Airlie Beach and the Great Barrier Reef - Jul 24, 2003 - Cape Upstart, Queensland, Australia

Had a great time, visited barrier reef a couple of times. Bernie went scuba diving, Sue, Joel & Billy enjoyed snorkelling. We stayed at Airlie Beach for about four nights and this is a real tourist spot so at last there weere a few kids around. We made trips to the Reef twice, the first one on a massive fast cat, called Fantasea to the Outer Reef. We snorkelled off a huge anchored pontoon with the area sectioned off with ropes and nets. The kids were great as the sea was quite cold and choppy and snorkelling is disorietating. The wetsuits we were provided with did not really do the job, but we all saw turtles, giant clams, wrasse, plenty of corals and shoals of silver fish. The second trip was on a sailing ship, called "Illusions" out to Hayman Island and we dived off the beach at Blue Pearl Bay. This was more personal and great fun. Bernie did some more scuba diving and we fed the fish, some huge wrasse and great shoals of darting tropical fish that swim right against your masks. You can fell lots of tiny fins scraping against your legs and arms. Here we saw amazing huge colourful coral formations which were at least as impressive as the fish. This was one of the real highlights of our trip and well worth all the miles to get there!

At the campsite there were almost tame rainbow lorikeets, possums and a heated pool so the boys were more than happy. We also met a family from Hong kong with two boys which is worth mentioning as it was so rare to meet anyone like this.