hervey bay and the whales

Last weekend i drove up to hervey bay to spend time a dear friend of mine who's doing her placements up there! It's about 300km up north (about 4 hours drive or more) so i drove up on friday night. It was a long and tiring drive which also added mileage into my car but I would say its definitely worth it:) It was great spending time with her, the long conversations we had/comfortable silence were things we used to share a lot more often and it was something i really enjoyed & appreciated. What was awesome were also just being in the countryside, where it was quieter, away from the hustle and bustle of city life and complications that life might bring since I was really just away from everything. The scenery was also great! it also psyched me up for the upcoming nz trip so ive been researching on that quite a bit. 

Anyway, we went up to rainbow beach and we went to the carlo sandblows & lake poona. we didnt want to the coloured sands cos it was 2km away but the sand was coloured at carlo sandblows too if you just swiped one layer of sand off near the rocks (coloured sands are a natural phenomenon caused by oxidation of the rocks/erosion - its like a orange colour) apparently the coloured sands have 72 different coloured sands http://www.ourrainbowbeach.com.au/our-rainbow-beach/rainbow-beach/coloured-sands.html

this was us at carlo sandblows! the first thing we said was how touristy we looked so we took another one

the coloured sands (kinda)

<3

from the initial platform! look how much sand there is!

this is the tea coloured lake poona! we did like a 4km round trip trek to get to this lake, it was nice bushwalking but this was the only place you can enter/see the lake so there wasnt much space at all! but there was this family who were so happily spending time in the lake and it just showed me how aussie families really find ways to enjoy spending time together. and it was a really peaceful place too since no one else was around!

next up, whale pics!! we were contemplating going whale watching because it wasnt cheap ~$100 but we did our research and hervey bay is a really fantastic place to watch the humpback whales! anyway these whales are huge ( i never knew that) and look nothing like how we draw them -.- and it was really nice watching the mum & calf go around and yeah we really enjoyed ourselves so no regrets!! we didnt get the tour group we wanted though we wanted to go with freedom but because it was so last minute there were no more spaces so we went with tasman venture. it was alright still!

this is called a breach(:

I was really thankful for the weekend and the time to spend with maria(: kinda miss it from before! i also took time out to spend time with people this week - ice skating/celebrating mid autumn festival/basketball/bowling tomorrow so yeah ive had quite a busy but funfilled week. thankful though for all these friends that i can hang out with even though its kinda strange how all this is happening in my final sem but im still thankful nonetheless & enjoying it as much as i can.

was also reminded of a few things through yesterday's prayer time/today's bs w olivia but more on that next time.

last week of placement next week! may it end well and be a good week for everyone x