple of years now travelling round some of the most noisy, populated and polluted parts of the world. So it was with absolute glee I found myself in an area pretty close to being totally unspoilt. Imagine having breakfast on the boat, watching the sun rise above you and the HUGE sea turtles rise for air to the side of you. (They are the white blobs in the top pic!).

The wildlife was great - sea eagles; reef sharks; dolphins; fish etc.

At night, the sky was ablaze with stars. And I managed to see at least 4 or 5 shooting stars everynight. I've taken it to several places before, but this was the first time I've used my Celestron Skyscout properly -- a kind of binocular crossed with a GPS enabled telescope -- it guides you to constellations and then gives you an audio lecture on what you're looking at. Hours of entertainment!

The beach you see me standing on is regularly polled as one of the world's top 5 beaches - it's Whitehaven beach on Whitsunday Island. The sand is 100% silica which means it's tremedously fine and powdery (imagine a beach covered in self raising flower) - trouble is, the fine grains get everywhere and are a nightmare to get rid of (cameras are regularly ruined on the beach apparently). We were warned by the skipper to shower ourselves off properly before returning to the boat - which we thought we had done. Never-the-less, he swept up two dust-pans of sand from the boat.

M

Proserpine & Airlie Queensland

The stopping off point for the sailing course was Airlie in Queensland - essentially, it is a backpacking town with one main road full of bars; clubs and backpacking hostels (plus one or two OK hotels).

I was there off-season, and it was quite pleasant - bet it's heaving in the high season. One of the higlights was fish and chips in Australia's "second-best fish restaurant" - 'Fish D'vine' ....the evening was assisted by the fact the restaurant was located next door to a specialist rum pub. Hic.

It was a 40 minute or so drive to Airlie from the local airport at Proserpine (population 3000). There's nothing there at all except for miles and miles of sugar cane. I noticed another crop - which I asked if it was grape vines - but no, turns out they're experimenting (successfully apparently) with growing coffee there.

Proserpine airport reminded me of one of the small caribbean airports you see ... you land (in a jet) on a large field (kangeroos were grazing right up to the perimeter fence - not at all fazed by the jet noise) - the waiting lounge was outside as was the area where you had to pick your luggage up!

M

Hong Kong Halloween - Ocean Park

We've had two great Halloweens so far in Hong Kong - and this, the third, did not disappoint!

As you know, we moved into a new apartment in the Summer - our last apartments went crazy for Halloween and all the neighbourhood was decked out. Our new place only has 5 tenants (families), but a week before Halloween and every inch of the hallways was decked out in skeletons; cobwebs etc. And HK seems to love selling this kind of junk, so there were also loads of sound/movement sensing spiders and corpses - quite spooky if coming home after a few Guinnesses.

We decided that the boys were old enough this year to go to one of the famous Halloween evenings @ the near-by theme park (Ocean Park). The park owners go crazy @ holiday times and place seasonal artefacts everywhere. Great fun. They also dress up twenty or so of the staff as pretty realistic ghouls -- so walking round the place, every 30 seconds or so you're greeted by the noise of 1/2 doz Cantonese school girls screaming (for real).

A highlight of the evening was a trip on the Raging River ride - a trip round a waterfall in a hollowed out log. Archie loves the ride - he's been on it several times - it was my first time and I was quite daunted by the prospect of falling 100ft near vertically in a plastic log. And yes, we got soaked (with no change of clothes, thank goodness it was 30 degrees still.

M