Floods and turtles and coral... oh my!

ok guys we are about to leave airlie beach, but i have yet to update this blog.....there's a week or so that you need to get caught up on!!
After we left Noosa we went up to Bundaberg and stayed two nights because of the weather. RAIN! we found a free parking spot near the beach, but got a verbal warning on our second morning. that night we went to the Mon Repos turtle rookery and were seated at a turtles nest so we got a front row seat while 92 hatchlings burst through the sand and i even got to help them towards the ocean with my headlamp (along with others). turtles take their lighting cues from the horizon, so Bundaberg and surrounding areas kill their lights at night so they dont get confused. luckily the rain held off so it was a perfect setting.....we were really lucky!!!!
We drove up to 1770 and Agnes Water, but the weather was bad (RAIN) so we didn't stay, we just headed up to Emu Park and stayed in the car park of an INCREDIBLE hostel for only $10 per night, so we stayed two nights and watched movies and did laundry the second day, since everything south of us was flooding (greyhound buses werent running north of brisbane, that's how bad it was). it was a perfect chill-out day, and i would highly recommend the emu park beach resort...the rooms looked really nice and it was clean and sparsely populated ;)
We got to Airlie Beach after a looooong time on the road (5 hours of driving by Ryan, what a champ!) and had a private double room waiting for us, complete with a queen-sized bed and ensuite and a/c for ryan since it is WAAAAY humid up north ;)
we were really upset to find that there is no surf north of 1770, since it gets cut off by the reef. being avid bodyboarding fans, we'll need to find something else to occupy our time at the beach :/
thursday at 4pm we got onto our catamaran 'On Ice' and there was one couple that couldnt make it due to the weather, so it was just us, a british couple, a girl from estonia, and a family of three from vermont, whose son lives on the gold coast, plus two crew. it was FANTASTIC!!!!! the food was amazing, they kept us well-fed, the snorkling was great (although a little murky because of the wet season and all the rain), but the weather held off and it mostly only rained at night. in fact, i fell asleep on the mesh netting at the front of the boat and had neglected to put sunscreen on my legs, so i wound up with a nasty, two-level burn on my legs. painful. i shall not be doing that again!!!!!!
we got some photos with our underwater camera, so i'll be posting those later when we get an actual computer with a drive so i can load the cd ;)
one thing: i am paranoid of jelly fish. i have got it in my head that they are all killers (not true) and i got really really scared while swimming, even though i was wearing a protective suit. they were EVERYWHERE!!!!! but the sea scooter was pretty neat, and even though i dont have any balance i tried the Stand Up Paddleboard twice, and promptly fell and just paddled on my knees.
Whitehaven beach was very nice, with very white sand that is the same consistency as refined sugar. i gave myself a spa treatment and then my skin was very smooth :)
we returned to airlie beach on saturday and have been here ever since, paying for two extra nights in the room (WORTH IT!!), and then staying in the van last night.
i have to apologize for the rushed nature of my writing in this post......it's my own fault that i havent written for so long and have left it til the last minute and ryan wants to get going. we should be in townsville the day after tomorrow, and are staying at magnetic island for two nights. we love snorkling now and will most likely be doing that as much as possbile up north :)
love you all! photos to follow xoxox