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Published: August 28th 2013
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Me, Jon and our new pal Q got on the bus for our next destination Magnetic Island. The bus journey was about four hours long and for the first hour the lovely Lozzie B, our friend in Melbourne, called us for a catch up and to make plans for our visit, which made the bus journey go a lot quicker. At about
2pmwe arrived in a small town called Townsville - from here we took a short ferry ride over to the island. The views from the ferry were stunning so I just couldn't wait to get there. From the marina we got on a local bus that dropped us off right outside our hostel - YHA Bungalow Bay, which was also happened to be a koala sanctuary too.
After we checked in we were shown to our eight bed dorm which was in its own little long house. The dorm wasn't full and there were only five of us all together. After making up our beds we took a walk to the nearest beach by us which is also part of a national park called Horseshoe Bay, only a five minute walk down the road. The beach was beautiful
with its golden sand and surrounding palm trees. After taking a stroll along the beach we decided to look for a supermarket. Stupidly we never went to a supermarket before we got there and the only shop we found was a tiny corner shop charging whatever they liked. Unfortunately we had no choice so picked up some bread, eggs and bacon and made ourselves sandwiches for dinner.
That night we went to bed early but I was woken in the middle of the night by Jon shouting and a scream from the girl in the next bed. I shot up quickly to see the light on and Jon out of his bed pointing. I got out of bed to see there was a possum in the room! It had somehow got into the room and jumped onto Jon's legs whilst he was sleeping. We then noticed a pile of possum poo on the bed above Jon's! Eventually we managed to get the possum out of the room but none of us could sleep the rest of that night and would all jump every time we heard a noise.
In the morning we were awake pretty early after barely
sleeping. We let reception know about the possum but they didn't do or say a lot. The weather that day was great so we went down to the beach where we stayed the whole afternoon. At one point we heard some rustling noises in the bushes just behind where we were sunbathing. It took a few moments for us to realise that it was a Kangaroo and two baby roos. We both stayed deadly quiet and watched them for about 30 minutes until a little dog came along and scared them off.
When it started to get a bit cooler at around
5pm we went to a nearby bottle shop and bought two bottles of wine. As we didn't want bacon and egg sandwiches again that night we went and got a portion of fresh fish and chips for dinner which we shared whilst watching the sunset on the beach and sipped on the chilled Sauvignon Blanc - it was perfect. When we got back from the beach we had our free jug of cider from the bar and then went to bed praying there wouldn't be another possum break in.
The next morning we made our way
down to the beach again and spent hours there before coming back to the hostel to do a wildlife tour of the on site animal sanctuary. With our very eccentric park guide we began our tour - first stop crocodiles. Everyone had the opportunity to hold the baby crocs with its mouth taped up with a bit of plaster but I just didn't fancy it. Jon on the other hand was really keen and proceeded to get pretty friendly with all the wildlife including feeding a bird from his mouth and got entwined with snakes. I wasn't so brave so stuck to holding a few lizards, a small tortoise and a baby koala! The koala was so cute and fuzzy and gripped on to me tight when placed into my arms - I didn't want to give her back! After the koalas came my worst nightmare, a giant poisonous tarantula - yayyyyyyy! Luckily for me as it was so poisonous it wasn't allowed to be passed around like everything else as I'm sure Jon would of happily chased me round the sanctuary with it. At the end of tour the whole group were given bird feed and had to hold
their hands out for the feeding of the parakeets. Me and Jon didn't fancy getting swarmed by the huge group of birds in trees above us so just watched. Eventually one bird came down to feed and then they all came, followed by the bird poo!!!
After having a quick wash to get rid of the bird poo we headed down to the beach again to go and watch the sunset but with a bottle of merlot this time - it was so relaxing and quite the opposite from the bird frenzy. We made our way back to the hostel, did some laundry and packed our rucksacks ready to head to Airlie Beach in the morning where we hoped the great weather would continue.
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