Like a Rollingstone

Left Rollingstone early this morning in order to get to the next location and in place for some much anticipated diving the next day. This dive site had been recommended to us by so many people we had to fit it in. We had a stroke of luck last week whilst on the Silversonic dive boat in Cairns, one of the dive guides told us to avoid going out of Townsville and head to Ayr instead, where a local company would pile you into a 4x4 and drive you + boat through the sand dunes to the sea. Sounded like something a little more interesting than just stepping of a jetty onto a boat.

We arrived in Ayr around 10.30 and pretty much straight after setting up the van headed back to the reception to get the diving booked. It seems there is only 1 dive company in Ayr, so they knew the ones we were talking about. Unfortunately for us the boat going out the next day only had 1 place still available. Wendy being Wendy said I should take the place and she’d stay behind. Yeah right, I’m not as stupid as I look. I enquired about possibly going on the reserve list just in case someone pulled out, alas 2 other people were already on that list. Not wanting to be in this part of the world and miss out diving on what some people consider to be pretty high up in the list of top-ten dive sites anywhere on the planet, I booked us in for the Friday.

Having driven through the main street on the way to the camp site I knew this was a one street town. There was no way this would keep us occupied for this afternoon, let alone the full day tomorrow. Even the local guide book didn’t offer much in the way of alternatives to diving.

We decided to head back into town anyway, there were still a few things we needed to buy and with there being a Woolies there’s a good chance we’d be able to get them.

Well that killed 90 mins, including stopping for a coffee & cream donut. There was nothing left to do other than head back to the campsite and hit the pool. That evening we sat outside the camper, Wendy reading her recently purchased Australian Women’s Weekly and me on the laptop writing the blog for the previous 2 days.

That night we had an almighty storm pass through, which seeing as the day was cloudless came as a bit of a shock as all the roof vents were still open, letting water pee through freely. I then sat there watching the water run off the awning, remembering the words of Tracey back at Apollo Campervans in Cairns “don’t have the awning open in Wind or Rain, otherwise it’ll be expensive to replace”….now we were having both. After 10 minutes of contemplating going out in the monsoon type rain to winch the thing back in, common sense prevailed and I went back to sleep. Good job we took out the extended insurance.