Queensland Trip

Previous posts showed some of the travel I did so far in Australia. But for example the Big Holidays in (Australian) summer only brought me up to somewhere between Sydney and Brisbane. But it was always my wish to see Australia's East Coast one day.

The next opportunity that I had was the Mid-Semester break from uni, nearly two weeks around Easter, which are actually intended for the students as study time to work on projects and assignments... well, and for me to plan a trip along the East Coast through the states of Queensland (QLD) and New South Wales (NSW), from Cairns to Brisbane (April 5-18). As I was going to travel on my own, I decided to join a group where all activities are already planned and included and where I knew I would travel with others which are also travelling by themselves. After careful research I found Adventure Tours Australia: I liked the trip they offered and - in comparison with other groups e.g. Contiki - their groups were smaller, up to ca. 22 people.

On Wednesday evening April 5, 2006, 9.25 pm, my trip started in Melbourne with a VirginBlue (the Aussie low cost carrier) flight to Cairns.


Arriving in the middle of the night I spent the last few hours sleeping at the Calypso Inn Backpacker's hotel:


With my arrival at Cairns Airport I got shocked by the humidity up in QLD! I have never been in such tropical climate before and it just amazed me. In the middle of the night, still over 30°C, so humid that I sweat without even moving, and despite those temperatures it was raining all night through.

The whole itinerary itself looked like as follows and has roughly been outlined on the below map:

Day 1: a day tour to the Great Barrier Reef

Day 2: Cairns to Mission Beach

Day 3: Mission Beach to Magnetic Island

Day 4: Magnetic Island to Airlie Beach

Day 5-7: Sailing around the Whitsunday Islands

Day 8: Airlie Beach to Kroombit Cattle Station

Day 9: Kroombit Cattle Station to Hervey Bay

Day 10-11: Fraser Island

Day 12: Hervey Bay to Brisbane

Day 13: a day alone through Brisbane, flight back to Melbourne

The following posts are dedicated to these several days in detail...

The company works together with the tour operator OZ Experience. People like me and some others that travelled with ATA had everything pre-booked and -organised for a fixed time schedule. Those travelling on OZ Experience had a pass which allowed them to hop on and hop off the tour wherever they wanted, thus those people changed from day to day.

However, 8 of us were thus travelling all together: 2 German girls, a French couple, a Dutch guy, a Danish couple (already a bit older) and me... we were the ones travelling with ATA and therefore spent the whole trip together. Of course we got to know each other quite well in those days and 6 of us (that is the 8 minus the Danish couple) we formed a group of friends. We did everything together, shared the rooms at the nightly accomodation, had some nice chats and I had the most fun with them! They contributed so much to these holidays for me to be one of the best!!! We also exchanged all our pictures which was especially useful as one had a waterproof camera taking all pictures with water involved...

I want to thank them all here for the great time we had! It was just amazing and I loved those 11 days with you!

As you might see them a few times on my pictures I'm going to introduce them to you here:

- Melanie & Jean-Baptiste, shortly Mel & JB (from France, studying 1 semester Law in Adelaide)

- Henkjan, or simply Henk (from Holland, visiting relatives in Melbourne, but using most of his time in Aus to travel around)

- Anna & Annemarie (from Germany, knowing each other from having done few months of au-pair in Perth before travelling now and later flying back home)