Men’s Adventure Tour, Cairns – Day 1

The title says it all – this was something I’d really been looking forward to and to add to the excitement Juweon, one of the Best Job in the World finalists, was flying out from Korea to join me for the experience!

Taking a week long break from his usual morning radio show Juweon has travelled out with some important people from the Korean media including:

• Mr Choong Keol Lee – editor of GQ Men’s magazine, Korea
• Mr Myung Hyo Chung – editor of AB-Road, one of Korea’s top travel magazines, and
• Hyun Woo Sun – a ‘power’ blogger from Korea

The aim of the trip is to introduce the adrenaline-filled adventures which are possible in tropical North Queensland to their markets and over the course of the next few days we’ll be lucky enough to trial some of the more exciting adventures out.

First stop however was to let the local press know our intentions so we met journalists from ABC Radio, Channel 7 News and The Cairns Post to give them a heads up of how our trip would inform the market back in Korea of the experiences which can be found here.

It was great to see Juweon again, I recently took part in an interview for him on his radio show and after chatting on the phone it was great to see him again in person.

No rest for the wicked though, this is going to be a seriously busy few days and our first appointment is with Sunlover Cruises, one of the tour operators who leave Cairns on a daily basis and head to the Great Barrier Reef to give holiday makers and tourists the experience of a lifetime. It doesn’t matter how many times I go out to enjoy the reef, I still get little butterflies of excitement in my stomach as I prepare to head out there. Today was no different!

We make our way down to the dock and after a few press photos make it onboard the custom built catamaran, which whisks us out to Moore Reef in just over 90 minutes. Sunlover are hugely popular with tourists from Korea, China and Japan and the entire boat is virtually full as it’s almost the Chinese New Year celebrations and lots of people visit Cairns at this time of year.

On the way out all of the options for things to do during the day are offered, accommodating all levels of experience and confidence in the water; there’s snorkelling, glass-bottom boat trips, touch-pools, underwater viewing chambers, SCUBA diving and the excellent Seawalker experience. It’s been nearly two months since I had my last dive on the reef and I’ve been missing it hugely. I think it’s one of those things that once you’ve tried it you just can’t stop wanting to do it – have I really become addicted to diving? There could be worse things I suppose…

As we arrive at the pontoon that the catamaran ties up against, the staff onboard go about their business looking after the excited customers all wanting to get off and get involved in their chosen activity. Most of the media crew I’m travelling with have never had the chance to dive before, so after very little persuasion they all decide to give it a go – bar the one unfortunate chap who can’t as he’s taking medication for high blood pressure. It’s good to see that the dive-master stops him from going due to the safety implications, much to his despair and infuriated protesting!

We make our way down to the pontoon and into the dive area, kit up and prepare to enter that hugely exciting underwater world once more. As I am the only certified diver onboard out of 243 passengers I get Vance, the dive master, all to myself! We make our way down the steps and into the warm (30 degrees C!!) tropical water. Cyclone Olga, which recently hit the coastline, came through this area only five days ago but there are no ill-effects visible on the reef, maybe the water has slightly less visibility than usual as the bottom’s been churned up, but there’s no damage to the coral or delicate sponges which are abundant here. It’s totally wicked getting back under the water again and within a few seconds I feel at home again, hovering above fish, watching Cleaner Wrasse at work and staring at the Anemone Fish close-up as they protect their bizarre stinging home.

After an hour of swimming around with my excellent divemaster Vance, we return to our entry point and surface on the steps of the pontoon. As ever I gush my story of what I’d seen to the nearest person – that being him. It’s the only disappointing thing to me about diving you know, not being able to speak to the person you’re down there with!

Meantime the Korean crew have been having some fun of their own, they’ve tried out SCUBA diving for themselves and spout their own reports of just how good it was. That’s the plan you see – tempt them with the good stuff so they return home and tell everyone about it.

We’ve all built up a bit of an appetite being part of the watery world below and head for the buffet to fill up on some food. The spread on offer is just what’s needed – pasta salads, cold meats, prawns and fresh fruit.

By the time 16:00hrs arrives we’re all ready to head home, the announcement comes over the speakers that were off and we bid farewell to the Sunlover pontoon. There are no Reef Rats living out here unlike the Fantasea one so all the staff who’ve become friends over the course of the day head home with us. We grab our photos from them and find a seat to fall asleep in. It’s been a long day…

Once we’ve had the chance to shower and freshen up the unrepentant itinerary kicks in again – this time with dinner at the Blue Sky Brewery just down the road. A short walk away we arrive at one of Cairns’ hotspots it seems as there’s loads going on!

The brewery was opened by a local Cairns family around two years ago and is one of the most successful micro-breweries in the country having scooped a handful of awards at the Australian Beer Awards in 2009. The bar and restaurant are wide, open and as you approach the bar a daunting line-up of barrels takes centre stage to greet you!

We all sat down and enjoyed a social dinner together and it was good to chat to another blogger, Mr Hyun, about his work, websites and interaction with social networking. Something that has become a big part of my job.

If the remaining three days of this adventure tour are anything to go by then we’re going to have an incredible time together – I just hope some others within the group have enough adrenaline reserves to get through it!

Sleeping under the stars….

Aussisms today (apologies if any actual Australian’s haven’t heard any of them!):

• Cackleberry – an egg
• Pozzie/possie – ‘ position; find yourself in a comfortable pozzie’
• Spitting chips – Very angry

Location: Hamilton Island, Queensland
Weather: Totally clear blue skies, no clouds and no wind. Winter rocks! Perfect for Reefworld. 25°c

The last time I went to Fantasea Reefworld it was back in May on the first day of the final for Best Job in the World, and that experience really didn’t fill me with a huge desire to go back for more. Let me explain….

The weather was pretty atrocious; the wind was thumping i.e. 25 knots, the sky was as grey as a retirees comb-over and the ocean was rough and full of white caps. If that wasn’t enough when it got to actually going in the water for our ‘snorkel test’ (the first of the interview examinations) what greeted me was a pretty bland, cloudy underwater environment.

Hardy Reef had some work to do in order to get my vote again…..

Of all the interviews I’ve had to do the one from today (and yesterday and the day before) were the most inconvenient. Villa Vanthilt is a late night program broadcast in Belgium and they asked me to appear on the show through a live Skype webcam connection…..at 5.30am! Not a problem as I normally get up early but when they ask for a practice the day before and I get the day wrong I end up doing three very early rises in a row, and I end up feeling shattered before the day has even started!

Had a couple of old friends join me today for the trip out to Reefworld. Tim and Mark from RTL in Holland are reporting on the Best Job and joined me at 8.30am on the marina ready to jump on the boat to Hardy Reef for a taxing day of helping the tourists, snorkelling and then staying the night aboard the Fantasea pontoon to enjoy the Reefsleep experience…something Bre and I had been looking forward to for ages – and she’s away on the Gold Coast, darn it.

A perfect crossing too with no wind, flat calm and even a good few whale sightings just off the bow which the captain slowed down for allowing us the time to take a few snaps of the breaching and pectoral-slapping pair loving their morning in the sunshine. This day could be the perfect way to forget about last time’s experience.

Now for the sake of television some things have to be rigged to make a good story, and today was no different! RTL are trying to film me doing my normal work which of course includes handing out snorkels, fins and mouthpieces to all of the customers – so I learnt how to size people’s feet without asking them today…a very useful skill should I find myself suddenly working in a shoe shop over the next few weeks!

The boat was pretty full on the way over with around 180 people arriving, many of them experiencing their first day out on the Great Barrier Reef all in search of their own little Nemo. Once we’d arrived at Reefworld and grabbed a mask, snorkel and fins it was out onto the reef to see exactly what was there ….can you imagine anything more awe-inspiring for a little kid than swimming above an aqua playground with all the marine life just below the surface within touching distance?

The fish here are pretty used to human interaction and come right up to your face and camera lens, the fish being particularly interested in my underwater camera so hopefully I’ve got some good footage!

As with most outdoor activities the weather is everything and we’d chosen the perfect day to come out with bright sunshine and hardly any wind.

There’s loads of options here for all ages and abilities; if you love being right under the water you can scuba dive, you can float on the surface and snorkel or if you don’t even want to get that wet there’s always the semi-submersible where you can sit and watch the marine environment through its glass windows as it slowly passes over the reef wall.

I met Nessy, the dive instructor, back at the final in May and every time I’d seen her on Hamilton she’d ask “When are you coming diving Ben?” – now was the time! We assembled our gear, did the safety checks and grabbed a ride 200 metres down the reef to our drop off point, the outgoing tide giving us perfect conditions for a drift dive right back to Reefworld.

The reef wall drops down to around 30 metres and as the current helped us along we spotted loads of different things; Clownfish in the anemones, Sweetlip hiding under ledges, a Wobbegong shark chilling out in a sandy spot and masses of plate, staghorn and brain coral giving the wall a garden-like appearance with something happening everywhere when you looked closely. I stopped myself once to rest up and watch a parrotfish crunching its way through some of the coral, I love how you can hear it as the water conducts sound so well!

I hadn’t expected the best dive having been treated over the last few weeks to some of the finest sites on the Great Barrier Reef but Hardy Reef definitely came up with the goods. For a location that’s only a day trip away from the mainland it’s well worth coming out so when some of my friends and family arrive in a few weeks time I’ll be bringing them back out here – that’s my snorkelling Mum and Dad and my experienced dive buddy Jon who’ll love it.

As we neared our ascent point we moved towards the anchor blocks for the pontoon and floated up towards the huge Grouper which hangs around Reefworld all day, there’s three of them with the biggest called George weighing in at over 200kgs! These are the daddies of the reef but I do wonder how on earth they get to such a size when all they do it just sit there and hardly move all day…I’m told that the size and speed their mouths move at is the secret.

With the day visitors gone for the day, the solitude of Reefsleep could start, just me the RTL crew and Jamie our chef for the night. My kingsize room opens straight out the reef and the sun deck above becomes a perfect star viewing platform once sunset has gone, leaving a glistening night sky. I did try taking some night shots of the stars with a long exposure but even with no wind the pontoon still moves very slightly and they came out a little blurry. Will try back on the balcony at home one night….

After dinner we lay silently on the sun loungers staring at the night sky watching and shouting out as soon as we spotted a shooting star. It’s only when I do this can I start to appreciate quite how massive the intergalactic world that we’re part of is…mind bending stuff!

If you really want to get away from it all on a simple day transfer from the mainland then come and do this. The utter peace and quiet of night out on the reef can’t be matched and then’s there the viewing chamber, we sat and had dessert lying on our fronts staring through the windows at the food cycle happening right before our eyes….microscopic fish being eaten by bait fish then being eaten themselves by fast moving Trevally. George wasn’t ever far away….

My expectations have been shattered and rightly so, Reefworld offers a truly interactive experience (and I know it sounds cheesy!) for all ages…but my sister’s family of three children would love it, if your kids have seen ‘Finding Nemo’ then you have to take them!

End of day location: Reefworld, Hardy Reef off the Whitsundays

Distance travelled: 50kms

….and then to Wilson Island – check this place out!

Aussisms for the day:

• Cockie/cocky – A small scale farmer. A cow-cockie is a dairy farmer
• Spear, get the – To be sacked
• on One’s Pat – Alone (Short for ‘on one’s Pat Malone: rhyming slang)

Location: Heron Island

Weather: Scattered white clouds and bright sunshine. Perfect day in my mind. 24c

There’s deserted islands….and there’s real deserted islands.

If I conjure up the image in my head of exactly what one would look like, I think white sandy beach, thick green scrub, clear blue sunny skies and a crystal clear ocean all around. That is Wilson Island.

...another stunning national park

As we neared the shore, half an hour after leaving Heron Island, Bec carefully navigated through the reef, which was becoming more obvious on the outgoing tide and powered us to a halt on the coral sands. Our hosts Nathan and Lynda met us (the local Island Caretakers) and what an office and back yard they have!

Back to a tent Ben!

‘Isolation’ is the name of our accommodation, a luxury safari-style tent on the western end of the island which overlooks the ocean, has our first hammock of the trip and gorgeous goose-down bedding. Somewhere, somehow I’ll fall asleep here, no problems.

There’s a maximum number of guests catered for on the island – 12! Each tent provides a sumptuous sleeping area for two people and there’s a communal day tent too overlooking the water.

The beauty of Wilson is the individuality of the place, you feel personally catered for the moment you arrive and even more so when you gather in the Longhouse for dinner – a hardwood open-sided building and the focal point to the evening’s entertainment where Nathan and Lynda conjure up a gastronomic delight with the limited kitchen they have available; two gas stoves, a gas-powered fridge and awesome wooden counters, plus the grandest of dining tables hewn from dark hardwood.

This is the 5* I like!

Where magic is made...

The Capricornia Cays, of which Wilson is one, support 84% of Australia’s Pisonia forests, which provide cover and shelter for breeding birds hence why they choose this island to bring up their young.

However during the flowering stage of the Pisonia tree, the buds are particularly sticky and this coincides with the Noddy, Shearwater and Heron hatchling season when the young wander from the nest, get caught in the sticky goo and die of starvation there. The body eventually falls to the ground acting as a natural fertiliser for the Pisonia tree. Cruel but extremely necessary for somewhere as nutritionally deficient as a coral cay.

Sunset drinks are tradition here as guests and the host gather on the western shore to share conversation, cheese and a glass of bubbly – awesome. It’s at this time of night that the immediate foreshore becomes a hive of activity too with a bait-ball of small fish racing up and down the beach furiously pursued by small reef sharks and game fish, the occasional group of them jumping clean out of the water in shimmering silver splashes.

Over dinner Nathan told us that on the sand cay in the distance there’s a catamaran which slipped its mooring in Fiji/Samoa, has drifted across the ocean and come to rest here on one of the hundreds of cays on the Great Barrier Reef – its been plundered of all goodies but remains there for now. I wish I had the energy to paddle the sea kayak there to investigate further – real pirate stuff!

Days can be spent as leisurely or actively as you want, the overwhelming feeling to sit on your ass and do nothing is something I initially struggled with – being the sort of person who can’t sit still though means Wilson becomes a playground instead. I tire myself out instead of just relaxing; head for a swim, then have a paddle, a walk around the island, a snorkel, work on the blog and then finally it hits me…….the urge to relax, arghhh at last! Slumped in my hammock Bre awakes me for dinner. The siesta is perfect.

Activities abound; sitting on the beach, kayaking around the island, bird watching and of course snorkelling – something Wilson is famous for.

Off snorkelling....looking like a right poser!

Almost like underwater fungi

The Wilson Bommie sits around 70m offshore and is well worth the swim from the island. A huge golfball shaped coral reef towering above the seafloor bustling with life; rays, turtles, squid and all manner of fish going about their individual business!

After an hour of snorkelling downwind, taking in everything below me, I’d chilled myself to the core and made for the island, looking up to search for Bre who’d joined me on the kayak. Where had she gone? I spot her in the distance a good 100 metres away, so I swim towards her and after a while look up again. This time she’s further away and not even paddling – I call out but there’s no response. Interesting what’s going on here!??!

After a good 10 minute swim I finally grab onto the handle at the back of the kayak, “What the hell happened Bre?” I ask. She turns round with a face like thunder “I couldn’t paddle this thing into the wind, so I gave up and was about to abandon ship!”

We look at each other and burst out laughing – I love her little stroppy moments! Clambering on board I grab the other paddle and together we make for the island, now a few hundred metres away, powering against the wind and swell we finally make it to the beach and lay on our backs soaking up the sun’s rays and laughing long and hard.

“Bye Bre” becomes the phrase of the day!

Fact about the Black Noddy Tern – it extends its wing in hot sunshine to kill the parasites on its body and then when it gets too hot changes to the other one. It has a white head to stop the brain overheating! Very clever.

Having lived last year in my roof-tent travelling around Africa I felt a huge connection and instant love for the accommodation here on Wilson; zipping up your door, watching the stars from the hammock, feeling the wind and air flowing through the tent, falling asleep to the sound of the ocean and awaking to the sound of the birds – all slow down the pace of life to what it should be, a pleasure not a grind.

Some people will say 'Boring island shot'; I say so what

If Robinson Crusoe had been lucky enough to wash up on the shores of Wilson Island and found it as we did, he’d still be there now absorbing it. Tom Hanks (in the film Castaway) would have joined him some years later of course – and finding it already named Wilson would have to choose a different name for the volleyball he befriended!

No need to tell the outside world where you are, far from telephone reception and with the ability to just disappear. The world and its problems can wait…..

Transport on and off the island

Of all the experiences and islands I’ve been lucky enough to spend time on over the last few weeks this was the hardest of the them to tear away from. As we stepped onto the boat and pulled away for the shore towards Heron Island, we sat and watched Wilson Island, our spiritual home for the last few days, get gradually smaller – wishing all the time we were just arriving, instead of departing.

End of day location: Heron Island

Distance travelled: 15kms