Magnetic Island + Townsville

The journey down the east-coast of Australia has now commenced!! Our schedule gives us 6 weeks in the land of Oz; 1 week of which we have already spent dossing about in Cairns. In hindsight, we probably have spent too much time in Cairns, however we were having a good time so didnt feel like moving on!!

On our last day in Cairns we went scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef. Coming all this way, it would have been a shame to have left and said we hadnt seized that great opportunity and missed out. It was an early start, especially for Ross who was still drunk on the walk down to the ferry having been out on the lash the night before!
We did 2 dives and saw some incredible marine life including some sting rays and even turtles! One turtle was pretty friendly and even got close enough for me to gently touch his shell!! Awesome!! We did our second dive without a guide which was pretty cool as we got to go off underwater and explore by ourselves. Thankfully we didnt run out of air (although Ross nearly did) and we managed to find the boat again!

Fantastic day where we all had a great BBQ lunch and stupidly fell asleep on the deck without any sunscreen! The redness has now faded to a beautiful tan. Its building up! Im sure my sister will be very envious! :D
Our trip to Magnetic island was for 2 nights so we left early on our first Oz Experience bus after a final night out with the Bristol boys. The Oz Experience was relatively cramped and we begrudigingly stopped off at a Croc farm to feed hundreds of Crocs and have a little feed session with the Kangaroos! (Little did they know that we had eaten one of their friends the night before as we had a BBQ with 'Kanga Bangers!' - very tasty!!)

We caught the last ferry from Townsville over to Magnetic Island and found ourselves checking into our Koala Bungalows at dusk. Me and Nick were put together in a very romantic hut surrounded by huge trees in the wild bush with squarking animals galore all around! Quite a traditional taste of Oz wildlife!

Magnetic Island doesnt have a great deal of things to do; it really is just a place to go and relax. This seems to be the theme of most of our Australia experiences thus far. As Australia as a nation doesnt have a great deal of history (if any...) and therefore no real traditional culture (certainly in comparison to Asia) they have adopted their own modern culture which is pretty much chill on the beach during the day and then go out drinking at night! Therefore, when visiting this country we try to adopt the same culture! Only thing is, its pretty expensive as the drink prices are crazy!

By day on 'Maggie' (local name for Magnetic Island) we chilled out on Horseshoe Bay which is a really picturesque coast line that is deceivingly long as myself and Ross found out. We decided to go for a late afternoon run along the beach - thinking it would only take about 5 minutes! 17 minutes later we stumbled, weak at the knees into the shadows created by the massive rocks at the far end of the beach! We are most certainly very unfit and the walk back to where the other guys were was very long and light-headed!
Whilst on this little getaway island we also went on a bush walk to find another hiden cove. We did eventually find the intended destination and kicked a mini-chill on the sands there watching some people wakeboarding in the jelly-fish infested waters.
As mentioned previously, the nightlife here isnt amazing but our hostel bar did have a pretty live atmosphere. We spent both nights here and drank the night away playing cards, singing along to the retro tunes and entering the quiz which was good banter! They frequently gave away free drinks and various other prizes including a limited edition Koala Bungalows t-shirt which Kit won.

There was one crucial event which could not be missed which was on the horizon. United v Barcelona - Champions League semi-final. Kick off at 4.45am and there was nowhere open atall on Maggie. Our only chance to watch it was to go back to the mainland with the town of Townsville (imaginatively named!). This place is a stereotypical northern Australia town. Pretty large but very quiet and the people that inhabit it are relatively strange folk - similar to those expected in deep south America. Apparently they are all inbreds...
We found a decent hostel and set in for the night; cracking into the beer crates at 7.30pm! This was the equivilant to about 10am in the morning in the UK as the football was still hours away!! Non the less we set into a marathon session. At about 1am we conceeded to sleep and woke at 4am to prepare ourselves for the match and set up the TV. The picture was aweful and we could barely make out the ball but we were tranfixed to the grainy picture and commentary. The 7 of us watched whilst our 1 other roomey in our 8 bed dorm tried to get some sleep. I dont think he really did!

Getting a few hours sleep after the dissapointing 0-0 draw, we headed to the docks to catch our next Oz Experience leg. This one was to take us further down the coast to Airlie Beach which is the gateway to the Whitsunday islands. We have 3 nights in Airlie before boarding our 2 night sailing expedition. All aboard Airlie beach...

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