I got into close contact with a Portuguese Man of War on Great Keppel Island, I believe they were called Bluebottles locally. It hurts a lot. We had gone on a trail to the other side of the island, it took about an hour and a half and we found a nice beach, there were maybe 50 people there. We get into the sea, I was approx 100 meters out when I felt this burning pain on my back, I turned around slapping my arm around and got another sting on my arm, not as bad as the one on my back which was the whole damn colony. I started screaming and I am a good swimmer so I swam like hell and everybody else thought it was a shark and left the water very fast.
I was swearing a lot because of the pain, I was young so I didn't want to scream of pain because we had met these 3 British girls and they were with us. So I toughed it out, one of my Swedish friends had been in Australia a couple of months already and he asked if I wanted him to pee on my back which I should have allowed him to do but I told him to f-off in Swedish. Vinegar is the best I believe but pee helps probably more than sunscreen which one of the girls put on. I still have a scar on my back and the pain went away after a couple of hours. Then we had to walk back in that bleeding sunshine and I got a cold sore to add to the misery and it obviously put stop to the plans I had for one of the Brits that night.
I had a great time in Australia, Great Barrier Reef was amazing, Northern Queensland with sugar cane toads and saltwater crocs. Stayed mostly in Sydney at King's Cross and went to Bondi Beach every day we were in Sydney unless we had something planned. I also went to Melbourne, went to the infamous gaol.
