Still in Hervey Bay

We're still in Hervey Bay.

We've finally tied up all the loose ends we had to but it's hard to leave, we're having a really good time. We should be heading out next week though after a quick trip to fraser island.

We managed to head out to round island on our inflatable kyaks which is around a 2km paddle out from the beach. While out there we found a big community of kingfisher birds nesting, and a baby sea snake heading into the water which was cool.
It was a long paddle for an inflatable kyak, and a bit disconcerting with all the sharks in the area. (Although our inflatable kyaks actually have a protective layer of canvas over them so we should have been fine anyway in that event).

Here's the baby sea snake.


After that we decided to head over to the nearby shark museum run by a shark fisherman from Brisbane called Vic Hislop. He's caused a pretty big stir due to his anti-shark sentiments, he wants all the large sharks dead pretty much and he's outraged by the ban on killing great whites (Plastered all over his walls).
We had a very educational day, we learned a lot of things from Vic, such as; that there are actually still prehistoric great whites out there at great depths which won't come into shallow water because there isn't large enough food for them there.
And we watched an educational movie about why whales beach themselves. (I'll give you a hint, the answer is sharks). That one wasn't so bad actually, I can imagine whales might beach themselves sometimes because they are being harassed by sharks.
We also got to see a bunch of frozen sharks, he had a huge great white frozen, which was a pretty scary looking creature.

Here's a picture of the inside of a real frozen great white's mouth


I can't understand why Vic is hell bent on killing every shark in the sea. He does meet the families of all the shark attack victims while trying to catch the sharks, which might explain some of his hatred.
Like a lot of unhealthy vendetta's though, Vic has religious grounds for his attempt at eradicating an entire species of animal. I'm pretty sure Vic is of the opinion that sharks were not created by god, and instead were created by the devil to plague mankind, and he is the holy man who has to set things right.
This isn't plastered around his museum, but doing a bit of research and reading a poem on his wall about sharks being the devil has put me to this conclusion. I'm pretty sure he's a pretty hardcore christian. with some unusual views..

There should be an I.Q test people have to sit before they can become involved with a religion, otherwise stupid people are gonna do things like Vic is trying here, or the plenty of worse things that have already happened.
Not that I would complain if there were no man eaters left in the ocean, I'd feel a lot safer swimming, but I think speciocide is a bit extreme

Here's a real picture taken by a photographer while his friend had both his legs bitten off by a great white. The guy who took the photo managed to get his friend on the boat and managed stop the bleeding by tourniquetting with some rope and saved his life radioing an ambulance to come in with fresh blood when he got back to the boat ramp. That was pretty impressive.


On that note Boris and I also went scuba diving off the pier again in the murkiest water imaginable, it was so bad you couldn't see further than a meter away. We didn't stay in very long and I couldn't get any good photos because of the murk. I almost knelt on a stonefish too in the murk, it was pretty camouflaged.
Here's a school of baby striped catfish who came up close in the murk right next to where the stonefish was sitting.

And here's a photo of one of the local residences "Asbestos Manor"

This house is all yellow, I couldn't fit everything in in the photo but everything is that yellow, even the water meter, it really stands out. It's been painted that way as a testament against the local council... I think half the population of Hervey bay are crazy.

O_O

Oh my god, the goddam bus has just kept breaking down, it's destroyed 4 distributor modules now, One each time after the autoelectrician has thought he fixed the problem. In the end he gave up and just put a new distributor in (after also replacing the coil) and that fixed the problem.
The last owner had put in some crappy chinese distributor and it was killing itself somehow.
Anyway, now it's got a new dizzy it will need to be retuned for gas. We're gonna put it back in at the last place we went to, they spent all day on it replacing the king pin and gear shift column bushes and only charged around $500 which I think was pretty reasonable.
Anyway, once it's re-tuned it should be sweet, it's been re-wired while trying to find the problem and everything else has been checked over pretty thoroughly. Now we just have to replace some heater and gas hose over the weekend, do a bit of wiring and we're pretty much done.

We painted the chassy today with black rust crap and got it all over ourselves. We didn't really plan ahead and didn't have any turps to clean it off (It was really sticky paint) so we had to walk around town trying to find somewhere which sold turps while getting comments from all the bogans about how we looked.
In the end we just had to give up and drive in to Woollies and walk around the supermarket looking like freaks, it was pretty embarrassing.
The up side is I finally got to see what I would look like as a black man.

Squatting in Hervey Bay

We've been in Hervey Bay for two weeks now (I think) and it's been pretty good.
Boris likes to host backpackers at his house from time to time and we've spent the last two weekends travelling up to Bundaberg and Baffle creek to meet up with some really friendly and outgoing Belgian girls (One of whom is Boris' girlfriend). We've also been hanging out with some Irish backpackers who Boris has kept at his house as well.
It's a good mix of people and we've been having a great time.
It's also offered a few chances to go diving a couple of hours drive away from the largest sand island in the world (Fraser Island) and all the sand it's left around the Hervey Bay region.
Here's a picture of a turtle off some rock's near Bundaberg

Last weekend we stayed in the Belgian's "Cabin" at Baffle creek which was a tiny demountable set up by a macadamia farm in the region to house it's workers. It was pretty cosy but we had a great time. We went out to Agnes water's on Saturday and then Boris, Rachael, Sara and I went spearfishing/Snorkelling off the headland at 1770.
Before we left we had to get some gear for Sara and the dive shop lady warned us that there was a big Tiger shark hanging around the headland. We went in anyway like we always do, usually when fishermen or locals tell you there is a shark hanging around they've either seen something from the shore and assumed it's a shark or they are just trying to scare you away from their favourite spot.
Well anyway, it was pretty murky water out there because we were diving at low tide, but it was looking promising, there was a bit of depth to the water there and I saw some spanish mackeral or something similat shoot past in the murk. I thought we had the headland to ourselves but following them I swam straight into some line fishermen fishing off a rock cliff.
Boris and the Girls had swam out to sea to get around their lines so I swam out to them and then Boris said he'd seen a Huge Tiger shark or Bull shark.
He had dived to the bottom after he had swam a fair way out from the rocks avoiding the fishermen's lines, and when he was on the bottom peering out he decided to look behind him (away from the ocean side) and there was a Huge shark about a meter behind him swimming up on him.
This shocked him and he jumped in fright. This spooked the shark a bit and it swam off into the murk. Boris then went up for air and then it came back and started swimming up at him!! He kept his gun on it for a while and then it swam off into the murk.
When I got over to Boris it was only just after it had happened and Rachael was there swimming next to him and Sara was swimming for the rocks. Apparently Boris had yelled out to the girls that there was a huge shark and they thought he was motioning for them to come out and check something out and they swam out to him. It's pretty funny now but it could have turned out badly. Just after Boris had started to pass the fishermen they had yelled out that there was a huge shark and then a minute later it arrived.
We still kept snorkelling after the shark went for Boris but kept to the shallows. I speared a nice sized fish at the end of the day for our lunch but after checking what it was with some of the locals (All the fish are different up north) they called it the mother-in-law fish (A Slatey Bream) which is a relative of the morwong. I haven't shot a morwong since my days as a greenhorn spearfisherman.
I've been becoming a bit of a fish snob so we decided to use it as burley for when we went out on the boat the next day (With one of the macadamia farmers the Belgian girls knew, who was a really nice down to earth guy). He was pretty amused at the slatey bream, the boat trip didn't go so well though. I've never had a good fishing trip yet line fishing on a boat.
Here's a photo of Agnes water's beach (the beach south of the shark encounter) with Boris and Sara in the pic on the right

As far as the lemon is concerned it has broken down a few times while we've been here, the plan is to get it fixed up before we leave. Which means we probably won't be leaving for about 6 months. We've been working pretty steadily on it, but there's always new issues popping up. Tomorrow we'll be getting the wiring fixed by George the auto-electrician, if he turns up (he is a bit hopeless, but a funny guy and very good at his job), he was pretty surprised when he saw how it was wired when he turned up last time the bus broke down (Which was a fried ignition module in the distributor). At the moment heaps of wires are being taken straight off the power supply to the coil, bleeding the voltage to it... On Wednesday we are getting the left king pin replaced ($$$) new bushings on the gear shaft and new gas lines and water line to the gas evaporator (Which routes hot water through to stop the gas from freezing the pipeline up when it evaporates). Hopefully after this the bus will be functioning ok. It's probably gonna cut our holiday funds down a fair bit so I'll have to look for a job sometime soon.
At the moment it is bogging out if you push the accelerator in past an inch, this is happening on gas and petrol so it's probably either an air leak somewhere (Which is unlikely because it works fine at low revs), Or an electrical problem.
At the moment we have to drive around town at 10Km an hour maximum or the engine cuts out. This is OK because Hervey Bay is made up mainly of old people, but it makes a few people angry and we get into trouble if we hit a hill because it is essentially just idling along with no acceleration at all.
Italian George will hopefully fix this up tomorrow so we can get the bus in for repairs on wednesday.
You know you're in trouble when you need to call out a mechanic to get you car to a different mechanic...
Anyway I'll update on that problem later. Rego is up soon and we can't register this thing in QLD without proof of a QLD address. That's the next problem..

I'll also put up some pics of diving under Hervey Bay pier. We gave it a crack earlier, we got sneered at by all the line fishermen on the pier, they were shocked we were trying to scuba dive off the pier and ALL the bogans had to make a comment about it.
BUT, after swimming out it was INCREDIBLE. I was sure it was gonna be crap but there was so much life under the pier it was amazing. Of course my camera ran out of battery, so no photo's yet. It was a bit dangerous too, I almost got caught by one of the fishermen when I brushed their line they jagged it up to try and catch me, there were so many fishermen there it was astonishing. A lot of dead fish too and fish with lines coming off them. It's a really bad misconception that catching a fish on a line and throwing it back is OK. In fact most fish have around a 70-80% chance of dieing after being pulled in on a fishing line, with some having a 99% death rate after catch and release. The dead fish under the pier were testament to this.
Just one more reason why spear fishing is so good. There is no by-catch and you can select which size of fish you want to catch. I think it is a more humane way to catch the fish too.

Hervey Bay

Yooooo!! Made it to Hervey bay, It's really nice up here. We're staying at our friend Boris' apartment on the beach, and it's pretty schmick.
We spent the last couple of weeks in Murwillumbah fixing up the bus for the trip. We managed to get a fair bit done on it. We also spent our time relaxing on the property and exploring the Tweed valley.

This is the view from the property. I couldn't do a panorama shot but it's pretty much all this dense forest. It's really beautiful.
My eccentric grandfather has decided to build a chalet on the hill a few K's up from the house, it's pretty nice, but heaps out of the way. The photo below is of the out house (It won't be connected to sewer line or anything), the next one is of the view.
It's really a beautiful property.

Anyway, we did so much work on the bus over the past few weeks it was ridiculous. The time finally came last monday to move out and the engine wouldn't start!! It took us ages, eventually we managed to coax it to start by pouring some fuel down the carburetor. We managed to get to dreamworld a bit late and then stayed the night at some tennis courts in Brisbane, then the next morning it wouldn't start again.
It took a while but we've finally figured out the choke's not closing (After rachael almost got her hand sucked into the carby acting as a human choke), So that's today's job.
It's getting to be a definite theme in this blog.

Hervey bay is very nice, it's a bit of a retirement town but it's really nice. Thats usually the way with retirement towns though, they're old enough to recognise the potential in a place and then ruin it for us youngsters by moving in.

here's a picture of the hervey bay pier. It's the longest pier in the southern hemisphere apparently. This is because it needs to be, the bay is so full of sand from frasier island that spearfishing's gonna be off the cards while we're here. The damn island blocks all the surf aswell so we're gonna have to make our own fun. There's some islands nearby which are almost in paddling distance, so we might have a crack at that later.