Too Many Times ...

... I've seen the sun come up through bloodshot eyes this week.

Particularly on Tuesday morning. However, I'm not complaining; it was a very nice end to a fantastic holiday!

So, here's how I spent my last day (and a bit) on Hamilton Island ...

It started out with a walk down to Foot Young's Gallery. He does some impressive sculptures in marble, bronze and granite. The subject matter consists predominantly of various sea creatures. I'll include a few in the photo set I'm planning for the next post.

I then went for a tour of the koala sanctuary and wildlife zoo. Pretty much what you'd expect: cockatoos, a cassowary, crocodile, wombat, a couple of kangaroos, some lizards, a frog and a snake ... and, of course, the very cute and cuddly koalas!

From there, I popped into the Resort Centre, to book a Reef Viewer cruise for the afternoon. While there, I discovered that there was a table tennis competition happening at 1pm that I could fit in before the cruise.

I came fourth out of about ten players, being beaten out of third place by a young whippersnapper who was sufficiently keen to have brought his own bat on holidays with him!

The Reef Viewer cruise was excellent, even though the overcast conditions meant that the coral appeared various shades of green, rather than their actual colours, through the glass bottom of the boat.

I met Michael at the Marina Tavern for a couple of cocktails and beers and some pool before dinner. We dined at Romano's, an excellent Italian restaurant; I'd say it was the best food we had during the holiday.

Our post-prandial plan was to check out the last couple of bars we hadn't tried. While waiting for the shuttle bus, we ran into two young ladies, Selena and Emily, who we'd seen sing a couple of duets at karaoke on Friday night. They asked whether we'd like to join them at the Toucan Tango Bar ... is the Pope a Catholic?!

They turned out to be lovely people. We played a couple of games of pool and drank a number of very interesting shots, concocted for us by Jamie, our Glaswegian barman.

When the bar shut, we retired to Emily and Selena's "bungalow" to kick on ... more beers, some pretty mediocre scotch, one of those horrible mixed drink cans and a couple of glasses of wine (no idea what Michael drank :-), plus a lot of good conversation.

It's kind of sad that we didn't hook up with these ladies earlier in the trip, but I'm not sure I'd have survived if we had done!

We ended up bidding them farewell and staggering back to the hotel just after 0500. Since we had to be on the bus to the airport at 0815, that didn't leave a lot of time for sleep!

Of course, that was no great change in my case; I calculate I caught ten hours across the three nights. As my old mate Barry Kyle would say ... "Sleep is death's rehearsal" :-).

The image below shows what our room looked like. This one's from the hotel's website, because I didn't think to take my own shot, but I swear they've photographed our specific room!

Go Ahead, Make My Day!

One thing I forgot to mention in the last post (and the blogging page doesn't seem to work 100% on this crappy machine, so I couldn't amend it!) was that on the way back from One Tree Hill, the trees and sky were filled with bats.

Unfortunately, I only took video of them, and it was so dark that it's next to unviewable. I might make the trek up there again tonight and take some stills.

Anyway, day two started out with me waking up at 0530, all keen to get some shots of the view from our balcony of the sunrise. I took a number of shots and video at at least four different times, with the recordings being separated by about ten minutes. So, lots of piccies to post when I get home.

Went down for breakfast to discover that the hotel had no record of the fact that it was included in the package, so I had to pay; very annoying, but I'm sure I'll get reimbursed once it's sorted out.

Michael went off to attempt to get involved in some windsurfing lessons ... far too energetic for me, so I popped back down to see what the marina looked like in the daytime.

On the way back, he called me to say the windsurfing had been cancelled .. something to do with the tide being too high ... so we decided to go off to "Target Sports" to do some shooting.

I opted for something fairly sedate ... a .22 rifle. I didn't do too badly, but I doubt anyone will be calling on my services for sniper training anytime soon :-).

Michael went for the bigger handguns: .357 magnum, .44, Glock and one other I can't remember. He was about 20m from where I was shooting and I could still hear a serious "thud" each time he fired off a round!

After that, we both had a go at clay pigeon shooting. Michael did pretty well; I think he hit with somewhere between eight and ten of the twenty five shots. I, on the other hand, connected with only five ... along with accidentally firing one round into the ground and forgetting to orient the gun off to the side when ejecting one set of empty cartridges, which narrowly missed the instructor.

Michael spent the afternoon snorkeling and going to one of the scenic lookouts. I went to the Bougainvillaea Bar, which looks out over the water, and had a Mud Baby, which was very similar to a Mudslide.

Then, I took a bit of a walk around, ending up back at the Marina Tavern for a quiet schooner of Stella. A bit more aimless wandering, then I grabbed a six pack of Beez Neez and spent the early evening battling Friday's DA crossword.

When Michael returned, we went off to the Red Emperor for dinner ... after he'd popped over to the sports centre for a sauna (shared with some Finnish chap who apparently cranked the temperature up somewhat higher than Michael had ever expected to experience!). One Long Island Ice Tea and a Boags, plus Banquet B, slightly modified to replace the Lemon Chicken with something decidedly more spicy.

Back to the room for another Beez Neez and a chin wag until Michael decided that was it for the night. A perfect time to pop downstairs to do this blogging, since there are no other guests mad enough to be using the PC at this hour :-).

Later today, I plan to check out the Koala Gallery and native animal sanctuary in the morning and go off on the Reef Viewer cruise in the afternoon. More on that later, gentle reader ...

Going Into Bozo Mode On Hamilton Island

It's the end of day two of the Hamilton Island odyssey.

So far, I've been approaching this the same way I always approach a holiday ... do as little as possible and drink as much as possible :-).

The plane trip was quite enjoyable. I was surrounded on all sides by two- and three-year olds. They were having a grand old time, running around and jumping up and down on seats.

The only issue was the father who kept eyeing me as though I might be some kind of pervert. I suppose when you've been forced to put up with one of those little urchins for an extended period, it's hard to imagine someone could enjoy having them around without some ulterior motive!

After settling in, we took the shuttle to One Tree Hill, to drink cocktails while enjoying the sunset. Very nice, indeed. Photos of that, and everything else, will have to wait until I return, because my only internet access for the time being is this tiny, hotel-provided, shared machine.

Next was dinner at a restaurant called the Manta Ray. Nothing special, just (quite nice) pizza, beer and a cocktail ... no sign yet of anything served in a pineapple, but I'm still on the lookout!

After that, we went off to the Marina Tavern. The beers were expensive ... $12 for a schooner of Asahi ... so after a couple, we ended up drinking liqueurs for the rest of the night. I can remember Drambuie, Galliano and Grand Marnier, but I'm pretty sure there was at least one other in there, too.

At around 1030, karaoke started and the bar filled to capacity ... no accounting for taste! We staggered out of there just before midnight and walked back to the hotel.

I'll save the details of day two for the next post ...