Well, as I am sure I mentioned many times, I have just been on a little trip to Fraser Island with the aim of seeing (for the first time) whales in their natural environment.

On Thursday, I headed up to Queensland to go to the Kingfisher Resort on Fraser Island.

The flight from Melbourne went to Sydney where I caught another plane to get me to Hervey Bay. There were three hours to explore Hervey Bay before the ferry would be leaving for Fraser Island - unfortunately exploring Hervey Bay takes about 20 minutes - but never mind, I was on holiday. Arriving at Fraser Island was great - a gorgeous place. Wandering along the beach was a dingo - a fine looking animal - bigger than I expected - it must be all the babies that they eat.

On the Friday morning, I headed out on a boat in search of the whales. As we left the Island, a few dolphins swam alongside - how cool is that? It is a lovely part of the world and as we glided along a ranger told us all about the humpback whales that we would hopefully be sighting. And then the boat stopped. Oh my - are there whales already? No, the bloody boat had broken down.

I looked around at the other people on the boat thinking whether we would survive marooned on a desert island together. Then it occured to me, if we were going to have to eat people to survive, then there is rather too much meat on me and I might be one of the first to be culled. Fortunately the boat limped on but unfortunately that was to Hervey Bay. But whilst there, I booked onto another whale viewing for the afternoon - the down side being that I had three more hours to kill in Hervey Bay - oh crap!

Anyway, that afternoon off I went once again and, oh boy, was it worth it? The first pod we found was just a mother and cub humpback whale. [A quick fact for you - doplhins and some whales use sonar to find their way around, but humpback whales don't have sonar - so they poke their heads out the water or jump (breach) out the water to see what's happening.] Anyway, back to the story .... the mother was teaching it's cub how to breach and we were greeted with three great leaps from the cub. What a site - it was a big cub, but then you see the shape of the mother passing by and you realise what big really is - wow. We watched these two for a while and then they went off so we went on and found a further two pods to watch and also a hammer-head shark passed by - it was all fantastic.

The weather was good, but cloudy. I told one of the people on the boat that when it rains, the whales don't come to the surface as they don't like to get wet - unfortunately, despite my sincerity, they didn't buy it - shame.

I was trying to catch some of the whale action on my digital camera, but I kept missing things as I tried to get a photo and ended up not seeing it live or catching the image. It is probably good because whales are very large and therefore take up a lot of space on a camera! Ok, so it doesn't work that way.

After returning from the whales, I was dropped at Hervey Bay and told that I have a couple of hours to look around until the ferry will come along to get me back to Fraser Island. Only two hours? I wandered around and saw a sign that said that they will be having a "make a scarecrow competition" - I must have misjudged the place - there was more going on than I gave them credit for.

As I'm sure you've noticed, whenever you see tourists, there is always some stupid pom who didn't put sunscreen or a hat on and looks like a beetroot well, once again, I was that idiot - will I never learn?

But on to the next day. I went out again to see more whales - after all, that's what I was there for. Again we had a lot to see - we came across several pods and there was much splashing and I loved it. I didn't take out my camara at all as I wanted to watch it all and not be playing around with the camera. We came across a couple of whales mugging a boat - this is where they rub themselves along a boat in an attempt to dislodge some of the barnacles that have attached themselves. Barnacles are parasites that attach themselves to whales and use them to feed off - sort of like how Peter Hellier is with Rove McManus.

It was a fine morning and after returning to the Island, I went on a half-day trip to see other parts of the Island - it is a beautiful, unspoiled and interesting place.

Whilst getting the ferry back to (shudder) Hervey Bay this afternoon to come home, we saw more dolphins and also passed a couple of whales - yes, just like that.

Other things that occured whilst away;
. I ended up having a conversation with a very old boring English bloke - I hope that he doesn't report the incident the same way! He was telling me how his wife had suggested that he get away for three weeks and here he was. My guess is that she's probably already packed and moved out leaving no forwarding address.
. Another conversation was with an elderly English woman who moved to Sydney 26 years ago - she left because "I didn't like all the West Indians who were there" and she followed this with "It's probably worse now with Asians too". Thanks you old bigot. I wonder why she thought that she could tell me this? Surely I don't look like somebody who would share these feelings? Hmmmm.
. On the plane there, there was kid that wouldn't shut up and it's parents had every possible toy that made a noise - maybe they thought that noise would distract it. They used all of these toys that had no impact on the kid at all, yet left me with the urge to see how many of the toys would fit inside each of the parents. They should publish their parenting methods as a warning to others.
. On the way back, the bloke behind me on the plane was in training for the 1 hour sniffing contest at the next Olympics - I think he must be favourite for gold.
. When looking for whales, a bloke said "There's one over there, I just saw it letting off steam" - so that's how they work!

and so it goes on

anyway, it was a great trip and I am a happy man for the experience