Daydream Island

last week we spent two nights on daydream island, one of the smaller of the whitsunday islands.


when we arrived we were greeted by the island's resident band 'the bali boys' and given sea shell necklaces, which was a nice change from the cockroaches that greeted us at magnums!

we were taken into the hotel and given complimentary drinks and shown to our amazing room!


this is the view of the main foyer of the hotel from the top floor.



we spent most of our time at mermaid beach, with this as our view!




one of the locals from the island would show his face at least once a day, which was amazing as he came so close and would sneak up on unsuspecting holidaymakers giving them quite a shock!



the island is really small and it only takes about 10 minutes to walk from the north end (where our room, our pool and mermaid beach are) to the south end, which has a few shops, a bakery, another smaller pool and beach.

we had lunch at the bakery and if you sit outside you can sit right by the side of the man made lagoon style aquarium.


we tried and tried to get a good picture of this fish but it always shot past us, then we'd put the camera away and it would swim slowly by taunting us. we finally got a good'un though.


here's a few pictures from the south end of the island. the "mocktail" we are drinking was called an 'is it nemo' and was fantastic, we drank quite a few.



these are the three brothers. local legend says that the captain of the ship they worked on buried treasure on the island which the three brothers went back to find. once on the island they saw medusa who turned them to stone. it is said that if you can undo this curse they will show you where the treasure is buried.


ooo, another weird little story we found out while on daydream was that in the 1930's "knockabout adventurer" leslie thompson sailed his scooner through the whitsunday's on his way to the gold fields of new guinea. he drove onto rocks in a storm one night and the story and pictures made the papers in sydney. a sydney film director saw the picture of the swashbuckling sailor and offered him the lead role in his new film 'the wake of the bounty'. it was the beginning of the hollywood career of errol flynn. (we had a book about the history of daydream island in our room, which had loads of little facts and storys in)

anyway, back to our time at daydream...

on our first night on daydream we got dressed and went to see what there was to eat. we soon found out that there was only two restaraunts open and both required pre booking... luckily we still had some weet-bix (not to be confused with the far better english weetabix) left over from our stay in yorkeys knob. so we went back to the room and had weet-bix with tiny hotel portion milk and sugar (from the "tea and coffee making facilities!") ... which was a lot of fun!




the second night we ate at 'mermaids' a really nice restaraunt, which funnily enough is just off mermaids beach. we had some amazing soup there... rivalling that
of 'the hunters inn' (dad can you book me, you, greg and grandad in for another meal when we're back? mmm). anyway, after the meal we went for a walk along the beach and saw some wallabies! we were really close to them...



at the north end of the island the aquarium was far better than the one at the south end. this one was far bigger and had lots of sting rays, sharks and fish in and there was a lot more coral.




we found nemo hiding in the coral but his dad wouldn't come out for a picture.



and that's just about it... oh apart from greg running off with some girl... he soon got bored and came back though.

daydream and nightmare

hello everyone, firstly we can't post any pictures til we are back at marra's house later this week.

but when we do you will see how amazing daydream island was! we stayed there two nights so had 3 full days there. it was quite expensive but well worth it.

in our last blog we said about staying near shute harbour then going to daydream. but in the end we couldn't as the shute harbour accommodation was unavailable so we went to daydream early, and booked in at a place called bush village backpackers for the remaining four nights when we got back.

we'll post a blog about daydream when we can put the pictures on, there's not much point now.

anyway, after three amazing days on daydream island we got a boat back to abel point marina... we left our bags in our room and the porters moved them onto the boat and got them off for us at the other end. amy got her bag back and the strap was broken! it was a 60 quid bag and now it's broken! we're really pissed off and are going to ring daydream about it today as it's going to be a big problem for the remaining 3 months of travelling.

to make matters worse, we waited 40 minutes for our accommodation pick up and when we got to bush village the guy looked at us and said "erm... there's a problem guys...", it turns out that the travel agent we booked through had made an error and booked us in for the previous night (even though the same travel agent booked us in for the two nights at daydream), as a result of us not turning up the previous night, bush village sold our room to someone else, leaving us homeless.

luckily they had a twin room with a shared bathroom for the night that we could have. it wasn't what we wanted though as we had booked the studio room with ensuite (the best room there), but we were glad that we had somewhere to stay at least.

this backpackers resort is a massive improvement on magnums. here it is a small family run style b&b, it's clean and comfortable and the bathrooms aren't outside.

the people at bush village said that if they hadn't had any cancellations they would help us find somewhere, but we got up this morning and found out someone hadn't turned up last night so we have a double room for the remaining nights. it's still a shared bathroom but it's only between us and another room so that's okay... and a big relief that we don't have to hunt around today!

we have recently discovered that we are not backpackers at all. after magnums and the problem with this place last night.... and the carrying of really heavy backpacks! it's not for us. we're glad we have people to stay with back in geelong, sydney and surfers paradise.

last night after we had sorted out the room we went into airlie beach for some tea and met up with dib (lucy allen's sister for those who don't know her). she's in aus for about a year, working and travelling a bit. she lives in sydney but came up here for a few days break. it was nice to see a familiar face and we will hopefully see her at the lagoon today. plus when we go to sydney we shall meet up again.

well i think it's time to go and relax at the lagoon... we need it! we've got 3 nights left here so are just going to make the most of it, will more than likely be at the lagoon for the majority of the time as thats the best part about this place!

bye for now x x x x