Farewell Oz.....

---

Hey,

Welcome to my final entry from Australia. We fly to Singapore tomorrow for the final leg of our journey.

I believe we had just returned from the Whitsunday's last time so I'll pick up from there......
We headed north (naturally) to Townsville, which was a really weird place. There seemed to be nobody around! We only stayed to one night, on which we went to see the North Queensland Cowboys hammer South Sydney (again) in an NRL game. Quite an enjoyable evening.
From Townsville we hopped on the ferry for a short 20min ride to Magnetic Island (so named by Captain Cook because his compass played up as he was passing it apparently) where we stayed for 2 nights. Magnetic Island was a great place, really chilled out and relaxed. The scenery wasn't bad either! We basically spent the two days walking around the various bays on the island and a few other walks the island had to offer, on one of which around an old WWII gun battery we saw a koala in the wild and it had a baby koala too which was very sweet.
After leaving Magnetic we head to Mission Beach which to be honest we wish we hadn't done and spent another day on Magnetic as there was naff all to do there really. We just walked up the beach but still hindsight is a wonderful thing.
We then took our last Greyhound bus (hurrah!) to Cairns. There isn't a lot to Cairns to be honest, there isn't anything particularly to see in Cairns itself as the Great Barrier Reef is it's greatest attraction. I decided not to bother with going out to the reef here as I had snorkelled at the Whitsunday's and see coral and fish there. We just chilled out here really. As it was Will's birthday on the 11th we had a decent night out around Cairns.
I must admit I'm ready to leave East Coast Australia, the blatant commercialism of a lot of it is beginning to grate slightly. I'd like to have seen some of the west coast and the outback but there is always next time.
So onward to Singapore which should be a welcome change of scenery.
Join me next time for my final entry!

---