Day 72

Wednesday 12^th January 2011

My dislike of Steve was increasing exponentially as the trip continued. It reached a peak at 7.00am this morning when he demanded that we get out of the sweat pit allocated for us to sleep in. After drenching the sheets, my hair and the T-Shirt I was wearing with cold water I had managed a little more sleep than the previous night but not a sufficient quantity to have me leaping out of bed all bright and refreshed at 7.00am.

It wasn’t clear why we had to get up either…. We weren’t sailing until 7.45am and then we were simply heading back to Airlie Beach to disembark.

However, there was no arguing so we got up….. and went up on deck to try and continue sleeping. This is not the easiest feat as the deck space was limited and cluttered with ropes and various other bits of paraphernalia that I am sure were crucial to the operation of the boat but which generally got in the way of my sunbathing / sleeping. Today was definitely about sleeping as there was no sun to be seen, just thick cloud and the odd spattering of rain. This rain was nothing to that which was falling in Brisbane though - it seems we had got out just in time as 20 000 homes were now under water as the Brisbane River had broken its banks, including the apartment building we had stayed in just 3 days earlier.

We sailed back into the Marina at 10.45am and disembarked. The plan was to meet up at Phoenix bar at 7.30pm that evening for free pizza and to ‘continue the party’ as Steve put it. I’m not sure which boat he had been on for the last 3 days but there were only a select few of us partying (and he hadn’t been one of them!)

We walked back into town and back to Harry’s café for some brunch. We couldn’t check into our room until 12.30pm. This was frustrating because we were absolutely knackered after 2 nights sleep deprivation in the super hot cabin. We couldn’t wait to get back to the air conditioned comfort of the room with a full sized bed.

At 12.29pm I was in the queue demanding our room key… to be told we were back in the same room we had vacated 3 days ago. I hoped the bed had dried out!

It had and we gratefully fell into it. I slept until about 3.00pm and then went downstairs with the laptop as we’d paid for 24 hours internet. Sleeping Beauty finally surfaced around 6.00pm.

We got showered and packed as the flood dodging Pommies were fleeing the country the following morning. 7.30pm soon came around and we headed down to Phoenix Bar. The German couple had turned up. They were both nice enough but he didn’t speak a word of English which made conversation none existent. His girlfriend could converse pretty well but I felt really rude chatting to her when he was completely left out. Karen and David, the Irish couple also showed up…. And that was it! Even Steve and Michelle didn’t bother – I think that sums up the ‘party atmosphere’ on our boat. The deal was that if we bought a drink we would all get half a Dominos pizza for free at 8.30pm so we decided to stay for that. This was painful as the bar’s owner was also the DJ and favoured hard core dance music – not my cup of tea at the best of times and certainly not before tea! The pizzas arrived at about 9.00pm and at 9.15pm we left the bar. Karen and Dave had the good sense to join us.

We wandered into Magnums for a drink. I thought Dave might be up for big night after his tea total day on the boat but they hadn’t spent the afternoon in bed and were absolutely knackered so not much company. We had one drink with them and then they headed off to bed. We had another one in Beaches, our hostel bar, and then headed off to bed ourselves. We’ve a full day of travelling ahead of us tomorrow.