I’ve just got back to the Blue Pearl after a fantastic inaugural Hamilton Island Triathlon which finished earlier this morning. It’s was the first such event on the island with some very famous names and around 100 people entering making it a superb morning’s work!

The week of sporting activities started off with a series of workshops hosted by some of the sporting world’s greats including:

I stupidly decided to go waterskiing last week and in the process caught a ski and ripped the abductor magnus muscle on the rear of my right leg resulting in some heavy bruising and making it almost impossible to walk up hills. This would obviously have massive repercussions for my triathlon event.

‘Frocktails’ Fashion Show – Friday night. Unsurprisingly I’ve never been asked to be a model at a fashion show before…with my super skinny legs (designed for speed and not looks!) and not-exactly model looks, I’ve been to watch a couple but never strutted my stuff on the catwalk. Tonight was to be very different as Bre and I had been asked to open the event taking place in the luxurious surroundings of Waters Edge apartments  where we were lucky enough to be staying and representing one of the fashion shops in the town, Airlie Beachworx who’d been kind enough to kit us out with some new threads ready for our modelling debuts.

With around 300 people in attendance the nerves were jangling a bit as we took our first steps down the red carpet, especially as at the last minute I’d been ushered into the make-up and hair chair to be worked on…..have a look at the photos and tell me what you think!

Sand Sculpting competition – Saturday morning

When I spotted this little challenge on the itinerary I shouted to Bre “we need to make a sand castle – what on earth shall we do?” Suffice to say we spent the next hour searching Google images for some inspiration and decided to try and construct a ‘Saltie’ or Saltwater crocodile….armed with a couple of printouts we descended on Airlie’s sandy beach front at 9am on Saturday morning armed with the desire to win! On arrival it seemed we’d got it a little wrong from the start….everyone had started bang on time and all we had was a pile of sand in front of us.

Around turtles, crabs and mermaids were already starting to take shape constructed by kids and parents all armed with buckets, sprayers, shovels and trowels – these people meant business and all we had were our bare hands! With three hours to prepare something we set about the task and formed the outline of our creation, built a huge pile and made the legs and tail but the problem came when we started to ‘finish’ the sand…hands do very little, sticks are just as bad and we struggled on until eventually our next-door neighbour leant us some equipment so we could finish the job off properly…now that’s a friendly proposition!

Once the time was up we felt we’d done ok….here’s some pics of the attempt. Sunday was the announcement and…by jove we won the adult section of the competition giving us a free dinner for two at Airlie’s top sushi restaurant. Perfect as it’s Bre’s favourite food!

Reef Festival Street Parade – Saturday afternoon

Fresh from the sand sculpting competition we brushed ourselves down, grabbed a change of clothes and made for the assembly area at the yacht club end of Airlie Beach where the trailers and floats were starting to mass ready to commence the culmination of the weekend’s activities….the carnival parade! Now as we’re filming a documentary for National Geographic throughout the Best Job experience the Producer and Cameraman James occasionally wants to throw something unusual into the mix to create a slightly more interesting program…today was to be no different.

I would be driving a golf buggy during the parade – not to represent Hamilton Island where buggies are the usual means of transport, but instead for Big 4 Adventure Whitsunday Resort where I’d been lucky enough to stay a few weeks earlier and who were sponsoring the event. This however is no ordinary golf buggy…this one has a massive frog head on the roof which is the logo for Big 4…then add to that the inclusion of a fancy-dress costume and I’d be passing through the streets of Airlie dressed as King Neptune with Bre as his mermaid. Enjoy laughing at the pictures of what was a brilliantly fun afternoon:

End of day location: Waters Edge resort, Airlie Beach

Distance travelled: 80 kms by helicopter, 250m on the catwalk and 3 kms by golf buggy! Very different!

• Cackleberry – an egg
• Pozzie/possie – ‘ position; find yourself in a comfortable pozzie’
• Spitting chips – Very angry

Location: Hamilton Island, Queensland
Weather: Totally clear blue skies, no clouds and no wind. Winter rocks! Perfect for Reefworld. 25°c

The last time I went to Fantasea Reefworld it was back in May on the first day of the final for Best Job in the World, and that experience really didn’t fill me with a huge desire to go back for more. Let me explain….

The weather was pretty atrocious; the wind was thumping i.e. 25 knots, the sky was as grey as a retirees comb-over and the ocean was rough and full of white caps. If that wasn’t enough when it got to actually going in the water for our ‘snorkel test’ (the first of the interview examinations) what greeted me was a pretty bland, cloudy underwater environment.

Hardy Reef had some work to do in order to get my vote again…..

Of all the interviews I’ve had to do the one from today (and yesterday and the day before) were the most inconvenient. Villa Vanthilt is a late night program broadcast in Belgium and they asked me to appear on the show through a live Skype webcam connection…..at 5.30am! Not a problem as I normally get up early but when they ask for a practice the day before and I get the day wrong I end up doing three very early rises in a row, and I end up feeling shattered before the day has even started!

Had a couple of old friends join me today for the trip out to Reefworld. Tim and Mark from RTL in Holland are reporting on the Best Job and joined me at 8.30am on the marina ready to jump on the boat to Hardy Reef for a taxing day of helping the tourists, snorkelling and then staying the night aboard the Fantasea pontoon to enjoy the Reefsleep experience…something Bre and I had been looking forward to for ages – and she’s away on the Gold Coast, darn it.

A perfect crossing too with no wind, flat calm and even a good few whale sightings just off the bow which the captain slowed down for allowing us the time to take a few snaps of the breaching and pectoral-slapping pair loving their morning in the sunshine. This day could be the perfect way to forget about last time’s experience.

Now for the sake of television some things have to be rigged to make a good story, and today was no different! RTL are trying to film me doing my normal work which of course includes handing out snorkels, fins and mouthpieces to all of the customers – so I learnt how to size people’s feet without asking them today…a very useful skill should I find myself suddenly working in a shoe shop over the next few weeks!

The boat was pretty full on the way over with around 180 people arriving, many of them experiencing their first day out on the Great Barrier Reef all in search of their own little Nemo. Once we’d arrived at Reefworld and grabbed a mask, snorkel and fins it was out onto the reef to see exactly what was there ….can you imagine anything more awe-inspiring for a little kid than swimming above an aqua playground with all the marine life just below the surface within touching distance?

The fish here are pretty used to human interaction and come right up to your face and camera lens, the fish being particularly interested in my underwater camera so hopefully I’ve got some good footage!

As with most outdoor activities the weather is everything and we’d chosen the perfect day to come out with bright sunshine and hardly any wind.

There’s loads of options here for all ages and abilities; if you love being right under the water you can scuba dive, you can float on the surface and snorkel or if you don’t even want to get that wet there’s always the semi-submersible where you can sit and watch the marine environment through its glass windows as it slowly passes over the reef wall.

I met Nessy, the dive instructor, back at the final in May and every time I’d seen her on Hamilton she’d ask “When are you coming diving Ben?” – now was the time! We assembled our gear, did the safety checks and grabbed a ride 200 metres down the reef to our drop off point, the outgoing tide giving us perfect conditions for a drift dive right back to Reefworld.

The reef wall drops down to around 30 metres and as the current helped us along we spotted loads of different things; Clownfish in the anemones, Sweetlip hiding under ledges, a Wobbegong shark chilling out in a sandy spot and masses of plate, staghorn and brain coral giving the wall a garden-like appearance with something happening everywhere when you looked closely. I stopped myself once to rest up and watch a parrotfish crunching its way through some of the coral, I love how you can hear it as the water conducts sound so well!

I hadn’t expected the best dive having been treated over the last few weeks to some of the finest sites on the Great Barrier Reef but Hardy Reef definitely came up with the goods. For a location that’s only a day trip away from the mainland it’s well worth coming out so when some of my friends and family arrive in a few weeks time I’ll be bringing them back out here – that’s my snorkelling Mum and Dad and my experienced dive buddy Jon who’ll love it.

As we neared our ascent point we moved towards the anchor blocks for the pontoon and floated up towards the huge Grouper which hangs around Reefworld all day, there’s three of them with the biggest called George weighing in at over 200kgs! These are the daddies of the reef but I do wonder how on earth they get to such a size when all they do it just sit there and hardly move all day…I’m told that the size and speed their mouths move at is the secret.

With the day visitors gone for the day, the solitude of Reefsleep could start, just me the RTL crew and Jamie our chef for the night. My kingsize room opens straight out the reef and the sun deck above becomes a perfect star viewing platform once sunset has gone, leaving a glistening night sky. I did try taking some night shots of the stars with a long exposure but even with no wind the pontoon still moves very slightly and they came out a little blurry. Will try back on the balcony at home one night….

After dinner we lay silently on the sun loungers staring at the night sky watching and shouting out as soon as we spotted a shooting star. It’s only when I do this can I start to appreciate quite how massive the intergalactic world that we’re part of is…mind bending stuff!

If you really want to get away from it all on a simple day transfer from the mainland then come and do this. The utter peace and quiet of night out on the reef can’t be matched and then’s there the viewing chamber, we sat and had dessert lying on our fronts staring through the windows at the food cycle happening right before our eyes….microscopic fish being eaten by bait fish then being eaten themselves by fast moving Trevally. George wasn’t ever far away….

My expectations have been shattered and rightly so, Reefworld offers a truly interactive experience (and I know it sounds cheesy!) for all ages…but my sister’s family of three children would love it, if your kids have seen ‘Finding Nemo’ then you have to take them!

End of day location: Reefworld, Hardy Reef off the Whitsundays

Distance travelled: 50kms

Daydream Island (View Larger Map)- First stop after an interesting Fantasea ride across the Whitsunday Passage due to the high winds thumping from the south at 25 knots! A few green people on board.

Every time I’ve been here previously its been with TV cameras in tow so a real chance to explore the other side of the island which I haven’t yet discovered.

The island is only 1km long and 200m wide, so a real tiddler but full of character. It’s one of the collection of Molle Islands, is also called West Molle and is only 15 mins ride from Airlie Beach.

Bre and I wandered the blustery beach front, found a couple of sun loungers and worshipped the golden ball in the sky for twenty minutes – I find sunbathing pretty damn boring so we upped sticks and headed to the Mini-Golf on the opposite end of the island, on the way passing loads of things for the kids to do to keep them amused. I will be bringing my sister and her family here – a whole day of amusement!

Mr Tree at Daydream's mini-golf

Brilliant course too, 19 holes, each really well made to represent a part of Australia. My nephews would have loved it here – big whale tails, crazy tunnels to putt through, obstacles galore but not enough time to complete it before racing back to our departing boat! Yikes cut that one short I’m afraid…

High-speed Catamaran sailing

Back on Hamilton Island I’d had a call from Keith at Adrenaline Rush letting us know if we wanted we could head out on his 36’ Nacro designed catamaran for an afternoon of spray and the wet-stuff.

Don’t need to be asked twice here so Bre and I met Mark, a friend from the island, headed to the beach to meet him and jumped onboard. This is one sleek machine and the only one of its kind in Australia licensed to carry passengers.

Keith at the helm of Adrenaline Rush

A pumping wind always helps, as we strapped into our harnesses to hang on the trapeze outside the hull of the beast, ‘Adrenaline Rush’ shot forward slicing through the water with its ultra-smooth lines. Hanging with your ass just over the waves is totally exhilarating at speeds of up to 20 knots and now I want one.

Hanging on the trapeze

Monohulls are good but for pure speed and excitement then a catamaran is the way forward!

Catamaran's are super sleek

Two hours later we were back in the marina; wet, salty but so so satisfied! Bring on Race Week at the end of August.