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Published: September 23rd 2005
me and sharna in townsville
and yes, your eyes are not deceiving you, in australia lindsey actually has legs and wears skirts :)whilst i remember, don't leave anonymous comments!!! i don't know who you are then!
i left mission beach on the saturday morning and headed on down to townsville (am back on track now with my "let's head south" plan 😊). it took about 4 hours, which wasn't all that bad. had a bit of a crappy experience when i got off the bus in townsville which involved the lady at the terminal telling me that it wasn't that far to my accomodation and that i could easily walk it. she obviously wasn't taking into account the fact that i had to lug what is fast turning into the suitcase from hell. i swear, if i ever see that woman again!!! it took me 20 minutes to get about half way and i was just about to get up when a car pulled over containing a lovely aussie family and offered me a lift. i don't think that i've ever been so grateful to anyone in my entire life!!!!! they were so so lovely, i couldnt thank them enough. turns out a girl (sharna) that i met in mission beach was actually staying in the same place. tis a small world!
out and about in townsville :)
claire, sharna, ian, little ol' me and nathan i went for a wander around townsville which was tres uneventful and a little disappointing - everything was closed except for the supermarket. and considering that it was a saturday afternoon this was a little un-nerving. but apparently quite normal :s took an instant dislike to townsville because of this. its not the greatest place to be perfectly honest. the strand (along the beach) is nice enough. but i couldn't see myself staying there. you know when you really just don't get a feel for the place?
which is why i totally welcomed sharna's suggestion of heading over to a little island just across from townsville called magnetic island. me and another girl, claire and her friend ian all booked our trip across. tres exciting!!!
so yeah, this all booked me, sharna, ian, claire and nathan went out for the night in townsville. which wasn't overly thrilling. a good time was had, but it was very much like going out in luton, as in the place was filled with chavs :s we ended up in an irish bar which had a live band playing. but in summary, townsville wasn't that hot.
the next morning we headed
for magnetic island - i got a taxi to the ferry terminal, there's no way i was lugging my suitcase again!!! when we got to the island we had to somehow negotiate getting all of our luggage on the most rickety old bus i have ever seen. this bus didn't get abov about 10mph the whole way i reckon! didn't think we were going to make it!!!!!! still, we did eventually! we were all staying in horseshoe bay, which was so so picture postcard perfect!!! its only one little street with a few shops and a few restaurants on, all along the beach front. and then you have oodles of little fishing boats out in the bay. totally fell in love with it the moment i saw it all.
once we'd settled, had food, etc etc i decided i'd better get my arse into gear and maybe book my whitsunday sailing trip. but somehow this went a little awry and i actually ended up booking to do my PADI certificate!! (just in case you don't know, this is a 3 day learn to scuba dive course which results in you being a certified scuba diver.) had to notify sharna
tis me at horseshoe bay :)
(no one will ever know i was actually wearing my pyjama bottoms when this was taken...) that sunbathing was to be postponed as the course started on the monday morning!! how super exciting!! and a little random too, but hey!
got up nice and early (8.00am, lol, this totally counts as early, i'm on holiday!!), twas a beautiful sunny day! the dive school (pleasure divers) picked me up and off i went! i had to have a divers' medical which was obviously great fun :s anyhoo! i passed which is the main thing 😊
there were 3 of us in the group, me, tom and kyle. we spent the morning doing theory/classroom work and then in the afternoon we learnt how to set up the scuba equipment and did some pool work which was really good fun!! we had to practice different skills which was cool, except i didn't really like mask clearing and mask recovery, a little bit scary :s and i can't do fin pivots for love nor money! not that this means anything to most of you i'm sure!
my second day of diving was brilliant 😊 spent the morning diving in alma bay. we did two dives out there, had to do the skills that we'd practiced yesterday but
most of the time we just swam around. the visibility was awesome and we saw some gorgeous fish and the coral was just amazing! it was the first time i'd done a shore dive too (ie. wading into the water, putting on your fins and mask and then swimming out, instead of just jumping off a boat like i'd done up in port douglas).
pool work in the afternoon was awful, i totally panicked on some of the skills (we had to remove and replace our dive equipment underwater), ended up doing somersaults and all sorts underwater which, looking back was obviously quite amusing for the dive instructor, but i nailed it in the end, go me 😊
we then had to do more classroom work, learning about dive tables and other such, obviously great fun things involving numbers and maths and pressure groups, etc etc. didn't finish till 6.00pm and then we had homework to do!!! what?!!?!!
totally random, was on the beach after dinner taking pretty photos of pretty sunsets and bumped into a group of blokes that we'd gone out with in mission beach! this is starting to get freaky!! 😊
i actually signed up to do my advanced diving course but had to cancel it because i'm getting a little pushed for time and it would have had a knockon effect on when i could have done my whitsundays trip 😞 still, its just another excuse to come back!!
wednesday was the last day of my course! we did our exam in the morning (and all passed) and then in the afternoon we did our final 2 ocean dives. there were a few more people in the group which was a bit of a pain because it meant that everyone kept getting in each other's way etc etc 😞 still, the dives were good fun. we did one in alma bay and one in geoffrey bay where we went to the moltke wreck. the moltke dive was so so knackering! we had to climb down some rocks with all our equipment on and then swim out to where the wreck was, which took about 10 minutes! anyhoo, all that done, awful ID photographs were taken and that was the end of my training! go me little miss scuba! aw, and i must be like, totally blind - when we came up from the dive, everyone was going "did you see that wobbegong shark?" (not dangerour, bottom dwelling, more like a stingray really) um, no. ah well 😊
sharna had gone (down to airlie beach) by this point so i had dinner with this guy called steve who i was meant to be doing the advanced course with. he was totally irish and i didn't understand a word he said 😊
the next morning (thursday), totally knackered, decided that the only option was to lay by the pool all day 😊
ah, but not until i had booked my whitsunday sailing! managed to get a deal that included a 4WD camping safari on fraser island (3 days, 2 nights), whitsunday sailing (3days, 2nights) and 4 free nights accomodation in airlie beach/hervey bay. booked the whitsunday sailing based on the fact that the boat had a spa on it 😊 hehe. tres important!! that and you could go diving, and it was only a small group of people on the boat. all so so exciting!!! so yeah, that was all booked for sunday 😊
friday was spent in a similar way. well, in exactly the same way actually 😊 lazing by the pool, tis a hard life!!! at about 3.30pm though i decided i should maybe try and be vaguely touristy so i caught the bus to the fort walk (they have loads and loads of marked routes around the island that you can follow) - apparently this is the best walk for koala spotting :D obviously had to do it!!! ended up walking with this couple from scotland who were dead nice, and, yes, we saw a koala bear!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it was brilliant, so so exciting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! he was just sat up this eucalyptus tree sleeping 😊 we carried on a little further, but, koala mission accomplished we gave up when the trail involved climbing a steep hill 😊 on the way back down everyone was asking if we had seen any koalas 😊 obviously not many people were interested in the actual forts, lol.
that evening i walked along the beach and watched the sunset. it was lovely and so so quiet - i had the beach totally to myself. it really is the most amazingly beautiful place.
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michaela
non-member comment
ohhh!!
ooh Lindsey. KOALA! Making me so jealous!! look at the pretty beach. =( im sitting at workin glooking at the dull cloudyness of luton! grr not fair!! hope your ok anyway. sounds like you are! xxxx