Trying to catch up on these things is such a pain, I will finish Australia before we leave here, note to self, decide to do a blog from the get go instead of half way through! Anyway!! The next few days involved a lot of driving on the way up to Airle Beach to visit the Whitsunday's.

Scooter, certainly one of the better Oz Experience drivers picked us up and we head towards the town of 1770/ Agnes Water. Apart from sitting on the beach the only thing that this place- named after Captain Cooks famous 1770 sailing, along with a lot of things- is going on these little scooters on a 60k ride to see the sunset over 1770, one of the few (only?) places in Eastern Australia where you can see sunset over the water. I got off to a very shaky start, to say the very least and wobbled along behind the other riders trying to look like I had a clue what I was doing. Terrifying, I will not be doing such a thing again, another note to self, when your dad, who has ridden bikes for many years says such things are dangerous, listen!! The sunrise, on the upside was totally worth it, stunning, no extra help from sunglasses needed to jazz it up either ;)

Leaving the lovely bohemian hostel 'Cool Bananas' behind we went onto Kroombit Cattle Station, certainly one of the more random places we have visited on this trip. Arriving early we had a BBQ lunch and Joey and I hung about waiting for those that did the horse riding to return, as I have ridden horses before I decided to give this one a miss, and after yesterdays events I decided it was better to stay put, on the ground, on my own two feet! The cattle station is exactly what you imagine it to be, completely isolated and very rustic, it certainly had a certain charm to it! The afternoon was spent learning how to lasso a goats head, on a stick as preparation for 'goat rodeo', which involved catching a goat with the lasso, another person turning it over and another branding it, I will never know what it would be like as the heavens took that moment to open and the rodeo pen became a squishy muddy mess, so onto the evenings events of mechanical bull riding, face painting, eating and drinking. All great fun, especially watching the mechanical bull riding, which I decided not to partake in, far to many bruises already!

The next morning following a cowboy breakfast including coffee from a billy can we head on the monster of a 9 hour journey to Airlie Beach where I was booked into do a days ocean rafting around the Whitsunday's! Airlie Beach itself is very much a backpacker mecca and we stayed at a great hostel called beaches. The first night there it had been arranged for all of us who had shared the last few days together would meet to have a few drinks, dinner and dancing, a great evening!

Up and early the next day and onto the Whitsunday's trip, another of those things that I was sooo looking forward to! The morning didn't look too promising, clouds of doom up ahead and rain, booooo! Luckily 10 minuets into the (really fast) journey the clouds cleared and out came some gorgeous sunshine! I was kept amused by 'Wilson' the tour guide who thought that my battered and bruised knees were something of great amusement, as did the rest of the boat, as I was one of the younger ones and I am not sure many of them had been on a surf board or scooter recently! We arrived at Whitehaven beach, one of the most photographed places in the world, I can see why. There are so many different shades of blue out there as far as the eye can see, simply a stunning sight. We then had a gorgeous buffet lunch on a secluded beach before taking a dip in the 'Chapagne pools' and visiting the hundreds upon thousands of soldier crabs making their way along the beach, such strange little creatures, they made a very amusing sound as they all scuttled around.

On from there to a few small reefs for some snorkelling. I am not going to pretend that I know much about fish and therefore cant name them, but I can say that there were loads and loads of them, one of which was a humongous blue thing that looked like it could swallow me whole, well maybe not, perhaps in two. Hopefully the under water photos worked out, if not there is always the Great Barrier Reef! We then cruised around a few more islands and went through 'gods washingmachine'- where three tides meet, SPLASH! Before heading back onto dry land! The last day was spent on Airlie Beach Lagoon before preparing to go onto Magnetic Island!

Onto Magnetic Island 'a holiday within a holiday' destination apparently! We turned up at our hostel after a brief visit to the doctors in Townsville (I have been deaf in the left ear for the lest part of 6 weeks and decided that it should be seen to, mild ear infection apparently, I can now hear again, yay!) The accommodation that we had chosen turned out to be one of those places that looks good on the internet, however it tuned out to be the worst choice of the trip so far, after 7 odd weeks we are pretty lucky that this was the case I guess! We stayed at Picnic Bay, a really secluded little area at the south part of 'Maggie', along with all other areas there was a bottle shop, beach and bar and that was about it!

Maggie is a really cute little island and perfect I imagine if you want to get away from it all, lots of lovely little secluded hotels and guesthouses and they hire out little mini moke's and tropical pink barbie cars for a day hire to see the island, they look really cool zipping about. Our time there was taken up with mainly beach related activities and eating lovely pancakes with ice cream, syrup and fruit for breakfast (naughty!), a very lazy few days indeed!