Mission Beach to Townsville

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Today we strolled into Mission Beach, which was right behind the Retreat. It is by far the most beautiful beach we have seen. (We say that a lot, don't we? This time we mea it!!) It is the most idyllic beach- clear, warm water, soft surf, palm tree lined, stretching for a few miles in both directions. A run down the beach even got squeezed in between swims and bronzing and we realized how out of shape we are from spending too much time in the car. We hung out at the beach till 2 and had to tear ourselves away to make lunch at the retreat.

On our way out of Mission Beach we passed by some wild wallabies doing what wallabies do... grazing and hoppin on a hillside. Pretty cool start to our 4 hour drive south to Townsville. Unfortunately it didn't get much more interesting. We put the ipod on shuffle and just sang whatever came at us. Townsville is probably the largest city we have seen since leaving Sydney, it has quite the urban sprawl. Our hostel, Globetrotters, was located smack dab in the center of the nightclub area. As we were moving into our crappy room, a guy walked by on the street and started yelling at the owner of the hostel. He was shaking the hostel's gate as if he wanted to get at the owner and was making a scene but what made it quite funny is that he could have just walked down the street 50 feet to the open driveway gate if he really wanted to fight... It was all for show.

So we were sitting in our room wondering what kind of ghetto we had just stumbled upon and realized that the toilet was broken, the shower leaked and the walls were paper thin. The yelling eventually stopped and we wandered very warily out into the town and realized that we were just in a backpackers' party town, who knows what that guy's deal was. Too bad we have an amazing dive scheduled for tomorrow otherwise we'd be enjoying the bar scene and having more than a middy (as in TINY beer, I believe half pint) at an Irish pub called Molly Malones, watching rugby playoffs on a projection screen. We are seriously missing college football right now, so we're getting into rugby...it's the next best thing. Plus we like watching hot, muscly men run around in short shorts!!

Passed out relatively early- pretty lame but necessary for the big day ahead. We had a hard time trying to get to sleep because 1) we were excited for the Yongala dive and 2) we could sing along to the music from the bordering clubs it's so loud. Thank goodness for ear plugs.

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